Romeo and Juliet

Performed at the New Theatre, London.
A tragedy by William Shakespeare.
Opened 2nd September, 1911.

Starring: Phyllis Neilson-Terry.

Editorial and Photos all as published in 'The Play Pictorial' VOL. XVIII, No. III. (1912).

Cast		The principal players in this production.
Review		Review of the play.
Other Commentary		Two articles from the magazine.
Scenes from the Play		A selection of scenes the play

THE CAST

REVIEW

Within the past thirty years of my post-juvenile play­going experiences I have seen several Juliets, some good, some indifferent, but not one wholly bad - I don't think the actor or actress lives who can fight against the poetical power of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Juliet - and touching this production of Mr. Fred Terry's at the New Theatre I am filled with admiration at the wonderful performance given by Miss Phyllis Neilson-Terry.

I know it is my self-appointed duty to avoid criticism in this particular article, but like an aged hunter who throws up his head at the music of the hounds, although he may be between the shafts of the village postman's cart, I feel irresistibly impelled to enter the fray.

Criticism is, generally speaking, a matter of comparison, but in the case of Miss Neilson-Terry we have no standard of comparison. Here is a young artist still in her teens, whose first public success can be measured by moons, and who has boldly and successfully fronted professional and public criticism and emerged from the combat with flying colours.

I am not going to tell Miss Phyllis that she is the very best Juliet I have seen, but I can fearlessly say that she has accomplished a tour de force and, from the standpoint of age and stage experience, a performance that will be fixed in the memories of those who have seen her embodiment of Shakespeare's most lovable heroine. What is Juliet from the conventional actress's point of view? A child of fourteen in the beginning; a woman, with every sense of womanly possibilities, in the latter part of the drama.

Is it possible to be a perfect and complete Juliet, that is, if we demand a Miss Neilson-Terry in the Balcony episode and a Mrs. Siddons in the Potion Scene? There were no women actors in Shakespeare's time, and what could have been his practical conception of the character? If he meant his fourteen-year-old Capulet to represent the deepest emotion of the Potion and Death scenes, to convey in her acting the mature significance of his words, then it seems to me that Shakespeare was a stage idealist and an extremely inconsistent creator of character.

Personally, I don't think Shakespeare was half the fool that Mr. Bernard Shaw imagines him to have been. He put into glowing language the sufferings of youth, and are there not many among my readers who in their days of adolescence have thrown themselves on their beds and cried their eyes out in an agony of grief and seen nothing but desolation and woe on the horizon of their young lives? Have they not sobbed and clenched their hands and abandoned themselves to utter despair? But have they majestically walked the room and made the space echo with the deep-toned notes of the actress versed in the tragic sorrows of Medea?

In Juliet, Shakespeare drew for us the joy of a girl's first love, the exquisite happiness inspired by a newly awakened sense, but can it be imagined that within the space of three days he meant that the girl's nature should have so rapidly ripened that only an actress of consummate tragic power should be able to do justice to the poignant emotion of the final section of the play? If so, he was asking the impossible, and as he demands it of no other person in the whole category of his male and female characters, I am compelled to believe that he desires no more of his ideal Juliet than that she should be the logical development of the impressionable girl whose heart was won by a chance meeting with an attractive stranger at a bal masque in her father's house.

That she should have fallen in love with the enemy of her house, that with self-willed petulance she should have ignored the wishes of her parents, and that opposition should only have strengthened her resolve, is but another instance of that perversity which parental authority has had to encounter from the days of Cain to those of the gilded youth who choose their wives from the musical comedy stage.

It is for these reasons that I wholly disagree with the traditional dictum that no actress can adequately represent the role of Juliet until she is old enough to play that of the nurse. Surely Shakespeare left something to the imagination of the spectators, that he gave them credit for being able to mentally picture the intensity of the passion which rent the girl in twain, that he foresaw the audience would realise the extremity of her sorrow, and that his eloquent utterance was intended to give a poetical power to the catastrophe which the limitations of human nature forbade him to expect from the actress! In Juliet I want to see the very perfection of girlish love, the complete embodiment of girlish despair when fate intervenes to thwart her purpose, and if in the latter the girl is made to give way to the Tragedy Queen, then I maintain that Shakespeare's Juliet has disappeared, that the symmetry of the character has been destroyed, and that we are simply witnessing the forlorn hopelessness of a middle-aged woman, to whom the possibilities of another love affair are so remote that she sees nothing brighter in the future than a barren life of virgin monotony, tempered by an austere submission to the religious sect which makes the most profound appeal to her devotional instincts.

Gentle reader, I must apologise to you for the above heterodox effusion. It was entirely unpremeditated. I intended only to give a few words of introduction and then quote you from Mrs. Jameson's "Shakespeare's Heroines," but the garrulity of old age came upon me and so you have been incontinently button-holed! However, donnons-nous la main et n'en parlons plus.

B. W. Findon.

Other Commentary

JULIETS I HAVE SEEN.
By Berthna J. Laffan.

There are certain moments, in certain plays, when the actor or actress engaged ceases to be a personality, other than that of the character represented. These moments are precious things to look back upon: they are treasures in the heart: they are joys that never fade. Looking back to the Louis XI. of Sir Henry Irving, "I saw King Louis, I forgot the other" - is still my verdict; the Beethoven of Sir Herbert Tree, the greatest musician of all time, even in death swayed by the passionate love of sweet sounds, who that saw that wondrous thing can forget? You watched, you listened, you thought of nothing and no one but the personality of the Master of Melody, it was Beethoven you saw, not the gifted actor, through your tear-dimmed eyes. When the blinding light fell upon the face of Forbes Robertson, as the Third Floor Back passed away to come no more, it was not the actor you thought of; your mind rose to heavenly heights, you seemed to touch the hem of the garment of the most Stupendous Personality the world ever saw, for the spirit of Christ was in the Play.

These things are joys unspeakable, and so I let my thoughts run back a long way to a Juliet I once (Alas! only once!) saw, the Juliet of Adelaide Neilson. There again, all personality seemed to fade as you watched the story of the Love that "knew no earthly close." The sweet, gentle, sensitive girl, and the coming of Love, like a ray of blinding light across a grey sky. In the radiance of this love life grew so beautiful, so heavenly a thing, it shone, as the moon­light shines on a still lake. You watched the calm ecstasy of the balcony scene, your heart went out to the lovers who found Love so sweet a thing. The Juliet of Shakespeare's dreaming was before you, no counterfeit but just herself. Then came the parting after the short marriage joys, and the "climbing sorrow" held your breath. Later, the anguish, the terror, the rush to the haven of death, how real it all was! "It doesn't seem like acting," said a keen Shakespearian who was with me. It didn't; and, when I heard of Adelaide Neilson's untimely death, it seemed to me like this "Juliet has gone out into the Great Silence."

This ends my list, for I have not yet seen the Juliet of Miss Neilson-Terry, but am looking forward ardently to it, as Marion Terry wrote to me and said it was "a beautiful and wonderful" thing; and surely the lady who won the hearts of all London in Peter's Mother must know what the perfection of good acting is, and her word of praise must stand for much!

JULIET
An Extract from Mrs. Jameson's Shakespeare's Heroines.

It is not without emotion that I attempt to touch on the character of Juliet. Such beautiful things have already been said of her, only to be exceeded in beauty by the subject that inspired them! it is impossible to say anything better; but it is possible to say something more. Such, in fact, is the simplicity, the truth and the loveliness of Juliet's character, that we are not at first aware of its complexity, its depth and its variety.

There is in it an intensity of passion, a singleness of purpose, an entireness, a completeness of effect, which we feel as a whole; and to attempt to analyse the impression thus conveyed at once to soul and sense is as if, while hanging over a half-blown rose, and revelling in its intoxicating perfume, we should pull it asunder, leaflet by leaflet, the better to display its bloom and fragrance. Yet how otherwise should we disclose the wonders of its formation, or do justice to the skill of the divine hand that hath thus fashioned it in its beauty?

In the extreme vivacity of her imagination, and its influence upon the action, the language, the sentiments of the drama, Juliet resembles Portia; but with this striking difference. In Portia, the imaginative power, though developed in a high degree, is so equally blended with the other intellectual and moral faculties that it does not give us the idea of success. It is subject to her nobler reason; it adorns and heightens all her feelings; it does not overwhelm or mislead them.

In Juliet, it is rather a part of her southern temperament, controlling and modifying the rest of her character; springing from her sensibility, hurried along by her passions, animating her joys, darkening her sorrows, exaggerating her terrors, and, in the end, overpowering her reason.

With Juliet, imagination is, in the first instance, if not the source, the medium of passion; and passion again kindles her imagination. It is through the power of imagination that the eloquence of Juliet is so vividly poetical; that every feeling, every sentiment comes to her, clothed in the richest imagery, and is thus reflected from her mind to ours. The poetry is not here the mere adornment, the outward garnishing of the character; but its results, or, rather, blended with its essence. It is indivisible from it, and interfused through it like moonlight through the summer air.

With all this immense capacity of affection and imagination, there is a deficiency of reflection and of moral energy arising from previous habit and education; and the action of the drama, while it serves to develop the character, appears but its natural and necessary result.

SCENES FROM THE PLAY

Click any image for a larger view
O Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore Art Thou Romeo	Paris Pays Court to Juliet	Juliet and Romeo	Romeo Hides in the Garden	The Balcony Scene
Juliet and Nurse	The Lovers Secret Wedding	Romeo (Vernon Steel)	Juliet (Phyllis Neilson-Terry)	Mercutio and Tybalt
The Friar Counsels Romeo	A Tender Parting	Juliet Defies Her Father/The Good Friar Gives her Aid	Juliet Appears Dead Having Taken The Friars Potion	Romeo Confronts Paris/Juliet Lies in State
Romeo Has Kills Paris Then Takes His Own Life	Juliet Awakes to Find Romeo Dead	The Final Tragedy