s personality into the character he is
creating. To have method without mannerism is given only to a few, but
among the few is Mr. Tree. Miss Alma Murray does not possess the
physique requisite for our conception of Helen, but the beauty of her
movements and the extremely sympathetic quality of her voice gave an
indefinable charm to her performance. Mrs. Jopling looked like a poem
from the Pantheon, and indeed the personae mutae were not the least
effective figures in the play. Hecuba was hardly a success. In acting,
the impression of sincerity is conveyed by tone, not by mere volume of
voice, and whatever influence emotion has on utterance it is certainly
not in the direction of false emphasis. Mrs. Beerbohm Tree's OEnone was
much better, and had some fine moments of passion; but the harsh
realistic shriek with which the nymph flung herself from the battlements,
however effective it might have been in a comedy of Sardou, or in one of
Mr. Burnand's farces, was quite out of place in the representation of a
Greek tragedy. The classical drama is an imaginative, poetic art, which
requires the grand style for its interpretation, and produces its effects
by the most ideal means. It is in the operas of Wagner, not in popular
melodrama, that any approximation to the Greek method can be found.
Better to wear mask and buskin than to mar by any modernity of expression
the calm majesty of Melpomene.

As an artistic whole, however, the performance was undoubtedly a great
success. It has been much praised for its archaeology, but Mr. Godwin is
something more than a mere antiquarian. He takes the facts of
archaeology, but he converts them into artistic and dramatic effects, and
the historical accuracy that underlies the visible shapes of beauty that
he presents to us, is not by any means the distinguishing quality of the
complete work of art. This quality is the absolute unity and harmony of
the entire presentation, the presence of one mind controlling the most
minute details, and revealing itself only in that true perfection which
hides personality. On more than one occasion it seemed to me that the
stage was kept a little too dark, and that a purely picturesque effect of
light and shade was substituted for the plastic clearness of outline that
the Greeks so desired; some objection, too, might be made to the late
character of the statue of Aphrodite, which was decidedly post-Periclean;
these, however, are unimportant point