The Divine Sarah
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Sarah Bernhardt in La Tosca
Madame Bernhardt has the charm of a jolly maturity, rather spoilt and petulant, perhaps, but always ready with a sunshine-through-the-clouds smile if only she is made much of. Her dresses and diamonds, if not exactly splendid, are at least splendacious; her figure, far too scantily upholstered in the old days, is at its best…[Madame Bernhardt] is beautiful with the beauty of her school, and entirely inhuman and incredible. But the incredibility is pardonable, because, thought it is all the greatest nonsense, nobody believing in it, the actress herself least of all, it is so artful, so clever, so well recognized a part of the business, and carried off with such a genial air, that it is impossible not to accept it with good-humor. One feels, when the heroine bursts on the scene, a dazzling vision of beauty, that instead of imposing on you, she adds to her own piquancy by looking you straight in the face, and saying, in effect: ‘Now who would ever suppose that I am a grandmother?’ That, of course, is irresistible…She does not enter into the leading character: she substitutes herself for it — George Bernard Shaw, from “Duse and Bernhardt” in Plays and Players-Essays on the Theatre
I am planning to see Tosca in Chicago on Friday the 22nd. I read the Shaw quote on Fuck Yeah Femmes the other day and was reminded of Sarah Bernhardt, who played the title role in Victorien Sardou’s La Tosca. You can read the review of her New York performance in the February 6, 1896 issue of the New York Times here. I’m hoping for something over-the-top–something as artful, controlled, and performative as a Sandra Bernhardt performance. Seems like the perfect break before another semester of teaching, etc.
