Wynne-Matthison in the part of
Everyman acted with remarkable power and subtlety; she had the complete
command of her voice, as so few actors or actresses have, and she was
able to give vocal expression to every shade of meaning which she had
apprehended.

III. "FAUST" AT THE LYCEUM

In the version of "Faust" given by Irving at the Lyceum, Wills did his
best to follow the main lines of Goethe's construction. Unfortunately he
was less satisfied with Goethe's verse, though it happens that the verse
is distinctly better than the construction. He kept the shell and threw
away the kernel. Faust becomes insignificant in this play to which he
gives his name. In Goethe he was a thinker, even more than a poet. Here
he speaks bad verse full of emptiness. Even where Goethe's words are
followed, in a literal translation, the meaning seems to have gone out
of them; they are displaced, they no longer count for anything. The
Walpurgis Night is stripped of all its poetry, and Faust's study is
emptied of all its wisdom. The Witches' Kitchen brews messes without
magic, lest the gallery should be bewildered. The part of Martha is
extended, in order that his red livery may have its full "comic relief."
Mephistopheles throws away a good part of his cunning wit, in order that
he may shock no prejudices by seeming to be cynical with seriousness,
and in order to get in some more than indifferent spectral effect.
Margaret is to be seen full length; the little German soubrette does her
best to be the Helen Faust takes her for; and we are meant to be
profoundly interested in the love-story. "Most of all," the programme
assures us, Wills "strove to tell the love-story in a manner that might
appeal to an English-speaking audience."

Now if you take the philosophy and the poetry out of Goethe's "Faust,"
and leave the rest, it does not seem to me that you leave the part which
is best worth having. In writing the First Part of "Faust" Goethe made
free use of the legend of Dr. Faustus, not always improving that legend
where he departed from it. If we turn to Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" we
shall see, embedded among chaotic fragments of mere rubbish and refuse,
the outlines of a far finer, a far more poetic, conception of the
legend. Marlowe's imagination was more essentially a poetic imagination
than Goethe's, and he was capable, at moments, of more satisfying
dramatic effects. When his Faustus says to Mephistopheles:

One thing, good servant