The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 2, July 1894
General
The yellow book, an illustrated quarterly. Vol. 2, July 1894
English literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Great Britain -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Once more delighting us with _Marquise_ in 1889; playing with such
child-like grace the Candidate in _Brevet Supérieur_ in 1891;
immediately afterwards she took a part in _Amoureuse_ at the Odéon.
The subject is equivocal, the dialogue smutty. Réjane extenuated
nothing; on the contrary, accentuated things, and yet knew always how
to win her pardon.
Now, it so happened that in 1882, after having personified the
Moulin-Rouge in _Les Variétés de Paris_, Réjane was married on the
stage, in _La Nuit de Noces de P. L. M._, to P. L. Moriseau. On the
anniversary day, ten years later, her marriage took place in good
earnest, before a real M. le Maire, and according to all legal
formalities, with M. Porel, a sometime actor, an ex-director of the
Odéon, then director of the Grand-Théâtre, and co-director to-day of
the Vaudeville.... But to return to her art.
Just as the first dressmakers of Paris measure Réjane's fine figure
for the costumes of her various rôles, so the best writers of the
French Academy now make plays to her measure. They take the size of
her temperament, the height of her talent, the breadth of her play;
they consider her taste, they flatter her mood; they clothe her with
the richest draperies she can covet. Their imagination, their fancy,
their cleverness, are all put at her service. The leaders in this
industry have hitherto been Messrs. Meilhac and Halévy, but now M.
Victorien Sardou is ruining them. _Madame Sans-Gêne_ is certainly, of
all the rôles Réjane has played, that best suited to bring out her
manifold resources. It is not merely that Réjane plays the
washerwoman, become a great lady, without blemish or omission; she is
Madame Sans-Gêne herself, with no overloading, nothing forced, nothing
caricatured. It is portraiture; history.
Many a time has Réjane appeared in cap, cotton frock, and white apron;
many a time in robes of state, glittering with diamonds; she has worn
the buskin or the sock, demeaned herself like a gutter heroine, or
dropped the stately curtsey of the high-born lady. But never, except
in Madame Sans-Gêne, has she been able to bring all her rôles into one
focus, exhibit her whole wardrobe, and yet remain one and the same
person, compress into one evening the whole of her life.
The seekers after strange novelties, the fanatics for the mists of the
far north, the vague, the irresolute, the restless, will not easily
forget the Ibsenish mask worn by Réjane in Nora of _The Doll's House_;
although most of us, loving Réjane for herself, probably prefer to
this vacillating creation, the firm drawing, the clear design, the
strong, yet supple lines of Madame Sans-Gêne.
Why has Réjane no engagement at the Comédie-Française? Whom does one
go to applaud on this stage, called the first in France, and from
which Réjane, Sarah Bernhardt, and Coquelin the elder, all are absent?
I will explain the matter in two words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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