Still, when all is said,
how easily does this lovely play, this artistic presentation, survive
criticisms founded on cheiromancy and cub-hunting! The Lyceum under Mr.
Irving's management has become a centre of art. We are all of us in his
debt. I trust that we may see some more plays by living dramatists
produced at his theatre, for Olivia has been exquisitely mounted and
exquisitely played.

AS YOU LIKE IT AT COOMBE HOUSE

(Dramatic Review, June 6, 1885.)

In Theophile Gautier's first novel, that golden book of spirit and sense,
that holy writ of beauty, there is a most fascinating account of an
amateur performance of As You Like It in the large orangery of a French
country house. Yet, lovely as Gautier's description is, the real
presentation of the play last week at Coombe seemed to me lovelier still,
for not merely were there present in it all those elements of poetry and
picturesqueness which le maitre impeccable so desired, but to them was
added also the exquisite charm of the open woodland and the delightful
freedom of the open air. Nor indeed could the Pastoral Players have made
a more fortunate selection of a play. A tragedy under the same
conditions would have been impossible. For tragedy is the exaggeration
of the individual, and nature thinks nothing of dwarfing a hero by a
holly bush, and reducing a heroine to a mere effect of colour. The
subtleties also of facial expression are in the open air almost entirely
lost; and while this would be a serious defect in the presentation of a
play which deals immediately with psychology, in the case of a comedy,
where the situations predominate over the characters, we do not feel it
nearly so much; and Shakespeare himself seems to have clearly recognised
this difference, for while he had Hamlet and Macbeth always played by
artificial light he acted As You Like It and the rest of his comedies en
plein jour.

The condition then under which this comedy was produced by Lady Archibald
Campbell and Mr. Godwin did not place any great limitations on the
actor's art, and increased tenfold the value of the play as a picture.
Through an alley of white hawthorn and gold laburnum we passed into the
green pavilion that served as the theatre, the air sweet with odour of
the lilac and with the blackbird's song; and when the curtain fell into
its trench of flowers, and the play commenced, we saw before us a real
forest, and we knew it to be Arden. For with whoop and shout, up through
the rustling fern came the foresters trooping, the banished Duke took his
seat beneath the tall elm, and as his lords lay around him on the grass,
the rich melody of Shakespeare's blank verse began to reach our ears. And
all through the performance this delightful sense of joyous woodland life
was sustained, and even when the scene was left empty for the shepherd to
drive his flock across the sward, or for Rosalind to school Orlando in
love-making, far away we could hear the shrill halloo of the hunter, and
catch now and then the faint music of some distant horn. One distinct
dramatic advantage was gained by the mise en scene.