[5] But this is not what Messrs. Osbourne and
Strong tried to do. Their Napoleon was the Napoleon of tradition--only
he failed to act "in a concatenation according."
There are a few figures in history--and Napoleon is one of them--which
so thrill the imagination that their mere name can dominate the stage,
better, perhaps, than their bodily presence. In _L'Aiglon_, by M.
Rostand, Napoleon is in fact the hero, though he lies dead in his
far-off island, under the Southern Cross. Another such figure is Abraham
Lincoln. In James Herne's sadly underrated play, _Griffith Davenport_,
we were always conscious of "Mr. Lincoln" in the background; and the act
in which Governor Morton of Indiana brought the President's instructions
to Davenport might fairly be called an obligatory scene, inasmuch as it
gave us the requisite sense of personal nearness to the master-spirit,
without involving any risk of belittlement through imperfections of
representation. There is a popular melodrama, passing in Palestine under
the Romans, throughout the course of which we constantly feel the
influence of a strange new prophet, unseen but wonder-working, who, if I
remember rightly, is personally presented to us only in a final tableau,
wherein he appears riding into Jerusalem amid the hosannas of the
multitude.
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