The manner in which Shakespeare’s plays have been generally altered, or rather mangled, by modern mechanists, is in our opinion a disgrace to the English Stage. The patch-work Richard which is acted under the sanction of his name, is a striking example of this remark. The play itself is undoubtedly one of the finest effusions of Shakespeare’s genius. It is as truly Shakespearian—that is, it has as much of the author’s mind, of passion, character, and interest, with as little alloy of the peculiarities of the age, or extraneous matter, as almost any other of his productions. Wherever Shakespeare relied upon himself, and did not appeal to the taste of his audience, he outstripped all competition, and this he did as often as he had a motive in his subject to do so; he had none in his vanity, or in the affectation of conforming to certain critical rules. The winds blow as they list; and the golden tide of passion no sooner rises in his breast, than it swells and bears down every thing in its mighty course.

The ground-work of the character of Richard,—that mixture of intellectual vigour with moral depravity, in which Shakespeare delighted to shew his strength,—gave full scope as well as temptation to the exertion of his genius. The character of his hero is almost everywhere predominant, and marks its lurid track throughout. The original play is, however, too long for representation, and there are some few scenes which might be better spared than preserved and by omitting which, it would remain a complete whole. The only rule, indeed, for altering Shakespeare, is to retrench certain passages which may be considered either as superfluous or obsolete, but not to add or transpose any thing. The arrangement and developement of the story, and the mutual contrast and combination of the dramatis personæ, are in general as finely managed as the developement of the characters or the expression of the passions.

This rule has not been adhered to in the present instance. Some of the most important and striking passages in the principal character have been omitted, to make room for tedious and misplaced extracts from other plays; the only intention of which seems to have been, to make the character of Richard as odious and disgusting as possible. A bugbear seems to have been always necessary to the English nation, and—give them but this to vent their spleen upon—they will, either in matters of taste or opinion, ‘as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are.’ It is apparently for no other purpose than to make Gloucester stab King Henry on the stage, that the fine abrupt introduction of this character in the opening of the play is lost in the tedious whining morality of the uxorious King (taken from another play);—we say tedious, because it interrupts the business of the scene, and loses its beauty and effect by having no intelligible connection with the previous character of the mild and well-meaning monarch. The passages which Mr. Wroughton has to recite are in themselves exquisitely pathetic, but they have nothing to do with the world that Richard has to ‘bustle in.’ In the same spirit of vulgar caricature is the scene between Richard and Lady Anne (when his wife)—interpolated, merely to gratify this favourite propensity to disgust and loathing. With the same perverse consistency, Richard, after his last fatal struggle, is raised up by some Galvanic process, to utter the imprecation, without any motive but pure malignity, which is so finely put into the mouth of Northumberland on hearing of Percy’s death. We hope that Mr. Kean, when he acts Macbeth, will die as Shakespeare makes him, and not with four lines of canting penitence (a common-place against ambition) in his mouth. To make room for these needless additions and interpolations, many of the most striking passages in the real play have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance of the prompt-book critics. We do not mean to insist merely on passages which are fine as poetry and to the reader, such as Clarence’s dream, &c. but those which are important to the developement of the character, and peculiarly adapted for stage effect. We give the following as instances among many others.

The first is the scene where Richard enters abruptly to the Queen and her friends, to defend himself:

What can be more characteristic than the turbulent pretensions to meekness and simplicity in this address?

Again, the versatility and adroitness of Richard is admirably described in the following ironical answer to Brakenbury:—

The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the Queen’s kinsmen, is also a master-piece. One of the finest features in the play, and which serves to shew, as much as any thing, the deep duplicity of Richard, is the unsuspecting security of Hastings, at the very time when the former is plotting his death.

Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in the original, are the farewell apostrophe of the Queen to the Tower, where her children are shut up from her, and Tyrrel’s description of their death. We will finish our quotations with them:—

The other passage is the account of their death by Tyrrel:—

These are those wonderful bursts of feeling, done to the very height of nature which our Shakespeare alone could give. We do not insist on the repetition of these last passages as proper for the stage; we should indeed be loth to trust them with almost any actor; but we should wish them to be retained, at least in preference to the fantoccini exhibition of the young Princes, bandying childish wit with their uncle.

We have taken the present opportunity to offer these remarks on the necessity of acting the plays of our great Bard, in spirit and substance, instead of burlesquing them, because we think the stage has acquired in Mr. Kean an actor capable of doing singular justice to many of his finest delineations of character.