While Mary Anderson was acting those two parts in London the sum of critical opinion seemed to be that her performance of Perdita was better than her performance of Hermione; but beneath that judgment there was, apparently, the impression that Hermione is a character fraught with superlatively great passions, powers, and qualities, such as are only to be apprehended by gigantic sagacity and conveyed by herculean talents and skill. Those vast attributes were not specified, but there was a mysterious intimation of their existence--as of something vague, formidable, and mostly elusive. But in truth Hermione, although a stronger part than Perdita, is neither complex, dubious, nor inaccessible; and Mary Anderson, although more fascinating in Perdita, could and did rise, in Hermione, to a noble height of tragic power--an excellence not possible for her, nor for anybody, in the more juvenile and slender character.
Hermione has usually been represented as an elderly woman and by such an actress as is technically called "heavy." She ought to be represented as about thirty years of age at the beginning of the piece, and forty-six at the end of it. Leontes is not more than thirty-four at the opening, and he would be fifty at the close. He speaks, in his first scene, of his boyhood as only twenty-three years gone, when his dagger was worn "muzzled, lest it should bite its master"--at which time he may have been ten years old; certainly not more, probably less. His words, toward the end of act third, "so sure as this beard's gray," refer to the beard of Antigonus, not to his own. He is a young man when the play begins, and Polixenes is about the same age, and Hermione is a young woman. Antigonus and Paulina are middle-aged persons in the earlier scenes and Paulina is an elderly woman in the statue scene--almost an old woman, though not too old to be given in marriage to old Camillo, the ever-faithful friend. In Mary Anderson's presentation of _A Winter's Tale_ those details received thoughtful consideration and correct treatment.
In Hermione is seen a type of the celestial nature in woman--infinite love, infinite charity, infinite patience. Such a nature is rare; but it is possible, it exists, and Shakespeare, who depicted everything, did not omit to portray that. To comprehend Hermione the observer must separate her, absolutely and finally, from association with the passions. Mrs. Jameson acutely and justly describes her character as exhibiting "dignity without pride, love without passion, and tenderness without weakness." That is exactly true. Hermione was not easily won, and the best thing known about Leontes is that at last she came to love him and that her love for him survived his cruel and wicked treatment, chastened him, reinstated him, and ultimately blessed him. Hermione suffers the utmost affliction that a good woman can suffer. Her boy dies, heart-broken, at the news of his mother's alleged disgrace. Her infant daughter is torn from her breast and cast forth to perish. Her husband becomes her enemy and persecutor. Her chastity is assailed and vilified. She is subjected to the bitter indignity of a public trial. It is no wonder that at last her brain reels and she falls as if stricken dead. The apparent anomaly is her survival for sixteen years, in lonely seclusion, and her emergence, after that, as anything but a forlorn shadow of her former self. The poet Shelley has recorded the truth that all great emotions either kill themselves or kill those who feel them. It is here, however, that the exceptional temperament of Hermione supplies an explanatory and needed qualification. Her emotions are never of a passionate kind. Her mind predominates. Her life is in the affections and therefore it is one of thought. She sees clearly the facts of her experience and condition, and she knows exactly how those facts look in the eyes of others. She is one of those persons who possess a keen and just prescience of events, who can look far into the future and discern those resultant consequences of the present which, under the operation of inexorable moral law, must inevitably ensue. Self-poised in the right and free from the disturbing force of impulse and desire, she can await the justice of time, she can live, and she can live in the tranquil patience of resignation. True majesty of the person is dependent on repose of the soul, and there can be no repose of the soul without moral rectitude and a far-reaching, comprehensive, wise vision of events. Mary Anderson embodied Hermione in accordance with that ideal. By the expression of her face and the tones of her voice, in a single speech, the actress placed beyond question her grasp of the character:--