Mad Acctor
TH’E JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE AND MENTAL PATHOLOGY. Art. I.?. No. 1.
see the players well bestow’d ? for they are the abstract, and brief chronicles, of the time ; after your death you had better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.?Hamlet.
Impersonation is, undoubtedly, the most interesting and perplexing of the supersensuous states, which either the metaphysician or the scientist has to deal. Imitation, whether on the stage or in ordinary intercourse, is the reproduction, in the person of the copyist, of expressions, tones, attitudes, and peculiarities which may so far resemble the characteristics of the original, as to suggest to the eye or memory of the observer the features or acts thus physically portrayed ; or this acted portrait may merge into mere mimicry, caricature, or buffoonery, and leave no trace upon the imagination except that of merriment and grotesque farce. Representation, on the other hand, is a more dignified and precise depicting of persons or the scenes in which they mingle, and in so accurate an embodiment, both of external deportment and moral qualities, so far as these are indicated by external signs, or modes of action, that no doubt can be left on the mind of the spectators as to the vrais semblances, or rather the realisation of the attributes of whomsoever, may have been dramatised or represented. The hero or the homicide, the shrinking girl or the virago, or the more common-place manifestations of human nature which pass before us, are seen, recognised, and inspire not merely a conception of likeness, but a conviction that these personages are in your presence. Impersonation, again must be defined.as that condition in which the actor sinks, loses or forgets, for the season, his personal identity and assumes, or, as it may be expressed, is converted into the ideal which he represents, and thinks, feels, acts, in the manner in which the original would have done, or has been known to have done. The double or mental photograph is deprived of his own nature, and rises or falls, as the case may be, into that of the creature of his imagination and creation. Macready has brought out this singular state into bold and appreciable relief by saying that on such a night he played or attempted to play Macbeth, but that on a subsequent night he succeeded because he was Macbeth. When superficially analysed, this capacity to identify an actor with passions or feelings seems to consist in the exercise of that faculty which controls, conceals the personal thoughts and tendencies, and substitutes for them the manifestations of another character. The most marked feature of such a power is an instinctive tendency to conceal our thoughts and emotions, and to impress upon others thoughts and emotions altogether distinct and inconsistent with what might be expected to be present to the consciousness of the actor. According to Sir Walter Scott, when Napoleon conceived himself to be closely observed, he had the power of discharging from his countenance all expression, save that of a vague and indefinite smile, and presenting to the curious investigator the fixed eyes and rigid features of a marble bust. But there are more profound and what may be styled transitive state of this metempsychosis, which to a certain extent and for brief periods of time abrogate or limit the functions of will and of the regulations of thought and action, and which approach very closely the confines of morbidity. It is recorded of the celebrated Mrs. Siddons, that after enacting certain of her most difficult and impassioned characters, in which she had so identified herself with the articulate history of the part represented, that she could not disembarrass, or denude herself of the look, the gait, the gesticulations, and, what is more striking, of the sentiments and emotions which she had simulated before her audience. This possession, this merging of herself in the ideas which she had described, or rather, had imparted, continued for hours, during which she walked to and fro, casting off, portion by portion of the mental deception or innocent perversion of her own nature, which she had worn as she did the articles from her wardrobe. It is not affirmed that she ceased to be in her own knowledge and conviction Mrs* Siddons, or that she failed to recognise her surroundings, or to recollect the events preceding and about to follow existing circumstances; but it is asserted that she had so entered into, and had become one with an ideal personage, that she could not cast off the sentiments, the bearing and the moral portraiture which she had assumed, nor regain her original self and return to the more commonplace doings and duties imposed upon her. Another illustration of this condition has come to our notice. Mr. W. Murray, formerly the manager of the Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, was a man of exquisite comic and simulative or secretive power. One evening, immediately after the performance, he was suddenly seized with indisposition, and uttered words which were regarded as incoherent. His medical adviser, who narrated the incident, arrived to find the whole dramatic corps in a state of wild agitation and alarm. Volatile salts had been freely scattered around, feathers had been burnt; but the terrified patient was still fixed in a chair close to the footlights, gazing in fear and perplexity on the darkened cavern of the pit, and the weird and shabby scenes and wardrobes, now deprived of all the make-shifts that render them attractive. He saw his physician without, recognising his well-known features and continued to shout or sigh, or whisper, ” I can’t get out ! I can’t get out.” He had been playing the part of Midas, and was apparelled in the tight-fitting leather dress and head cowl, with the long nodding ears shaking at every semiconvulsive perturbed movement, which is always worn on such occasions. His restlessness and cries continued for some time, but, at length, the moral medicine of the gentle persuasive voice of the doctor, had its desired influence, and serenity and silence were established, but there remained, for a time, a perplexed and half-conscious condition, in which he knew that something extraordinary had occurred, but in which memory supplied solely the conviction that he was Midas, that he would remain Midas, and that his thoughts, his future career and his doom must be that of Midas. His terror originated in the thraldom of this metamorphosis.* It is conceived that such of our tragedians as have been most successful, and the conception may be justifiably extended to all distinguished players, have been those who buried their own personality in the attributes of another, and that to exercise the paramount even tyrannical influence of Isabella, Mrs. Haller, Lady Macbeth, over the hearts, heads, eyes and perceptions of a miscellaneous crowd, were all endowed with some degree or modification of this * We possess no evidence that this worthy gentleman was ever affected with any other nervous symptom than that of somnambulism. Many anecdotes might be collected of instances where this duality or duplicity of consciousness became permanent, and could not be dissolved, a new species of hallucination having thus been created ; but, with the exception of an exampio which shall be given on a subsequent page, implicit reliance cannot be reposed on such narratives. impersonating faculty. But this gift has not been confined exclusively to those distinguished in histrionic art, who may be fairly said to have been taught and trained in shrouding their own lineaments under a mask of widely different aspect and proportions. In a volume designated Mystifications ” published about twenty years ago, and edited, it is believed, by Dr. John Brown, there are presented eight or ten scenes, in which a lady of high culture and lofty lineage completely outwitted many of her most able, astute and imaginative countrymen, several of whom had been warned, or rather threatened with the hoax of which it was intended they should be the victim. Among those subjected to this ordeal were Lord Jeffery, Sir Walter Scott, &c. The temptress affected but one role. She was always an old lady scrupulously attired in the dress of sixty years ago, always a Jacobite, and always armed with subjects and stories and mirthful anecdotes suited to the taste of her auditor, and calculated to blind and mystify his perceptions. It is worthy of note that while completely withdrawing her individual characteristics from observation, and while leading astray those whom she addressed into what appeared real but were fabulous circumstances, and while able to change or disguise her features so as to resemble anyone but herself, thus obliterating her individual expression, there sometimes passed over the mind of the listener or spectator that both Mrs. Ogle of Balbogle, the oddity represented, and her original representative were both in the room. Should a more extensive view be taken of the education, manners and history of those public servants who afford such exquisite pleasure, and sometimes such solemn and valuable lessons to the public, important data may be obtained concerning the morbific proclivities which they inevitably imbibe. Several of our eminent heroes of the buskin have left military or naval or legal ranks in order to seek for fame and fortune in the dramatic corps. But the great proportion of performers have first seen the light and their earliest impressions in a booth or caravan or some half-ruined building purlieus of a town. They emerge from a nursery where impecuniosity mingled with bare or squalid properties, where there was a frequent hurried and moonlight change of residence, where every event imparted a degree of precariousness and adventure to the family history. The children of the troupe could not avoid being imitators from their swaddling clothes. They must have strutted their brief hour on the stage as soon as they could totter, and they must have breathed the same moral air as their relatives and tutors. Even in a higher walk of the profession where many of the appliances of comfort and een luxury surround childhood or youth, there must hive been the same unintentional but powerful communication of the opinions, hopes, fears, pleasures and objects of those around. Even when pecuniary considerations are constantl}’ obtruding, the great aim of such a society must be public distinction; its members crave, solicit, pant for praise and plaudits ; their days are occupied in the unhealthy preparation for the evening display ; in committing to memory thousands of lines of writers but imperfectly understood; in the iteration of,the same phrases, sometimes for a hundred nights in succession ; in acquiring certain attitudes, expressions of face or figure, and in removing as many of the traces of their own aspect and individuality as possible, in order to secure the wonder or admiration of those whom they desire to impress. When the actor has attained a prominent place amongst his fellows, he does not escape from these contagious influences; his habits both of thought and action are comparatively artifical; he inhales a sort of intoxicating gas and moves through the work-a-day world with fewer ties and connections, than with the realm of fancy or the romantic; at all events, unreal existence. It would be absurd to suppose that persons so constituted generally pass into the condition which has been described as presented in Mrs. Siddons; but it may be confidently stated that the player rarely ceases to be the player, that he cannot entirely dispel the strut, the stare, the speech and many of the peculiarities which he has laboured to incorporate with his own nature, and of the predominance of which he may be entirely ignorant. It is however gratifying to know that, notwithstanding the unhealthy education to which this class of men has been subjected, and notwithstanding the pernicious effects which unavoidably flow from the course pursued, while all, or the great majority, have acquired elevated, extravagant, and non-natural dispositions and manners, few have passed the border line of sanity, or have become the victims of forms of nervous disorder, obviously originating in their art and occupation.
Charles Macklin, 1690.
There was at one period a favourite theory held by psychologists, that the different species of alienation corresponded in some measure, modified, doubtless, by personal idiosyncrasies, education and habits, with the national genius and character of the people of which the patient was a member. This view did not refer primarily or chiefly to the endemic and hereditary forms of arrested development met in mountainous countries and dependent in part, at least, upon geological and other local conditions, such as climate, food, and personal surroundings, as much as upon the transmission of taint. As a corollary of the doctrine, it was to be expected that while furious excitement would be encountered in one region or country, melancholy and depression would prevail in another, and that even the hallucinations distinguishing these different states would bear a colouring and resemblance which might be traced in the opinions, superstitions, and moral peculiarities existing in health. Although certain of our fellow-labourers have hinted the suspicion that the jperfervidum ingenium scotorum may be detected in the madman springing from the Gael, the Cymric and the inhabitants of Northern France, an examination of the cloistered patients in these countries does not bear out very palpably this speculation. It should be confessed, however, that nationality does impress a certain stamp upon mental affections, and especially on delusions, which demand, and should receive, special study and consideration, as intimately connected with the etiology of mental disease.
We are about to trace the manifestations of a Celt, but apprehend that his nature and the close of his career were of too commonplace a kind to cast much light upon the obscure matter which has been initiated. C. M. was not a distinguished player, yet he succeeded in occupying a very prominent place in the theatrical world during the latter half of the past century.* His race has not furnished many eminent members to the dramatic art. This may be an illustration of the hypothesis alluded to above, that imagination is limited in its abnormal as well as in its normal influences. A race, however, represented almost contemporaneously by Macaulay, the son of a Highland clergyman, as the most eloquent historian of our time; by General MacMahon, whose ancestors were expatriated after the battle of the Boyne, and who wielded the destinies of France for years; by Sir Eoderick Murchison, who stood at the head of modern geologists, and by Grant, the President of the United States, cannot lack many of the qualities which contribute to the powers of an actor; nor are examples of brilliant success by Celts in histrionic art wanting when we recollect the names of Macready, the Campbells, and their descendants. C.M., like other great men, must have had an obscure birth and parentage, as he does not come distinctly into view until he is acting as an errand boy in Trinity College. Yet he claimed to be the descendant of kings, bearing the unmelodious name of McLaughlin, asserted that he had been present at one of a series of annual festivals given by the chief of the sept, during which there were extended to him certain marks of favour and distinction. A glimmer of fame is shed upon his extraction by a tradition that during the siege of Londonderry, he had three uncles within and three without the walls. According to his own version his launch on the sea of public life was, that his parents, small farmers, residing near the Bessborough family, he was selected to play the part of Monimea in the tragedy of
” The Orphan.” This incident, and his subsequent apprenticeship to a saddler, his subsequent difficulties on leaving this appointment, are all compatible with his servitorship at Trinity College. His failure on his debut in the tragedy of ” CEdipus ” led to an insulting condemnation from the manager, and his connection with a strolling company in Wales. It is to M.’s credit that his misfortune was due to an appreciation of the natural mode in which dialogue and declamation should be enunciated on the stage, rather than in the stilted and bombastic mouthing then resorted to. Success at a gaming table, and the example of a companion, led him into extravagance and profligacy, but repentance, or at all events respectability, appeared to have characterised his appearance in London, although that appearance still took place in a booth, and in Southwark. But success, and a friendship with Fielding, attended his representation in the comedy of “The Coffeehouse Politician.” According to certain authorities very considerable decorum prevailed, or was enforced in the theatre of Co vent Garden, when M. joined it. But although the dissipated classes were banished, or absented themselves from behind the curtain, and from all other ? parts of the house, and although order and tranquillity existed, occasional disturbances must have taken place, as we find M. engaged in a ludicrous duel in which he wounded his antagonist in the eye, his only weapon being a broomstick, an offence for which he was tried and found guilty of manslaughter. His great intractability of disposition did not materially interfere with the decencies of his domestic position, and at this period he attained his highest reputation, and deservedly secured the gratitude of the admirers of Shakespeare, by redeeming the part of Shylock from the base and degraded caste in which, until then, it had been performed. The reproduction of this play, and of the distinction obtained by M. on the occasion, are traced to two circumstances, the onf, the ruin of one manager, and the usurpation of another, in consequence of pecuniary difficulties and complications, and secondly to the sneering criticism and the incredulity as to his powers freely circulated by the friends of M. Connected with this incident was the melancholy fact that his eccentricity ultimately, but long after his triumph, merging into dementia, he had dressed for his favourite character, but forgot altogether the play of which it formed so conspicuous a feature. Following this decided victory over prejudice and impecuniosity, a strong admiration and intimacy associated him with Grarrick, then a rising, although not a risen actor. This friendship involved various professional transactions, but ended in a rupture, and his exclusion from Drury Lane, without money or prudence, or prospects for the future. During many years M. passed rapidly from one theatre to another,from London to Dublin, from company to company, but offending or quarrelling with almost every person, and certainly every manager with whom he came into contact, by bis pretentious arrogance and infirmities of temper. His irascibility and unreasonableness may be illustrated by his formidable and final quarrel with his amiable daughter, who had retired from the stage on a small competency of her own earning, and which hinged upon the accentuation of the quotation of ” Mercy is mightiest in the mightiest,” she uttering the final word with the greatest emphasis, he giving the prominence to “in.” For a brief season he acquired a reputation for heroic morality, by treating a nobleman, who had ventured to address improper proposals to the father in reference to his daughter, with the contempt and punishment which he deserved, hurling him downstairs, with a threat of instant death, enforced by the proximity of a knife to the throat. He starts a tavern, writes successful farces, announces his retirement from the stage when in the vigour of health, and with no intention of actually saying farewell, and in every proceeding displaying defects of judgment and peculiarities of disposition which greatly interfered with his fame and fortune. After the failure of several pieces, he produced ” The True-born Irishman ; ” the universally famous ” Man of the World,” which were enthusiastically received, and still retain a hold upon the stage. He accomplished another feat, remarkable in several respects, by entering upon a totally new cast of character, appearing with considerable success in Richard, Othello, and Macbeth, in reforming the dress and properties of the actors, especially in transforming the latter hero from a modern military officer into a chief, wearing the garb of Old Gaul, and in achieving this marvellous effort when he was eighty-five or according to others ninety-five. But age, probably the death of a daughter, and above all the original lack of balance in his mind of self-control, and of a due estimate of his own powers, brought about mental decay and decrepitude, chiefly betrayed in the loss of memory and of the perception of the requirements of his position. This amnesia was detected not merely by. his friends, but was publicly proclaimed by his forgetting the play of the evening, although he was dressed for the part of Shy lock, and surrounded by the inmates of the Green-room similarly prepared. When realising, but imperfectly recollecting, the duties assigned him, the poor old man went upon the stage, spoke portions of the dialogue, but evidently did not understand or recall what he was saying. After some time he somewhat recovered, but it was merely to say, ” I can do no more,” looked helplessly around and retired for the last time. He never attempted to act again, and his declining years were marked by the indications of senile dementia, which, however, were accompanied by occasional serenity and partial lucidity, by the capacity to attend regularly in the theatre, and momentarily to recognise the condescension of royalty when members of the reigning familv extended some notice to his well-remembered but fast-failing form. The data upon which any conclusion can be legitimately founded are insufficient, but enough is known to justify the belief that the symptoms of the malady did not differ from what is daily observed in individuals without genius or imagination, and without that interpenetration of exalted and artificial sentiment to which the mind of this sufferer was throughout life subjected. It might be argued that such a career as has been traced was conservative rather than destructive ; that the extreme old age which Macklin readied, without impairment, one hundred and seven (?), shows that health, if not strength of intellect, is compatible with all the difficulties and vicissitudes of an actor’s life ; and with the incessant strain upon certain of his powers, alike in preparing and in exhibiting his exercise of memory and impersonation, the mind would, in all probability, have tottered and fallen in a centenarian, whatever his mode of life or training; had been. FiiANgois Joseph Talma, 1763.
It is not, of course, proposed that these sketches should be confined to the mental disturbances of actors who were natives of Britain; but had this intention existed, Talma might have been legitimately included in the melancholy catalogue. Although born and educated in France, he was brought to England at a very early age; he spoke its language with facility and fluency, he admired its literature, he associated with some of its most gifted sons, and he even essayed, and with success, to represent certain of our most celebrated and difficult histrionic creations, such as ” Macbeth,” ” Hamlet.” But although his life-long opinions- and predilections must have been greatly influenced and modified by his love and admiration of our land, and language, and institutions, by his friendship with John Kemble, and his intercourse with other distinguished members of our community, he was actually educated at Chaillot in France, pursued his more advanced studies in the College Mazarin in Paris, making himself familiar with all that was grand and beautiful in the dramatic literature of his native country. It is probable that the prosecution of his studies of the poets and tragedians was dictated and sustained by an intention of devoting himself to the representation of the characters which had secured his attention and admiration, and of imparting to the world his analytic conceptions of the productions of the authors to whom he had for years devoted his abilities and affections. His ambition was not to be immediately gratified, as it would appear that his debv.t in the character of ” Seide,” in the tragedy of ” Mahomet,” was an unmitigated failure, pronounced by a council of friends, whom he consulted, to be destitute of genuine tragic power and imagination, and was followed by a constrained adoption of his father’s profession, and doubtless, by a sweet and stolen indulgence in his former and favourite pursuits and reading. So vast had then, and subsequently been, the range and grasp of Talma’s conception of the drama that it is recorded he prepared and introduced upon the stage twenty-one new characters, surrounding each with a nimbus of glory, imparted alike by his own imagination and the reciprocal admiration of his school.
As many of these parts were founded, and had been prepared, from Roman sources, it is probable that the events and allusions occurring in the development may have appealed to the temper and tone of the French mind, which had scarcely recovered from the fever of revolutionary excitement, and that applause may, perhaps, have been showered upon the politics, as well as the poetry of the piece. His power over the audience which he fascinated was so paramount that, in opposition to the prejudices, or shall we dignify the tendency with the name of taste, he spoke the dry, hard, and stiff verse of tragedy as if it had been prose. He is not to be blamed, we think, for this innovation ; but, at all events, he may be commended for his daring and influence. It is interesting that, living during a cycle of transition, and when neither the constitution nor opinions, nor manners of the community had recovered from the tumultuous changes of revolution, and were still haunted by that ” fear of change perplexing nations,” his talents, tact, and reputation secured the attention, the patronage, even the friendship, successively of two monarchs differing as widely in their habits, principles, and objects as Bonaparte and Louis XVIII. Yet this fascinating mimic had been drawn into the hideous vortex of the French Revolution ; but although a Jacobin, it does not appear that he participated in the excesses of the faction, nor drank the blood, nor imbued his hands in the execution of its victims.
We possess no account of the physical tendencies of this great actor, nor whether he was predisposed by descent, or in his own person, or by peculiar habits to disease, and especially to nervous maladies; but we can readily understand that he was intensely susceptible to the impressions received in his ordinary career, and especially to the paralysing and perilous convulsions by which he was environed. Talma is said to have been subject to strabismus, but whether this affection was congenital or the sequel of some cerebral affection, or whether it may have disturbed and perverted his powers of vision, we have no means of knowing, but that the murders and massacres, the breakingup of society, and, it may have been, his personal danger, must have shaken his frame to the very centre, may be predicated. It is certain that, at the commencement of the revolution, of which he was nothing more, we are entitled to conjecture, than an affrighted spectator, he became the victim of a nervous disorder. That this was complicated by hallucinations is proved by the grave and appalling features of his condition. When partially recovered, he began again to act, but whenever he trod the stage and gazed down upon the assembled crowds who hung upon his declamation, he saw not the upturned faces of his admirers nor any proof that they were human beings at all. There grinned and gibbered before him, or sat mute and motionless, a crowd of skeletons which he was able, notwithstanding the awe, the superstition, possibly the terror which such a spectacle must have induced, to see distinctly, to recognise, and to recoil from. Yet such were his powers of self-command and self-possession that he proceeded with his part, betraying no emotion, and conducting himself as if unconscious of the supernatural assemblage before which his energies and abilities were displayed.
Another famous French actor, even while delighting Parisian citizens by his unvarying hilarity, his infectious mirthfulness, his witty extravagance, and convulsing all who came within the sphere of his fun and folly with laughter, was plunged in profound melancholy. He sought out a physician, skilled in such affections, and received as a prescription which would inevitably dispel his depression and effect his cure, that he should frequent the theatre where Carlin acted ; in other words, that he should ?see himself, and derive cheerfulness from his own nightly exhibition.
Monrose.
Among the deteriorating influences to which actors are subjected in the training and exercise of their profession, and which restrict them to a narrow, infected, or intoxicating region, the burden imposed upon memory does not appear to play an important part. That the constant commitment and repetition of the language and thoughts of others must interfere with and limit the creation and origination of new suggestions of fancy and imagination, cannot be doubted. But beyond the substitution of artificial for natural modes of reasoning or sentiment, no injury seems to be inflicted upon mentalisation. We have before us the history of a clergyman of the Established Church of Scotland, who secured the reputation of an eloquent, powerful, and popular preacher. During somewhat more than an hour he was accustomed to pour forth from the pulpit a continuous stream of what was accepted as sound reasoning, of solemn and impressive warnings, admonitions of encouragements and grounds of hope, sometimes in complicated phraseology, but more generally in clear, cogent or persuasive sentences delivered without effort, and as if spontaneously arising from his heart at the moment. This gentleman was necessitated to prepare two sermons in each week of the length and duration specified, and this task consisted in his case in writing out, carefully correcting, and then committing to memory every word of his elaborated composition. He did not write with facility, though with felicity, and the effort to accomplish his self-elected work required four days in each week, and he confessed that he had heard the bells of the parish church often summon to worship before he had completed his weekly toil. On each recurring Monday he consulted his medical adviser, complaining of indisposition, of great prostration, muscular pain, loss of appetite, inability to engage in reflection; conditions which appear to have demanded relaxation. But actors undergo much more severe discipline than has been described. It has been affirmed that certain of the hard-working members of the dramatic corps have been able to acquire and retain many thousand lines in a day; but although this may be rejected as apocryphal, we have ascertained that one distinguished individual of this body has committed eight hundred lines in a portion of a day, and delivered them in the evening. Such may be Titanic triumphs of memory, but when it is known that new parts may require to be studied, and the dialogue faithfully impressed upon the recollection every day in the season, the strain upon,the nervous system appears to be excessive, and all the aids and accessories of rehearsals, prompters, and so forth, can readily be conceived as essential to the successful rendering of any character whatever. It is wonderful that such a course pursued for years, during a long lifetime indeed, is so little destructive of health and mental integrity. The act of impersonation, of the surrender of self, of temporarily excluding the idea of personal identity from consciousness, and of substituting passions, conceptions, and words, foreign and even repulsive to our nature, involves a more severe test and trial on the capacity, self-negation, and acting of the similator.
There were presented on a previous page, several illustrations of the striking but transitory effects of this power of absorbing individuality in the representation of intense emotion or ideal personages, by susceptible and highly-wrought feelings, where the actor found it impossible to cast off the imaginary moral attributes which have been assumed. But there is a more painful, because permanent result, of which the fate of Monrose is an example. This person was at one time an ornament of the French stage, but bending under the oppression of longcontinued exertion and excitement, his brilliant powers were obscured by disease from which he never recovered. Defective as to our information concerning the precise features and progress of his affliction, it is evident from the superintendence of his medical attendant, during his last appearance on the stage, that the symptoms involved doubt, if not danger, as to his conduct. But the prominent and peculiar morbid manifestation was not merely the loss of his personality, but the engrafting of his favourite character upon his ordinary condition. This metempsychosis may be observed, although in somewhat modified aspect, in various other affections of the nervous system; in somnambulism, for instance, in the different forms of trance, vaguely delineated by Dr Beard in his* pamphlets published in New York in the current year; and even during hysterical agitation, mild or premonitory stages of cerebral irritation, and of fever, there occur self-deception or mystification as to who or what the sufferer may be, but these are passing perturbations and momentary phases of physical unhealth, and cannot be associated with the phenomena under examination. There are, moreover, in every establishment for lunatics, a department which might be designated the Hall of Kings or Magnates; but although the personages thus assembled may have deluded themselves into the belief, which they loudly proclaim and offer battle to defend, that they are Louis XIV. or the Admirable Crichton, they never lose the perception of their original identity, nor of their real origin, designation, and position, nor of the humble and harsh surroundings which contradict their assumption. But the distracted French player not merely con14 MAD ACTORS. ceived himself to be Figaro, in which part he had attained distinction, forgot his own name, answered to that of Figaro, had his gloom dispelled by quotations from ” II Barbiere di Seviglia,” and was, in truth, at all times and in all circumstances the Figaro which he had originally only pretended to be, and by the repeated realisation and enactment of which part his mental equilibrium and discernment had been destroyed, and an abnegation of his previous existence and relations interwoven with his thread of life. It has been narrated that lie was liberated for a single night from the durance to which he had been consigned, in order to participate in his own benefit, when his vigilant physician, the audience, and players were alarmed and excited, but his memory and bearing were perfect, until he was required to utter the words ” il est fou,” when the poor demented aged man, as if suddenly struck by the accidental allusion to his own misfortune, betrayed intense sorrow and retired never to return again. The celebrated tragedienne, Rachel, who witnessed the performance, is said to have been deeply affected by this close of a long and eminent career. Whether this psychical transmutation was the result of intense and protracted admiration of the part of Figaro, or of the incessant iteration and repetition of the words, deportment, assigned to the character, or of the applause which the representation had elicited, or whether pre-existing disease had merely received a colouring and contour from the play, it would be bootless to inquire; as whatever hypothesis as to causation may be adopted, the delusion was in itself a specific manifestation of mental perversion, deriving its signal aspect from the circumstances under which aberration occurred. It might have been instructive to have followed this bewildered patient into his seclusion, in order to have determined whether the scope and sincerity of his convictions continued until the close of life or not. A vulgar belief exists that under the pressure of chronic disease of a feeble and slackening pulse of all the preludes of dissolution, there is a lightening before death, a brief glimpse of rational thought and feeling, and the observation of men of science have not altogether gainsaid this cheering supposition. There has been related of the famous Mrs. Glover, who was the daughter of Betterton, that while her infant feet trod the stage, her earliest recollections must have arisen in a theatre, and almost her last hour of consciousness was on the stage. We have watched the disease and decaying powers of a gentle, but utterly confused and incoherent maniac, whilst waning and wasting under tubercular disease, but whose absurdities and extravagance gradually disappeared until within a short period of her death, she became perfectly tranquil, natural, lucid, so that, had the question arisen as to her being of sound mind, it must have been answered in the affirmative. But in cases where positive derangement cannot be predicated, there may arise states of error and weakness, and waywardness which may cease previous to or contemporaneous with the cessation of the vital functions, but which leave traces of tendencies, and opinions, and emotions utterly inconsistent with the original character, and incompatible with the habits and customs of the surrounding society. These posthumous deviations from the health and habits of a known individual, are chiefly disclosed in eccentric or unnatural testaments and bequests; which often, however, betray long-clierished antipathies or preferences as well as a complete transformation from what has been gauged and guaranteed as the real and established convictions and opinions of the testator. A well-known melo-dramatic notoriety became excited by the Volunteer Fever, which pervaded this country when an invasion from France, under Napoleon, was apprehended as imminent. His enthusiasm was supreme, and survived his decay, for, craving to demonstrate that “even in his ashes, lived his wonted fires,” he enjoined that his accoutrements should be interred with his body, and his regimentals, musket, &c., were, in compliance with his farewell words, buried with him. Nay, as if to perpetuate his devotion, and proclaim it to other generations outre le tombeau, his martial gear and arms, even to his chajpeau bras, are carved in stone, and form his principal monument.
Charles Matiiews, 1776.
The principle of the unifaction of thought has been generally admitted by metaphysicians.
We cannot think qn two subjects at the same time; we cannot carry on two different trains of ideas simultaneously; we cannot concentrate consciousness on an emotion and a process of reasoning at once. These processes must be embraced consecutively, and with a clear perception that they are different, divergent, and altogether alien to each other. But yet there are many illustrations, which to the philosophical, as well as to the popular conception, appear to demonstrate that there is no succession either in physical action or in time; such are the capacity of Napoleon, and as conspicuously of Canning, to dictate to many amanuenses nearly at the same time, and upon matters totally unconnected, even heterogeneous; and of the power possessed by Landseer of drawing at the same moment dissimilar objects upon separate sheets of paper with both hands. It may be difficult to detect the distinct and independent operation of the mind in such cases as have now been cited, but our embarrassment is created by the rapidity with which the different acts, or events, the successive utterance of sentences, or the individual contraction of the muscles of the hand and forearm, by means of which this apparent identity of volition is effected. In this paper several approximations to the consentaneous and contemporaneous action of mind have been related; where, at least, simulated passion or merriment has shone through the gloom of depression and absolute disease. We are about to present another instance where a most wonderful power of affecting humour and burlesque, and propagating them to others, was exercised under the pressure of melancholia.
The father of Charles Mathews was a Wesleyan bookseller, and, in all probability, shared in the hatred to theatrical amusements which Puritans of every age have conscientiously cherished. His ultimate choice of a profession and life destination are at least traced to his domestic seclusion and training; although it be more legitimate to conclude that his early friendship with Elliston, and the descriptions and suggestions of that eminent actor, then a boy in Merchant Taylors’ School, may have led to his choice. His taste was, however, stimulated and fostered by a clandestine visit to Drury Lane, and by a participation in some improvised private theatricals, all under the auspices and guidance of his tempter Elliston. His debut took place in the character of Richmond, when he was only eighteen ; after this event, which was, of course, a flagrant violation of paternal injunctions, and an insult to the religious principles in which he had been educated, his father offered no further opposition to the rash step thus precipitated, or to the subsequent course of conduct involved, but sent the headstrong youth twenty guineas, and apparently left him to his own devices.
The adventurer’s career led him to appear on various stages, but his success does not appear to have been decided or distinguished. He was married when twenty-one, but lost his wife, and subsequently became the husband of Miss Jackson, an actress ; and the union seems to have been most propitious and prosperous, as we are told that they fulfilled a brilliant engagement in comedy and farce at the Haymarket. The retirement of his wife from the stage may have suggested to him the composition and execution of his far-famed Monologue, by which he was better known, and obtained a broader and deeper hold upon the public taste and mirthful tendencies than by his more strictly professional appearances. These were, however, so marked by ability and comic personation, as to have secured for him, not merely a well-merited reputation, but as having obviously prepared the frequenters of the theatre for the supreme manifestation of his talent. That we may not be suspected of extravagance or predilection in portraying the nature and effects of the creations of Mathews’ fancy and imitative powers, to which we have been indebted for many a hilarious, and, it must be confessed, many a happy hour, we shall quote the words of a biographer who must have participated in our enjoyment. It should be premised that the fascinations of M’s. ” At Home ” depended exclusively upon his own powers, that the representation was not assisted by any of the adjuncts or appliances of stage decoration and deception, the actor latterly sitting, solitary, behind a table covered with green cloth. ” This piece offered peculiar advantages for the display of his talents, and continued for many years.to attract crowds. An excellent mimic, full of vivacity, abounding in anecdote and in humorous descriptions, he exhibited in appropriate costume characteristic adventures of men of every variety. His spirit of fun, his gentlemanly manners, and his clever comic singing, gave an inimitable charm to these performances.” His acting was proteiform. This eminent farceur, with the aid of very few simple contrivances and appliances, apart from his flexibility of feature, his attitude, his voice infinitely varied in its tones, natural or artificial, often ventriloquial, would nightly, in a brief space of an hour or two, create or cause to pass before his audience multitudes of faces, figures, acted dialogues, distinct, individualised, characteristic. Some of these representations were mere portraits of persons met in coaches, steamboats, in the ordinary walks of life, wherever men and women ” most do congregate,” and owed the interest produced to what they said or did ; but many, the great majority, were grotesque, absurd, laughter-provoking caricatures. The attractions, the genius, developed in these entertainments may be conceived, as they were repeated for hundreds of nights, and w^re carried to and from America, where they secured the same eclat and good fortune. Wherever these outpourings of an exuberant fancy were presented by the solitary performer, they suggested the impromptu addressed by Walter Scott to Monsieur Alexandre, the ventriloquist actor :
Of yore, in old England, it was not thought good To carry two visages under one hood; What should folks say to you, who have faces such plenty, That from under one hood you last night show’d us twenty? Stand forth, arch deceiver! and tell us, in truth, Are you handsome or ugly ? in ng<3, or in youth ? Man, woman, or child ? or a dog, or a mouse ? Or are you, at once, each lire thing in a house ? Above all, are you one individual ? I know You must be, at the least, Alexandre and Co. But I think you’re a troop?an assemblage?a mob? And that I, as the Sheriff, must take up the job, And, instead of rehearsing your wonders in verse, Must read you the Riot Act, and bid you disperse.
Yet this arch contributor to general gaiety and mirthfulness, although he seemed to share in the fun and cheerfulness which he elicited, was himself a depressed, and, perhaps, a despairing melancholic, liable, at least, to alternate fits of elation and dejection, and so dreaded the trials and temptations of his own disposition, that he ordered razors to be removed from his sight, that suicide might not be suggested. But grouped, this central and cardinal mental perversion, there were a vast number of odd and eccentric states and peculiarities, sometimes painful and humiliating, calling for our sympathy; sometimes bordering upon his comic vein and provoking a smile. Thus, when excite’d and joyous in a room with a sunny aspect, but if necessitated to pass into a badly-lighted apaitment he would ensconce himself in a corner, and would remain morose and moody for the day; again, he was annoyed and unhinged for the day when the sunlight was excluded by window curtains.
Either from conceit or vanity, he was apt to suspect and suffer from remarks which were not directed against him, and had no connection with him. The same susceptibility was roused by trivial circumstances, and he was worried by the housemaid picking up a pair of dirty stockings which he had left on the floor, as a guide to his recollection of some other circumstance. His equanimity was disturbed by seeing a picture hung awry on the wall. He was discomposed by the lack of harmony in the colours of ladies’ dresses, by the refusal of mustard by those around when roast beef was served, by the breach of some of the most insignificant usages of society, and carried snuffers in his pocket, that he might top the candles even in the houses of his friends, so great was his antipathy and intolerance to untrimmed lights.
It is possible that some of these oddities might have originated in early habits, but, taken as a whole, such deviations from natural and healthy conduct cannot be interpreted otherwise than as offshoots from mental infirmity. Mathews became for a season the lessee of a London theatre, but lie will live longer in the remembrance of his admirers, as having struck out a new feature in histrionic art, than from his achievements in the legitimate drama.
His great and versatile talents descended to his son, without any trace of his eccentricities.
Cohalie Walton, 1830.
Every member of the corps clramatique, whether he may emerge from a booth or barn, in a village fair or market, or have been familiar with the mirrored, curtained, carpeted, luxurious green room provided Mad. Vestris in Covent Garden, passes his life and acquires and practises his profession in a non-natural and artificial condition. He has rarely enjoyed the privilege and advantage of regular training or initiation in a regular and sedate occupation. His education is carried on and completed on the stage by rehearsals and public representations, accompanied by private study. His reading is confined to the authors, whose words he must commit to memory, whose sentiments he must realise in his mind, in his heart, and bearing. His associations are unreal; his companions generally of the same excitable or imaginative type as himself; the rewards of his exertions or success are the applause and approbation of his simulated passions, patriotism, or merriment; and his position in society, although not degraded and branded as it once was, is still uncertain, undignified, and keeps him on the outside of those ranks and grades upon whose patronage and pleasure he depends. He sees and knows the world through the footlights. His intercourse with his fellow-men is chiefly when they cheer his assumed greatness, wit, or extravagance, or when they denounce and hiss his feebleness or failure. He generally breathes an atmosphere of intoxicating gas, forms a judgment of the world and its ways from the authors, who furnish him with thoughts and opinions as well as with bread, and is very apt to conceive that happiness and the realisation of ambition is prefigured and shadowed forth in the theatre when brilliantly lighted up, and in the feelings which attend his own brief hour upon the stage. He not only acquires the strut, the swagger, which conventionally have been identified with the heroes of the buskin, but the stilted phraseology and modes of thinking which characterise his range of study. This state of the mental constitution may not amount positively to unhealth, but it creates an utterly fictitious conception of the institutions of society, and of the every-day life by which we are surrounded. An eminent and popular actor, who had passed his whole life upon the boards, and who hereditarily seemed to be designed or prepared for the destiny which he invited, has said:? ” The result of my experience is that the stage is the last occupation a young man of spirit and ambition should think of following, for this one reason, if for no other?that it seems to cut him off from the business of life, and from the great movements and practical working of the world?the objects of a worthy and legitimate ambition.
” If employed, hard work and small pay. As he advances into the position of a regular actor, the amount of study to be ‘ up in’ at short notice, is brain-splitting; in some cases overstudy has produced brain fever. Therefore, let no rash youth, ‘ with a soul above buttons,’ adopt the stage as a means of elegant idleness; if he do, he will be woefully mistaken, when he finds that, after a hard week’s work, even Sunday is not always a day of rest.
These men, thus moulded, do not actually speak in blank verse, nor act the part of patrons, or potentates, or merryandrews, in their intercourse with others, but many of them see or seek for romance and the creations of fancy in the practical and prosaic relations of life; the suspicion that this tendency may influence their cogitations and be transfused into their compositions as well as into their conversations, has led us to receive with some doubt and caution a narrative of the life and death of the person whose name is placed at the head of this article. Yet this memoir, which may be accepted as partly histrionic and partly historic, has been published on the authority of a distinguished and otherwise trustworthy writer, who was himself, in a certain sense, the hero of the tragedy. The heroine, Coralie Walton, is described as possessed of great beauty and elegance, of unimpeachable moral deportment, but of a reserved, reticent, and dignified manner ; and in dress and ornament presenting the perfect personification of the modesty and harmony of a well-bred woman. She is first seen at a rehearsal, where she displays a perfect knowledge of her part and the regular business of the stage, and from which she retires immediately after performing her part, without miDgling in the familiarities and flirtations which, occasionally, innocently enough, take place on such occasions. Coralie Walton is represented by the manager of the dramatic company of which she is a member, after a year’s experience, as a most correct, modest, and obliging character; as having been admitted, without introduction, and upon her own personal application, as a subordinate ; but as having won his favour, and that of the public, so steadily, but triumphantly, that she had been promoted to the position of his leading actress. Satisfactory in her conduct as well as in the performance of her professional duties, he neither knew nor could discover her history, or even any of her antecedents, which, without any affectation of concealment, she seemed to confine to inexorable secresy and mystery.
Her obliging disposition seems to have tempted her employer to impose extra and extreme duties, which revealed, in technical language, how ” quick she was in study ; ” how voluntarily she devoted her nights in order ” to get up in a new part, and the cheerfulness and fidelity which accompanied all these exertions ; qualities which emboldened her superior to allude to her former experience and to her home, an experiment which provoked a passionate demand that he should never allude to her home again. The obvious conclusion was that she had some reason and object in shrouding her previous career, whether theatrical or in the busy walks of commonplace work, in obscurity; and it is highly probable that this constant effort to elude discovery may have had an important and deteriorating influence upon her mental and physical constitution, for there is truth in the psychological conclusion that the effort to limit our thoughts and feelings to our own thoughts and consciences, to dwell subjectively upon a hoarded grief, or shame, or sorrow, is injurious to health, and in the poetical confession:
I have a secret sorrow here, A grief I’ll ne’er impart, It heaves no sigh, it sheds no tear, But it consumes my heart. She is depicted as Virginia, ” the perfection of girlish beauty, the type of classic grace, the ideal of feminine softness, all tinged and shaded by a pervading sadness,” as displaying a perfect acquaintance with the lines of the poet, as entering into the tragic character of her part, but as betraying tremor and agitation whenever either approaches or allusions^ to love scenes occurred. Insensibility follows the more exciting passages, and it is observed that the repeated application of a handkerchief to her lips is to staunch the appearance of blood. In Desdemona, she is equally successful, but is equally abhorrent of all the tenderer and impassioned incidents, and in this instance recoils from the writer of the recital, who acted Othello, but is so calm, and cold, and still, that in the death swoon he is paralysed by the apprehension that she is actually dead; and he tests his fear during the action of the scene by placing his hand upon her heart, but to add to the seeming reality of the crisis, the lady utters not the required farewell injunction, nor any response, remains mute and motionless even after Othello has used his poniard, and proves to have actually fainted either in the orgasm or hysteria of her temperament, or in the stage of some more serious malady. Ihe next episode in this strange, uneventful history, is the appearance of lovers, attracted by the beauty and isolation of the fair Desdemona.
One of these, animated by violent passions, but base designs, she shunned,-repelled with dignity and firmness, but required the assistance of the manager, and an appeal to his father, before she temporarily escaped from his persecutions. Before these were renewed, a genuine and honourable protector had espoused the cause of the injured lady, and having thoroughly chastised her ravisher, emancipated her from further annoyance. This chivalrous youth had himself become enamoured of the grace and talents of Coralie Walton while a constant frequenter of the theatre, and so sincere and pure was the affection thus inspired, that in order to accomplish the object of his wishes, and to come into nearer and uninterrupted association with the actress, he determined to adopt the stage as his profession; he became a pupil of the manager, and after prolonged study and tuition in this school, he was incorporated with the company. This handsome and accomplished suitor succeeded in captivating at once the admiration and applause of the public, and the kindly feelings of the person whose attractions had tempted him to take so important a step. ” The course of true love never doth run smooth ” ; and although the result of these romantic arrangements had been what was aimed at and was desired, and a deep and exalted affection had arisen between the parties interested, the lover, apparently either rejected or estranged by certain obscure conduct or revelations on the part of Coralie Walton, suddenly announced his change of profession, his departure for America, declining all remuneration for his really valuable services, and avoiding all explanation of his present conduct or his future plans and projects. She who was, in some inexplicable manner, the cause of this catastrophe, was seized with brain fever, which proved to be protracted, calling for all care and kindness from those around. Shortly after her recovery from this formidable attack, she was called upon to act the part of Ophelia, and is described by the Hamlet of the evening as agitated by tremulous and spasmodic twitching of the face when he took her hand, and pronounced the words, ” I did love you once”; the contractions and agitations being intensified when she replied, ” Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.” On the occurrence of the passage “You should not have believed me, for virtue cannot so innoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it?I loved you not,” the poor trembling, agitated girl becomes more and more the image of distress and despair, evidently recalling and reanimating some faded but unforgotten scene of pain and separation, representing less Ophelia than herself, and paralysed rather by real sentiments and sorrows than by their imitation. A wild wandering of the eye, and a hysteric catch in the speech were observed, and were speedily followed by wild, uncontrollable shrieking, uttered as she rushed from the stage, and passing at once into hysterical and ultimately acute and fatal mania. In the course of a few days this unfortunate victim of impersonation died, whilst still a lunatic, and in her incoherence muttering confused sounds, in which might be distinguished ” 0 mother! mother!” and ” Tell Hamlet not to forget.” Contemporaneously with her sudden loss of reason there was delivered to the narrator a packet, with the urgent request that he should deliver it to the person whose name it bore, should he encounter him in his travels through America, where he was about to go. Upon the contents of this missive hung the solution of the melancholy tragedy recorded. The transatlantic journey was undertaken, and accidentally the owner of the packet was discovered in the person of an officer of the United States army, who, after displaying much natural emotion, revealed to the narrator all that was previously inexplicable in the conduct of Coralie Walton.
It disclosed what was throughout anticipated, that the attachment which seduced him from more grave occupations to the stage was returned by the object of his idolatry; who, however, while confessing perfect reciprocity, and although there were no obstacles to immediate marriage, gently, but firmly, it was conceived by her admirer, obstinately, refused her consent to an immediate union. This event, ardently desired by both parties, was made to depend upon a proposed visit to the mother of the actress. This step was at once taken when the betrothed youth finds himself, to his horror, in a notorious brothel, whose mistress is the rouged, bedizened, utterly profligate and degraded parent of his cherished companion. A hurried announcement of his emigration completes the tale, except that the deserted Coralie Walton, roused to an exciting recollection of her recent misfortune, and misery by the situation and character in the drama, probably by some similarity in the person and bearing of Hamlet to her lover, and by the tenderness and tone in which she was addressed, was precipitated from fictitious into real alienation. We are entitled to conclude, although all certain information on the subject is wanting, that while the profession and; position of her mother, the estrangement of her intended husband, the false position which she held, with feelings of shame, degradation, and other moral factors, may have contributed to the catastrophe, physical changes had taken place in the brain and lungs, of which evidence is afforded in the attack of cerebral fever and haemoptysis, which were fully adequate to produce abrupt and fatal derangement. Yet many illustrations are accessible, in which feigned pride, wrath, indignation, have rapidly merged into forms of madness, marked by precisely similar manifestations; where the emotions have been cherished, encouraged, in other words, cultivated and inflamed, have usurped’ and dethroned the supremacy of judgment, have exercised the province and power and will, and ultimately placed the system under the dominion of some form of monomania. It is quite true that in the majority of such cases there is present bodily disease, which may be unconnected with the disturbance in the nervous functions, but which is often palpably the outcome or direct consequence of this disturbance, and where the election of the precise relation in which these organic laesions stands the moral phenomena, depends more upon the opinions of the reporter than upon any demonstrative proof afforded by the alterations themselves.
Companies of Mad Actoes.
In concluding this subject, it is incumbent upon us to record, not merely that individuals engaged in ministering to the gratification and instruction of the public in our theatres have occasionally yielded to the influences of constitutional causes, or surrounding circumstances, and been doomed to mental infirmity, as have the performers on the wider and grander stage of life; but that by a kind of inversion of this Nemesis, the insane have either individually or in groups, assumed the role and functions of professional actors, and have appealed successfully to the suffrages of members of their own class, or to the less indulgent critics from general society. This course has been adopted, we believe, in all cases, in consonance with the inclination and earnest desire of the individuals, although suggested, in all probability, by medical guides or other guardians as a remedy, as a means of distraction from painful and unhealthy thoughts and feelings, and as an inexhaustible source of enjoyment. The great success which it is believed attended the effort to produce plays in our asylums, enacted by patients, has fully justified the safety and expediency of such an experiment, while the benefits which have accrued to those personally engaged in histrionic representation has conferred upon this amusement a dignified rank in the scale of moral hygiene. It may be well conceived that the preparation and actual production of a vaudeville, or farce, or comedy, in an hospital for diseases of the mind, where, although the accommodation, furniture, comforts, assimilate the place to a home or a hotel, but where rigid discipline, and, at the best, pensiveness, depression, or melancholy, “must generally prevail, could not fail to effect a decided and pleasurable revolution in the hearts and hopes of all concerned, from the prompter and tirewoman to the principal character and hero of the piece. This experience has convinced a large proportion of those engaged in the treatment of insanity that this powerful and popular element in the excitement, perhaps in the regulation, of the emotions and sentiments, should not be neglected, although its employment must be limited alike by the instruments at their disposal, the nature of the cases and of the cure to which it is addressed, and by the operation of the higher agents resorted to.
An attempt was made many years ago, by M. Esquirol, to introduce theatrical representations into the Asylum at Charenton, as a means of amusement, if not of cure, in the treatment of the insane. The French have a passion for the Drama, and a vast number of the educated classes in that country have been amateur performers ; and so the experiment might have been expected to succeed. But it failed from a somewhat singular circumstance. It should be noted that this development was essayed at no great distance of time, subsequent to the French Revolution ; we have forgotten what the piece selected was, but it is interesting, both chronologically and philosophically, to understand that the plot contained, amidst other features, the deposition of a King by his subjects. The audience, chiefly composed of patients, regarding this rebellious act as real and unjustifiable, rushed on the stage with the utmost tumultuous indignation, and restored the ill-treated monarch.
Some years after this amusing failure, Moliere’s Tartuffe was successfully placed before the inmates of Salpetriere. Plays have been, it is reported enacted in Asylums in Copenhagen. It is concluded that in all these instances the dramatic company as well as the auditors were, to some extent, of unsound mind. But no doubt or uncertainty on the subject was possible when the practice was revived in 1842 in the Crichton Institution iji the Northern part of this country. We read that in the first representations of ” Raising the Wind,” ” The Irish Tutor,” ” Monsieur Tonson,” &c., there were invariably four or five insane boarders engaged, one of whom was a female, and that the principle was laid down that no play should be accepted or placed before even insane spectators, unless some of the parts were undertaken by patients. It has been ascertained that of the persons thus participating one had been labouring under acute Mania, with convulsions, that another had recovered from an attack of epilepsy, but suffered from delusions and intellectual feebleness; that a third was suicidal and dejected ; a fourth was actuated by delusions, while a fifth presented symptoms of fatuity with the hallucination that she saw the head, limbs, &c. of her best friends continually dropping from the sky. In many cases the patients were in a state of convalescence ; but in all vestiges of their original malady could be traced. The step now mentioned was not merely a temporary test of the practicability of reaching the mind diseased, but was persevered in for thirty or forty years, with hundred of dramas, ranging from mere vehicles of fun and merriment up to ” Eed Gauntlet” and “The Lady of Lyons.”
In Great Britain, this mode of treatment or amusement has been and is sanctioned, and has proved curative or calmative in a large number of similar establishments, and has, it is affirmed, penetrated even into the region of the Pilgrim Fathers. It would be invidious and might prove cruel to estimate critically either the pretensions of these actors, or the approximation effected to a well constituted and suitably decorated theatre, in the apartments and make-shifts where their capacities were displayed ; but it is worthy of grave consideration that during these impersonations there was neither disturbance nor interruption from the pit or galleries, nor failures of memory or absurdities, or incongruities, or the manifestation of delusions on the part of the performers. And we possess the evidence of an accomplished literary friend, who witnessed these performances, that ” everything was, in fact, conducted as in a long-established theatre, by a well-disciplined corps of actors, and it was altogether a hearty and kindly representation.” While these exhibitions were generally hailed as marvellous manifestations, it must be confessed that admiration and approval were not unanimous. To those who were unable to conceive the influence of reading, music, or any external pleasurable and exalting sensations in restoring or reconstructing, or rehabilitating the wrecked and ruined intellect or imagination, the power of the histrionic art was regarded as vain and visionary; to those who cherished conscientious religious scruples or objections to all entertainments of this class, such experiments were unacceptable and worthy of condemnation. But it may be well to place in antagonism to such views the remarks of Martin Luther, the great founder and champion of the Eeformation, made at a time when that great social convulsion was at an intense heat, and when the tendency of all those affected by its throes to recede to as great a distance from what had been sanctioned or tolerated by the Church of Eome as possible: ” The acting of comedies ought not to be debarred for the sake of the boys in school; first, that they exercise them in the Latin tongue ; second, in comedies, such persons are artificially feigned and presented, whereby people are instructed and admonished every way concerning their offices and vocations, likewise what belongeth to a master or a servant, a young fellow that becometh him, and that he ought to do. Yea, therein are demonstrated all dignities, degrees, offices, and duties; how everyone ought to carry himself in outward conversation, as in a looking-glass. Moreover, therein are also shown and described the crafty exploits and deceits of evil ones. In like manner what the office of parents and young striplings is; how they ought to bring up and train their children and young people to the state of matrimony, when time and opportunity serveth.
How children ought to be obedient to their parents, and how they ought to proceed in wooing. And, indeed, Christians ought not altogether to fly and abstain from comedies, because now and then gross tricks and dallying passages are acted therein; for then it will follow that by reason thereof we should also abstain from reading in the Bible.
We conclude by quoting a more modern critic. He says:
” In ancient times the dramatic art has been honoured by being made subservient by religion and morality, and in the most enlightened country of antiquity, in Greece, the Theatre was supported by the State. The dramatic nature of the dialogues of Plato has always been justly celebrated, and from this we may conceive the great charm of dramatic poetry. Action is the true enjoyment of life, nay, life itself. The great bulk of mankind are either from their situation, or their incapacity for uncommon efforts, confined within a narrow circle of operations. Of all the amusements, therefore, the theatre is the most profitable, for there we see important actions when we cannot act importantly ourselves. It affords us a renovated picture of life, a compendium of whatever is animated and interesting in human existence. The susceptible youth opens his heart to every elevated feeling; the philosopher finds a subject for the deepest reflections on the nature and constitution of man.”
Books consulted : Bernard’s Retrospections of the Stage ; Gait’s Lives of the
Players; VandenhofFs Recollections of the Stage; Biographical Dictionaries, various; Asylum, Reports, many.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.