" Presently, however,
it occurred to him that, although in the abstract this might be true
yet at that particular moment he was a fool; and he made the best of
his way to Drury Lane. He managed to find his way into the gallery
just as Kean came on the stage in the second scene of the first act.
Far down below him, through the misty air, he thought he could see
his wife and the Major; but he was in an instant arrested by the
play. It was all new to him; the huge building, the thousands of
excited, eager faces, the lights, and the scenery. He had not
listened, moreover, to a dozen sentences from the great actor before
he had forgotten himself and was in Venice, absorbed in the fortunes
of the Moor. What a blessing is this for which we have to thank the
playwright and his interpreters, to be able to step out of the dingy,
dreary London streets, with all their wretched corrosive cares, and
at least for three hours to be swayed by nobler passions. For three
hours the little petty self, with all its mean surroundings,
withdraws: we breathe a different atmosphere, we are jealous, glad,
weep, laugh with Shakespeare's jealousy, gladness, tears, and
laughter! What priggishness, too, is that which objects to
Shakespeare on a stage because no acting can realise the ideal formed
by solitary reading! Are we really sure of it? Are we really sure
that Garrick or Kean or Siddons, with all their genius and study,
fall short of a lazy dream in an arm-chair! Kean had not only a
thousand things to tell Zachariah--meanings in innumerable passages
which had before been overlooked--but he gave the character of
Othello such vivid distinctness that it might almost be called a
creation.
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