n with the greatest
truth; like a faithful clock never striking before the time; never
anticipating or leading you to anticipate. He was totally destitute
of trick and artifice. He seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's
message simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios
in Homer deliver the errands of the gods. He let the passion or the
sentiment do its own work without prop or bolstering. He would have
scorned to mountebank it; and betrayed none of that _cleverness_ which
is the bane of serious acting. For this reason, his Iago was the only
endurable one which I remember to have seen. No spectator from his
action could divine more of his artifice than Othello was supposed to
do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you in possession of the
mystery. There were no bye-intimations to make the audience fancy
their own discernment so much greater than that of the Moor--who
commonly stands like a great helpless mark set up for mine Ancient,
and a quantity of barren spectators, to shoot their bolts at. The Iago
of Bensley did not go to work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone
about the character, natural to a general consciousness of power; but
none of that petty vanity which chuckles and cannot contain itself
upon any little successful stroke of its knavery--which is common with
your small villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not
clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting his wits at a
child, and winking all the while at other children who are mightily
pleased at being let into the secret; but a consummate villain
entrapping a noble nature into toils, against which no discernment was
available, where the manner was as fathomless as the purpose seemed
dark, and without motive. The part of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night,
was performed by Bensley, with a richness and a dignity of which (to
judge from some recent castings of that character) the very tradition
must be worn out from the stage. No manager in those days would have
dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons: when Bensley
was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble thought it
no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio is not essentially
ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. He is cold, austere,
repelling; but dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of
an over-stretched morality. Maria describes him as a sort of Puritan;
and he might have worn his gold chain with honour