Page images
PDF
EPUB

this curiosity, got leave to carry a load of faggots into the hall where Lag was used to sit all day cowering over a huge fire. As the boy entered, the old man, well knowing the popular feeling, turned on him, and, bending his brows into the fatal horse-shoe, said, in a voice whose harshness even fourscore years had not wholly quenched, "Ony Whigs in Gallowa' noo, lad?" The boy dropped his load and scuttled from the hall as though the devil indeed had been after him.

Lag died on the last day of the year 1733, in his house at Dumfries. As his end drew near he was sorely tormented with the gout, and the story goes that relays of servants were posted from his door to the Nith, some two hundred yards away, to hand up buckets from the fresh stream to cool his fiery torments; and that the moment his feet touched the water it began to hiss and smoke! So, as every one knows-for we reject as too gross a libel even on this generation the thought that there can be any one who does not know his Scott-so bubbled and sparkled like a seething cauldron the water into which Redgauntlet plunged his swollen feet on the awful day when Willie Steenson's father last saw him alive. And here

we may note a curious piece of family history Colonel Fergusson has recorded: the last paper to which old Lag ever put his name was a receipt for some back arrears of rent; and the paper is among the family archives at this day.

But we have not space to go through all the legends coined about this fell old creature. Colonel Fergusson's book will feed all further curiosity full. And let him who has such curiosity be careful not to miss the chapter on 'Lag's Elegy,' that scathing diatribe on the protagonists of "the killing time" which Carlyle has told us in his 'Reminiscences' was the work of old John Orr, the dominie of Hoddam parish, of whom he had often heard his father talk as a man "religious

and enthusiastic, though in practice irregular with drink." How fresh still in his own childhood was the memory of Lag our author gives an extremely curious instance, which will best be told in his own language ::

"Some forty years ago, or more, it was common in many of the houses in Dumfriesshire and Galloway to commemorate annually the evil deeds of the Laird of Lag. They used to represent him in shape of beast as hideous as the ingenuity of the performer entrusted with the part could make it, without wandering far, however, from a conventional model, which it was understood should be adhered to. This is how it was done in my mother's house, and we were singularly fortunate in possessing in an old nurse, Margaret Edgar, an artiste who had made the part her own, and her name famous by reason of her wonderful impersonation. She was known throughout the country-side for the manner in which she could play Lag,' as the phrase went. Her make-up and her acting were excellent alike. In dressing for the part she used to take a sheet, or blanket, or some such covering, which was drawn over her head and body, only the feet and hands being left out. But the one chief point, on which the individuality of the monster depended, was the head, which was invariably composed in one way, no scope for fancy being permitted. The kitchen implement called in Scotland a 'potato beetle,' which is a large wooden pestle, the handle pretty thick, and between two and three feet long, and ending in a ponderous oval head, was entirely covered by strips of cloth being wrapped round it. Eyes were drawn upon it, and pieces of fur sewed on for eyebrows; long ears and a mouth were added, the long handle of the instrument forming an imposing proboscis. This structure was fastened to the head of the performer, who moved on hands and knees; the result was a quadruped resembling a combination of the tapir of Borneo and South American anteater, strongly conveying an impression as of a character escaped from a mediæval miracleplay. The Abbot of Unreason would have been proud of such an attendant in his train. Margaret Edgar possessed the skill needed to give life-like movements to the beast, and to keep up the character of ferreting and listening implied by the long nose and ears. threw into her reading of the part an amount of cat-like inquisitiveness and a determination recalling the restless and unwearying malignity of the original that made the blood run cold of old and young. The head and dress being in readiness, a suitable night had to be chosen for the appearance of the Laird, usually about the time of Halloween, when minds are attune with things unearthly. On some dark November night-for there was

She

some artistic feeling displayed-when the wind off the Solway swept in gusts off the dismal and dangerous Lochar Moss, making the branches of trees to groan, and the windows of the old house rattle, the Laird of Lag might be looked for. Then, the company seated, and the dining-room being left sufficiently dim and mysterious by the unsnuffed light of a couple of the miserable moulded' candles of those days, a moaning most melancholy is heard, and anon the door is slowly opened, and the end of Lag's long nose appears, then the glaring eyes and long ears of the creature, who proceeds, with stealthy steps and head on one side, to listen for sounds of a house-conventicle, and to smell out Covenanters under the sideboard and other likely places. The performance usually ends with an attempt to pounce on and capture a little Whig body with frills round her ankles

according to the fashion of the period. The memories of Drumclog were all unavailing in the presence of this fell prelatic beast."

To this description is appended a picture of Miss Edgar in the character of Lag, and certainly the "make-up" would not discredit even this age of theatrical ingenuity. Old Sir Robert Redgauntlet himself could not have looked more 66 gash and ghastly" as he lay wrapped in his velvet gown with his gouty feet on a cradle, and Major Weir grinning opposite to him in a red-laced coat and the laird's own wig on its ill-favoured head.

NOT GLAD, NOR SAD.

You sang a little song to-day,
It was not sad, it was not gay,
The very theme was nigh out-worn:
Two lovers met, as lovers may,
They had not met-since yesterday—
They must not meet again-till morn!

And did they meet again, my dear?— Did morning come and find them here, To see each other's eyes again?

Alas, on that you are not clear,

For hearts will shift as winds will veer, And Love can veer like any vane!

Ah no, I think some sudden craze,
Some bitter spite befell their days,-
What was that plaintive minor for?
No more together lie their ways,
Remote, perhaps, the lover strays,
Perhaps the lady comes no more!

So strange the numbers sob and swell;
No, there's no guessing what befell;
It is the sweetest song you sing!
Not sad, and yet I cannot tell,—
Not glad, and yet-'tis very well-
Like Love, like Life, like anything!

ARCHEOLOGY IN THE THEATRE.

WHAT are the principles by which the modern manager can put Shakespeare on the stage to the very best advantage?

The question is pretty frequently asked without receiving any definite answer; and, for the matter of that, it is likely to revive as often as the Shakespearean drama itself, in theatrical parlance, "revives." The aim of every stage-manager who has any tincture of ambition in him, being above all things to achieve distinction by means of the Shakespearean drama ; and a novel interpretation of the text, a conception, that is to say, of its real significance different from that which is ordinarily held, not being always obtainable, the most usual plan to attract public attention is to contrive some striking innovation in the way the piece is mounted. If it be true that each generation must have its special Hamlet, it is at least equally true that each Hamlet must have his special surroundings; and so, from time to time, the question how to represent Shakespeare most satisfactorily for a modern audience comes to have fresh interest for all who have any love for the play.

There are some people, to be sure, who will have it that the answer is of little or no importance, and that it is the acting only, and not the scenery or the costumes or the stage carpentering, with which we should concern ourselves. Of certain plays this may be true; but surely to assert it generally of all plays is to overlook the real distinction between the modern, or Shakespearean, drama and the drama of the Greeks. The Shakespearean drama is eminently picturesque; that is to say, the impression it studies to produce being largely due to the circumstances, the accessories, the accidents, as it were, of the plot, as well as to the development of the main

idea, it must needs affect a variety of incident, a novelty in the scenery and surroundings of the action, and a proportionate care for detail, such as ancient tragedy could well afford to dispense with. Though there are of course exceptions-exceptions which serve, for example, to make Eschylus appear more modern in many ways than Sophocles, and Aristophanes more modern than either, yet on the whole the simplicity and reserve of the Greek genius are nowhere, probably, so conspicuous as in the Greek drama.

Prometheus on his rock, the monsters that draw the car of Oceanus, the dreadful locks of the Erinnyes, or again, the outlandish appearance of the Aristophanic chorus, the lion skin. on Dionysus's shoulders, and the basket from which Socrates discourses philosophy-these are modern touches that bring the drama of the ancients home to us, foretastes as it were of the Elizabethan method, which one greets with a pleasant sense of familiarity, but unquestionably they are exceptional. A Greek dramatist was as a rule too fast bound by the conventions of the stage to indulge in many such eccentricities. The hero of one of those old tragedies must have looked very like the hero of another; and in the trailing robes, the masks modelled on strictly preserved types, and the measured declamation of the actors, deviations from the normal arrangement were rarely allowed to distract attention from the central action of the story.

With Shakespeare on the other hand (not to speak of his contemporaries) externals were all-important; and this, whether one looks at the plays from the standpoint of the literary critic or that of the stagemanager. In both cases the same method is unmistakable; one sees a

[ocr errors]

determination to make all manner of details, accessories, non-essentials, serve a particular purpose, and to handle them in such a manner that, far from diminishing, they may rather aid and heighten the main effect. Thus Juliet's nurse, the porter in Macbeth,' and the gardener who reads a lesson to King Richard's Queen, are just as much, and in a sense just as little, externals as the colour of Othello's face or the fashion of Malvolio's hose. The minor parts of many of Shakespeare's plays may be said, it is true, to be mere circumstances, unnecessary for the development of the dramatic idea; but, on the other hand, the genius of the dramatist weaves them into so close a connection with his fable, as to give them a very special and peculiar importance, which cannot be overlooked in any stage representation; and among the externals of the Shakespearean drama costume plays a by no means insignificant part.

Considered as means to deepen the tragic irony of young Hamlet's position, or the pathos that clings round an outcast king, Lear's 'lendings' and the well-known suit of sables are quite as genuinely dramatic contribute quite as really to the expression of the dramatist's conception, as the more purely literary devices of introducing in the one play the faithful fool, and in the other the gravediggers, the first player, the judicious Horatio, and above all the pushing and determined Prince of Norway. Stage renderings of Hamlet's character have indeed, in most instances, lost enormously by lacking the contrast, so strikingly emphasised at every turn in the play itself, with the fiery, martial spirit whose triumphant entry at the last supplies what is perhaps the most solemn and tremendous close that could be imagined, to the bloody and bewildering scene on which, as matters now are, the curtain is usually allowed to drop; the gap caused by the omission in most acting versions of the part of Fortinbras is immense, and yet the loss would scarcely

be less, as far as the stage effect is concerned, if Hamlet were to be de prived of that distinctive costume which from the first marks him out from among the gay crowd of courtiers.

Costume then may be made, and should be made, intensely dramatic.

The question really is, how it can be made most dramatic. What, in fact, is the principle on which the Shakespearean drama can be most satisfactorily put on the stage? The question will, as we have said, receive a different answer in different ages; the answer which is most in favour to-day, if we may judge from recent Shakespearean revivals, is eminently characteristic of a scientific age, and is based on what may be called a theory of historical realism. Now it seems reasonable enough to argue that every play must needs be laid in some country and at some period, or at least must recall some country or some period more unmistakably than any other; and that, having once determined these, the stage-manager has next to do his utmost to realise them by every means possible, to spare no pains to make the scenery and surroundings of the action historically harmonious, to look on every detail as an occasion for adding a touch to the verisimilitude of the whole, and to throw himself into the arms of archæology as his best and surest friend. And this is, as a matter of fact, what we frequently

see.

Archæology, growing daily more popular, has made the Shakespearean stage its own; and a generation that does not mind paying handsomely for historical accuracy congratulates itself on the invasion.

Modern audiences seem content to put up with long, wearisome intervals between the acts, with a complete rearrangement of the scenes and even with an excision of many of them, if what remains be given with sufficient pomp and splendour of antiquarian display.

It is the theory on which this practice is founded that we now propose to examine; and at the outset

« PreviousContinue »