seated on the ground, according to the true Shakespearian conception, at once deepens the impression of the preceding words and action which make that sublime enthronement of her grief, and gives bolder effect to her majestically indignant contradiction of the French king's speech in glorification of that "blessed day," A wicked day, and not a holy day! &c."— and yet more to the personal invective against Philip, You have beguil'd me with a counterfeit Resembling majesty, &c. And in like manner, her action and tone, in bending down to clasp her son, with the words And our oppression hath made up this league !— while they speak all the beautiful nature of Constance, make us the more strikingly and sublimely feel its energy when, as if drawing from her child's embrace the strongest stimulus of which the wronged and sorrowing mother is susceptible, she rises, as it were, to more than the natural height of her noble figure, and lifts high her hands to heaven in the majestic appeal Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur'd kings, &c. It is this exaltation of the figure - this aspiring heavenward of the whole look, and tone, and gesture -that gives, and can alone give, adequate effect to the flashes of scorn that burst, in her glances and her accents, upon the despicable and devoted head of Austria, when he interrupts her invocation, in its highest fervour, with those very characteristic words of his, "Lady Constance, peace!" This it is, as given by the present actress, that makes her piercing and scorching reproaches seem to be drawn down like the forked lightnings from above, searing and blasting where they strike, and sharpened to their utmost keenness by the practical sarcasm which she finds in the bodily aspect worn by the object of her indignation-in the "lion's hide upon "those recreant limbs." This, in all the part, is the passage most requiring the display of physical energy-yet of an energy richly and variously modulated, as remote as possible from monotonous loudness and vehemence. Miss Faucit, in her whole manner of rendering this passage, shows how well she comprehends this distinction. By the fluctuating look and intonation, by the hesitating pauses, at a loss for expressions adequate to the intensity of her unwonted bitterness, and giving keener force to the expressions when they come, she makes us exquisitely feel the stung spirit of injured, betrayed, and insulted confidence and tenderness, more terrible and blighting far than that of mere exasperated pride. -- And after this climax of her indignation, when the legate appears, as if sent from heaven in answer to her call, most affectingly and impressively beautiful, to our mind, is the expression of the noble nature of the heroine, which her representative gives to the kneeling appeals which Constance makes to the virtuous and religious feelings of the dauphin. Already, in speaking of Mrs. Siddons's acting of the part, we have fully expressed our opinion as to the true reading of this important passage. We have here only to add, that Miss Faucit gives that reading, as it seems to us, with admirable effect, delivering especially, with all that noble and generous fervour which, we conceive, belongs to it, the unanswerable answer to Blanch That which upholdeth him that thee upholds, His honour; oh, thine honour, Lewis, thine honour! It is to be regretted, that owing to the suppression, in the acting play, of that part of the dialogue which immediately follows, the last words of Constance in this scene Oh fair return of banish'd majesty !— the crowning expression of her trusting, grateful, forgiving spirit-are nearly drowned in their delivery by the too hasty noise and bustle on the stage, of breaking up the royal conference. We shall not attempt to speak in detail of this lady's acting in the terrible despairing scene. She renders its anguish-born poetry with a delicacy of expression yet more overpowering than its force. The looks, and tones, and gestures of a performance like this, are not things to be described, but to be seen and heard, felt and wept over. For our own part, long shall we be haunted by those accents, now piercingly, now softly thrilling-now enamoured of Death, now rushing back to the sweet and agonizing remembrance of her child, now hurrying forward to anticipate the chasing of "the native beauty from his cheek”—till her last lingering ray of hope expires, and reason totters on the verge of frenzy. All these emotions are rendered to us by the actress, in all their varied beauty and their trembling intensity. In the concluding exclamation O Lord! my boy! my Arthur! my fair son! her voice, it is true, rises almost into a scream: what, however, we would ask, are the whole three lines in themselves, but one long scream of intensest agony? The immediate effect upon the feelings of the auditor is doubtless painful, as the shrieking accents are to his ear; yet both are necessary to the full dramatic force and beauty of the passage. The woes of Constance and her son are to be visited in retributive justice on their oppressors; and to sustain our interest vividly through that subsequent portion of the drama, it was requisite that the affliction of the bereaved mother should be brought home to us in its darkest and most heart-rending extreme. The poet, therefore, conducts her through every stage of desperate grief-the yearning for death-the longing for madness-the constant craving for the presence of the boy whose image "walks up and down with her"-till this last fixed idea finally seizes, burningly and burstingly, on her brain, and consigns her, not to insanity, which, as she says, might have made her "forget her son," but to a torturing frenzy, hopeless and mortal. Of this her final state on earth, Shakespeare gives us one awful glimpse, one harrowing strain, then mercifully hurries her from our sight and hearing. An exclamation like this, then, let us repeat, in justice to the actress, can only have its due effect from being delivered, not with the harmonious modulation of tone appropriate to even the most impassioned words of Constance while her self-possession yet remains to her, but rather like the death-shriek of a spirit violently parting. Among the other omissions in acting, we have to regret that of the lines spoken by King Philip in the middle of this scene Oh, what love I note In the fair multitude of those her hairs! Where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen, Like true, inseparable, faithful loves, These are wanted, not only for the purpose to which Shakespeare ever so diligently attended-to relieve the feelings and attention of the auditor, by breaking the continuity of the heroine's effusions of despair,but also to give double effect to those effusions, by the impression which the exquisite poetry of this passage shows to be made by her cureless affliction, even upon the not over-feeling personages about her. The dry, cold words which are left in Philip's mouth, Bind up your tresses, are a grievous falling-off. The suppression is an injury to the actress, no less than to the heroine. Small a space as Queen Elinor occupies in the dialogue of this piece, it is important to mark the clear indications which every line of it assigned to her affords us, of the character as conceived by the dramatist. Here, indeed, we have arrogance and unscrupulous love of power personified; and accordingly, her vehemence in repelling the charge of usurpation against herself and John, is proportioned to the clear consciousness which she betrays of the justice of the imputation. In her violent altercation with Constance, she makes up for the inferiority of her eloquence to that of her rival, by boldness of assertion and fierceness of reproach. Her sentences are brief, but each one of them speaks a volume respecting her own predominant qualities; and her vituperation, it must be owned, is truly imperial. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth! is her answer to the beautiful words of Constance on the weeping of her son— His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's shames, Draw those heaven-moving pearls from his poor eyes, &c. But more thoroughly are the whole heart and conscience of the speaker betrayed in the exclamation— Out, insolent!-thy bastard shall be king, That thou mayst be a queen, and check the world!— a speech most forcibly characteristic of the woman whose own youthful gallantries had given such public scandal, divorcing her from her first royal husband, and who in age had shown, that her chief solicitude to have John a king rather than Arthur, was, that she herself, ruling his political councils, might really "be a queen and check the world." And here let us point out the art which the dramatist has used, to cast the greatest possible improbability upon the charge of conjugal infidelity brought against The Lady Constance by her insolent oppressor, no less than upon that of unlawful ambition. The striking resemblance of her son to her deceased |