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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 168.: PEMBERTON'S LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE EXAMINER, 3 JUNE, 1832, P. 358 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

168.: PEMBERTON’S LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE EXAMINER, 3 JUNE, 1832, P. 358 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II [1831]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXIII - Newspaper Writings August 1831 - October 1834 Part II, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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168.

PEMBERTON’S LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE

EXAMINER, 3 JUNE, 1832, P. 358

Charles Reece Pemberton (1790-1840) quickly abandoned an acting career in 1829 after receiving mixed notices of his Virginius and Shylock (under Charles Kemble’s management) and devoted himself to lecturing, largely at mechanics’ institutes. He also became a frequent contributor to the Monthly Repository. This unheaded review in the “Theatrical Examiner,” is described in Mill’s bibliography as “A notice of Mr. Pemberton’s Lectures on Shakespeare in the Examiner of 3d June 1832” (MacMinn, p. 21). In the Somerville College set of the Examiner, it is listed as “Article on Mr Pemberton’s Lectures on the Characters of Shakespeare” and enclosed in square brackets.

mr. pemberton is now delivering, at Saville House, Leicester Square, a series of lectures on some of the principal characters of Shakspeare (illustrated by the characteristic delivery of the most striking passages), which we think highly worthy of the attention of the public.

Mr. Pemberton’s object is not solely to state and establish his view of the particular characters delineated by Shakspeare, but still more to set forth and illustrate his own theory on the subject of acting. This theory, though not the prevalent one, is not peculiar to him; and we conceive that it must have occurred to almost every one who has given himself the trouble to think long and attentively on the subject: we ourselves have stated the same doctrine pretty fully in this newspaper, just a year ago, (Examiner of the 22d May 1831), in our remarks on the admirable acting of Mademoiselle Léontine Fay.1 The proposition is simply this: that in acting, as in every thing else, genius does not consist in being a copyist; even from nature: That the actor of genius is not he who observes and imitates what men of particular characters, and in particular situations, do, but he who can, by an act of imagination, actually be what they are: who can so completely understand, and so vividly conceive, the state of their minds, that the conception shall call up in his own the very emotions, and thereby draw from him the very sounds and gestures, which would have been exhibited by the imaginary being whom he is personifying. Such a man’s representation of nature will have a consistency and keeping in it, and will reach depths in the human heart, which no man’s opportunities and powers of mere outward observation could ever have enabled him to attain to.

If any one doubts this, we exhort him to go without delay, and see and hear Madame Schröder Devrient;2 and if he does not admit that such acting as hers comes not from the eyes and ears, but from the heart, we give him up, as a person not competent, in respect of sensibility, to judge of Art.

Mr. Pemberton knows these truths so well, and explains them so happily, that he would be well worth listening to, even were he incapable of practically exemplifying them. But he also lays claim to the actual possession of the faculty to which we have alluded: the power to call up by a voluntary effort of imagination, what he not unhappily terms secondary feelings, that is, feelings suggested by a vivid conception of similar feelings in others: and by thus realizing for the time being, an imaginary character, to give a profoundly true dramatic representation of it. Though his claim to these powers cannot by us at least, be admitted without considerable explanation and qualification, yet we must, in the main, admit it; and we can at least promise to our intelligent readers both amusement and instruction from listening to him.

Mr. Pemberton has hitherto lectured on three characters only; Macbeth, Hamlet, and Shylock: we have heard him on the two former; and he has certainly succeeded in giving us a far clearer and more comprehensive view of those characters than we had before.

[1 ]See Nos. 104 and 106.

[2 ]Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient (1804-60), born in Hamburg and trained from a very early age as a dancer and actor, made her great reputation in opera. Her most famous role, when she came to London for the months of May and June 1832, was as Leonore in the first London performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, on 18 May. For Mill’s praise, see CW, Vol. I, p. 351.