es he certainly was not;
for would any true lover of them have admitted into his matchless
scenes such ribald trash as Tate and Cibber, and the rest of them,
that

"With their darkness durst affront his light,"

have foisted into the acting plays of Shakspeare? I believe it
impossible that he could have had a proper reverence for Shakspeare,
and have condescended to go through that interpolated scene in
Richard the Third, in which Richard tries to break his wife's heart
by telling her he loves another woman, and says, "if she survives
this she is immortal." Yet I doubt not he delivered this vulgar stuff
with as much anxiety of emphasis as any of the genuine parts: and for
acting, it is as well calculated as any. But we have seen the part of
Richard lately produce great fame to an actor by his manner of
playing it; and it lets us into the secret of acting, and of popular
judgments of Shakspeare derived from acting. Not one of the
spectators who have witnessed Mr. C.'s exertions in that part, but
has come away with a proper conviction that Richard is a very wicked
man, and kills little children in their beds, with something like the
pleasure which the giants and ogres in children's books are
represented to have taken in that practice; moreover, that he is very
close and shrewd, and devilish cunning, for you could see that by his
eye.

But is, in fact, this the impression we have in reading the Richard
of Shakspeare? Do we feel anything like disgust, as we do at that
butcherlike representation of him that passes for him on the stage? A
horror at his crimes blends with the effect which we feel, but how is
it qualified, how is it carried off, by the rich intellect which he
displays, his resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, his vast
knowledge and insight into characters, the poetry of his part,--not
an atom of all which is made perceivable in Mr. C.'s way of acting
it. Nothing but his crimes, his actions, is visible; they are
prominent and staring; the murderer stands out, but where is the
lofty genius, the man of vast capacity,--the profound, the witty,
accomplished Richard?

The truth is, the characters of Shakspeare are so much the objects of
meditation rather than of interest or curiosity as to their actions,
that while we are reading any of his great criminal
characters,--Macbeth, Richard, even Iago,--we think not so much of
the crimes which they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring
spirit, the intellect