The high-water mark of Sarah’s poetical and intellectual art was probably reached in her _Phèdre_, her _Hamlet_, and her _Lorenzaccio_; but the furthest limits of the power of her power were revealed in Sardou’s plays, for Sardou had the intuition to guess what forces lay in the deeps of her personality, and the insight and skill to make plays which, like subtle engines, should enable these forces to reveal themselves at their highest pitch, to find full expression, and to explode in a divine combustion.
There is another thing to be said about Sarah Bernhardt’s emancipation from the Théâtre français. Had she never been independent, had she never been her own master and her own stage manager, she would never have realised for us a whole series of poetical visions and pictures which have had a deep and lasting influence on contemporary art. We should never have seen Théodora walk like one of Burne-Jones’s dreams come to life amidst the splendours of the Byzantine Court:
We should never have seen La Princesse Lointaine crowned with lilies, sumptuous and sad, like one of Swinburne’s early poems; nor La Samaritaine evoke the spices, the fire, and the vehemence of the Song of Solomon; nor Gismonda, with chrysanthemums in her hair, amidst the jewelled glow of the Middle Ages, against the background of the Acropolis; nor Izéïl incarnating the soul and dreams of India. Eliminate these things and you eliminate one of the sources of inspiration of modern art; you take away something from D’Annunzio’s poetry, from Maeterlinck’s prose, from Moreau’s pictures; you destroy one of the mainsprings of Rostand’s work; you annihilate some of the colours of modern painting, and you stifle some of the notes of modern music; for in all these you can trace in various degrees the subtle, unconscious influence of Sarah Bernhardt.
The most serious break in the appreciation of her art, on the part of the critics and the French public, did not come about immediately after she left the Théâtre français. On the contrary, when she played the part of Adrienne Lecouvreur for the first time—this was in May 1880—in London, her triumph among the critical was complete. I have an article by Sarcey, dated 31st May 1880, in which he raves about the performance he had come to London to see, and in which he says, had the performance taken place in Paris, the enthusiasm of the audience would have been boundless. The most serious break in the appreciation of her art came about after she had been to America, toured round Europe many times, with a repertory of stock plays and an indifferent company, and acted in such complete rubbish as _Léna_, the adaptation of _As in a Looking-Glass_, of which I have already given a schoolboy’s impressions. People then began to say they were tired of her. It is true she woke up the public once more with her performance of _La Tosca_ in 1889, but in July 1889 Mr. Walkley voiced a general feeling when he said: “I suspect she herself understands the risks of ‘abounding in her own sense’ quite as well as any of us could tell her. She knows her talent needs refreshing, revitalising, rejuvenating.” He speaks of “her consciousness of a need for a larger, saner, more varied repertory. But,” he adds, “she will never get that repertory so long as she goes wandering from pole to pole, with a new piece, specially constructed for her by M. Sardou, in her pocket.”