Tolstoi according to Captain Marshall, I should be
inclined to define him; but I must give Mr. Tree his full credit in the
matter. When he crucifies himself, so to speak, symbolically, across the
door of the jury-room, remarking in his slowest manner: "The bird
flutters no longer; I must atone, I must atone!" one is, in every sense,
alone with the actor. Mr. Tree has many arts, but he has not the art of
sincerity. His conception of acting is, literally, to act, on every
occasion. Even in the prison scene, in which Miss Ashwell is so good,
until she begins to shout and he to rant, "and then the care is over,"
Mr. Tree cannot be his part without acting it.
That prison scene is, on the whole, well done, and the first part of it,
when the women shout and drink and quarrel, is acted with a satisfying
sense of vulgarity which contrasts singularly with what is meant to be
a suggestion of the manners of society in St. Petersburg in the scene
preceding. Perhaps the most lamentable thing in the play is the first
act. This act takes the place of those astounding chapters in the novel
in which the seduction of Katusha is described with a truth, tact,
frankness, and subtlety unparalleled in any novel I have ever read.
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