persons be considered
cold. Once or twice she dropped her voice so as to became almost
inaudible, and occasionally forced her low tones more than was quite
agreeable; but whether in speech, in gesture, or in delicate suggestive
byplay, her performance is essentially finished. One or two little actions
may be noted, such as the instinctive recoil of alarmed modesty when
Pygmalion blames her for saying 'things that others would reprove,' or her
expression of troubled wonder to find that it is 'possible to say one
thing and mean another.'"
_Daily Telegraph_, 10th December, 1883.
"'PYGMALION AND GALATEA.'
"It is the fashion to judge of Miss Anderson outside her capacity and
competency as an actress. Ungraciously enough she is regarded and reviewed
as the thing of beauty that is a joy forever, and her infatuated admirers
view her first as a picture, last as an artist. If, then, public taste was
agitated by the Parthenia who lolled in her mother's lap and twisted
flower garlands at the feet of her noble savage Ingomar; if society
fluttered with excitement at the sight of the faultless Pauline gazing
into the fire on the eve of her ill-fated marriage, how much more
jubilation there will be now that Miss Mary Anderson, a lovely woman in
studied drapery, stands posed at once as a statue, and as a subject for
the photographic pictures which will flood the town. Unquestionably Miss
Anderson never looked so well as a statue, both lifeless and animated,
never comported herself with such grace, never gave such a perfect
embodiment of purity and innocence. In marble she was a statue motionless;
in life she was a statue half warmed. There are those who believe, or who
try to persuade themselves, that this is all Galatea has to do--to appear
behind a curtain as a '_pose plastique_,' to make an excellent '_tableau
vivant_,' and to wear Greek drapery, as if she had stepped down from a
niche in the Acropolis. All this Miss Mary Anderson does to perfection.
She is a living, breathing statue. A more beautiful object in its innocent
severity the stage has seldom seen. But is this all that Galatea has to
do? Those who have studied Mr. Gilbert's poem will scarcely say so.
Galatea descended from her pedestal has to become human, and has to
reconcile her audience to the contradictory position of a woman, who,
presumably innocent of the world and its ways, is unconsciously cynical
and exquisitely pathetic. We grant that it is a most diffic
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