A VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE OR A SERIES OF DRAMATIC CRITICISMS (continued 5)

NEW ENGLISH OPERA-HOUSE

The Examiner.

June 23, 1816.

The New English Opera-House (late the Lyceum Theatre) in the Strand, opened on Saturday week. The carpenters are but just got out of it; and in our opinion they have made but an indifferent piece of work of it. It consists of lobbies and vacant spaces. The three tiers of boxes are raised so high above one another, that the house would look empty even if it were full, and at present it is not full, but empty. The second gallery, for fear of its crowding on the first, is thrown back to such an unconscionable height, that it seems like a balcony projecting from some other building, where the spectators do not pay for peeping. All this no doubt promotes the circulation of air, and keeps the Theatre cool and comfortable. Mr. Arnold’s philosophy may be right, but our prejudices are strongly against it. Our notions of a summer theatre are, that it should look smoking hot, and feel more like a warm bath than a well. We like to see a summer theatre as crowded as a winter one, so that a breath of air is a luxury. We like to see the well-dressed company in the boxes languidly silent, and to hear the Gods noisy and quarrelling for want 315of room and breath—the cries of ‘Throw him over!’ becoming more loud and frequent as the weather gets farther on into the dog-days. We like all this, because we are used to it, and are as obstinately attached to old abuses in matters of amusement, as kings, judges, and legislators are in state affairs.

The New Theatre opened with Up all Night, or the Smugglers’ Cave; a piece admirably well adapted as a succedaneum for keeping the house cool and airy. The third night there was nobody there. To say the truth, we never saw a duller performance. The Actors whom the Manager has got together, are both new and strange. They are most of them recruits from the country, and of that description which is known by the vulgar appellation of the awkward squad. Mr. Russell (from Edinburgh, not our old friend Jerry Sneak) is the only one amongst them who understands his exercise. Mr. Short and Mr. Isaacs are singers, and we fear not good ones. Mr. Short has white teeth, and Mr. Isaacs black eyes. We do not like the name of Mr. Huckel. There is also a Mrs. Henley, who plays the fat Landlady in the Beehive, of the size of life.—Mr. Lancaster, who played Filch in the Beggars’ Opera, and Mrs. W. Penson, who played the part of Lucy Lockitt tolerably, and looked it intolerably well. There is also Mr. Bartley, who is Stage-manager, and who threatens to be very prominent this season. There is also, from the old corps, Wrench, the easiest of actors; and there is Fanny Kelly, who after all, is not herself a whole company. We miss little Knight, and several other of our summer friends.

The Winter Theatres.—We must, we suppose, for the present, take our leave of the winter performances. We lately saw at Covent-Garden Mr. Emery’s Robert Tyke, in the School of Reform, of which we had heard a good deal, and which fully justified all that we had heard of its excellence. It is one of the most natural and powerful pieces of acting on the stage; it is the sublime of low tragedy. We should like to see any body do it better. The scene where, being brought before Lord Avondale as a robber, he discovers him to have been formerly an accomplice in villainy; that in which he gives an account of the death of his father, and goes off the stage calling for ‘Brandy, brandy!’ and that in which he finds this same father, whom he had supposed dead, alive again, are, in our judgment, master-pieces both of pathos and grandeur. We do not think all excellence is confined to walking upon stilts. We conceive that Mr. Emery shewed about as much genius in this part, which he performed for his benefit, as Mr. Liston did afterwards in singing the song of Ti, tum, ti; we cannot say more of it. Genius appears to 316us to be a very unclassical quality. There is but a little of it in the world, but what there is, is always unlike itself and every thing else. Your imitators of the tragic, epic, and grand style, may be multiplied to any extent, as we raise regiments of grenadiers.

Mrs. Mardyn, after an absence of some weeks, has appeared again at Drury-Lane, in the new part of the Irish Widow, the charming Widow Brady; and a most delightful representative she made of her—full of life and spirit, well-made, handsome, and good-natured. If it is a fault to be handsome, Mrs. Mardyn certainly deserves to be hissed off the stage.

THE JEALOUS WIFE

The Examiner.

June 30, 1816.

The performances at Drury-Lane Theatre closed for the season on Friday evening last, with the Jealous Wife, Sylvester Daggerwood, and the Mayor of Garratt. After the play Mr. Rae came forward, and in a neat address, not ill delivered, returned thanks to the public, in the name of the Managers and Performers, for the success with which their endeavours to afford rational amusement and to sustain the legitimate drama, had been attended.

The play-bills had announced Mrs. Davison for the part of Mrs. Oakley, in the Jealous Wife. We have seen nothing of this Lady of late, except when she personated the Comic Muse (for one night only), on the second centenary of Shakespear’s death. The glimpses we catch of her are, in one sense,

‘Like angels’ visits, short, and far between.’

She was absent on the present occasion, and Mrs. Glover took the part of the well-drawn heroine of Colman’s amusing and very instructive comedy. Mrs. Glover was not quite at home in the part. She represented the passions of the woman, but not the manners of the fine lady. She succeeds best in grave or violent parts, and has very little of the playful or delicate in her acting. If we were to hazard a general epithet for her style of performing, we should say that it amounts to the formidable; her expression of passion is too hysterical, and habitually reminds one of hartshorn and water. On great occasions she displays the fury of a lioness who has lost her young, and in playing a queen or princess, deluges the theatre with her voice. Her Quaker in Wild Oats, on the 317contrary, is an inimitable piece of quiet acting. The demureness of the character, which takes away all temptation to be boisterous, leaves the justness of her conception in full force: and the simplicity of her Quaker dress is most agreeably relieved by the embonpoint of her person.

The comedy of the Jealous Wife was not upon the whole so well cast here as at Covent-Garden. Munden’s Sir Harry Beagle was not to our taste. It was vulgarity in double-heaped measure. The part itself is a gross caricature, and Munden’s playing caricature is something like carrying coals to Newcastle. Russell’s Lord Trinket was also a failure: he can only play a modern jockey Nobleman: Lord Trinket is a fop of the old school.

Mr. Harley played Sylvester Daggerwood, in the entertainment which followed, well enough to make us regret our old favourite Bannister, and attempted some imitations, (one of Matthews in particular) which were pleasant and lively, but not very like.

The acting of Dowton and Russell, in Major Sturgeon and Jerry Sneak, is well known to our readers: at least we would advise all those who have not seen it, to go and see this perfect exhibition of comic talent. The strut, the bluster, the hollow swaggering, and turkey-cock swell of the Major, and Jerry’s meekness, meanness, folly, good-nature, and hen-pecked air, are assuredly done to the life. The latter character is even better than the former, which is saying a bold word. Dowton’s art is only an imitation of art, of an affected or assumed character; but in Russell’s Jerry you see the very soul of nature, in a fellow that is ‘pigeon livered and lacks gall,’ laid open and anatomized. You can see that his heart is no bigger than a pin, and his head as soft as a pippin. His whole aspect is chilled and frightened as if he had been dipped in a pond, and yet he looks as if he would like to be snug and comfortable, if he durst. He smiles as if he would be friends with you upon any terms; and the tears come in his eyes because you will not let him. The tones of his voice are prophetic as the cuckoo’s undersong. His words are made of water-gruel. The scene in which he tries to make a confidant of the Major is great; and his song of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ as melancholy as the Island itself. The reconciliation-scene with his wife, and his exclamation over her, ‘to think that I should make my Molly veep,’ are pathetic, if the last stage of human infirmity is so. This farce appears to us to be both moral and entertaining; yet it does not take. It is considered as an unjust satire on the city and the country at large, and there is a very frequent repetition of the word ‘nonsense,’ in the house during the performance. Mr. Dowton was even hissed, either 318from the upper boxes or gallery, in his speech recounting the marching of his corps ‘from Brentford to Ealing, and from Ealing to Acton;’ and several persons in the pit, who thought the whole low, were for going out. This shews well for the progress of civilisation. We suppose the manners described in the Mayor of Garratt have in the last forty years become obsolete, and the characters ideal: we have no longer either hen-pecked or brutal husbands, or domineering wives; the Miss Molly Jollops no longer wed Jerry Sneaks, or admire the brave Major Sturgeons on the other side of Temple Bar; all our soldiers have become heroes, and our magistrates respectable, and the farce of life is o’er!

THE MAN OF THE WORLD

The Examiner.

July 7, 1816.

We are glad to find the Haymarket Theatre re-opened with some good actors from the Winter Theatres, besides recruits. On Monday was played the Man of the World, Sir Pertinax MacSycophant by Mr. Terry. This part was lately performed by Mr. Bibby at Covent-Garden without success; and we apprehend that his failure was owing to the extreme purity and breadth of his Scotch accent. Mr. Terry avoided splitting on this rock, by sinking the Scotch brogue almost entirely, and thus this national caricature was softened into a more general and less offensive portrait of a common Man of the World. On the whole, Mr. Terry gave not only less of the costume and local colouring of the character, but less of the general force and spirit than the former gentleman. He however displayed his usual judgment and attention to his part, with less appearance of effort than he sometimes shews. If Mr. Terry would take rather less pains, he would be a better actor. He is exceedingly correct in the conception of his characters, but in the execution he often takes twice the time in bringing out his words that he ought, and lays double the emphasis on them that is necessary. In the present case, Mr. Terry, probably from feeling no great liking to his part, laid less stress on particular passages, and was more happy on that account. The scene in which he gives the account of his progress in life to his son Egerton, was one of the most effectual. Mrs. Glover’s Lady Rodolpha Lumbercourt had considerable spirit and archness, as well as force. Of the new performers in it we cannot speak very favourably. The young gentleman who played Sydney, a Mr. Baker, seems really a clergyman by profession, and 319to have left, rather imprudently, the prospect of a fellowship at Oxford or Cambridge. His voice and cadences are good; but they are fitter for the pulpit than the stage.

Mr. Watkinson, on Thursday played Sir Robert Bramble, in the Poor Gentleman, with a considerable share of that blunt native humour, and rustic gentility, which distinguish so large a class of characters on the English stage. We mean that sort of characters who usually appear in a brown bob-wig, and chocolate-coloured coat, with brass buttons. Of this class Mr. Watkinson, as far as we could judge on a first acquaintance, appears to be a very respectable, if not brilliant representative. A Miss Taylor made an elegant and interesting Emily, the daughter of the Poor Gentleman; and Mr. Foote played that personification of modern humanity, the Poor Gentleman himself. There is a tone of recitation in this actor’s delivery, perhaps not ill suited to the whining sentimentality of the parts he has to play, but which is very tiresome to the ear. We might say to him as Caesar did to some one, ‘Do you read or sing? If you sing, you sing very ill.’ We must not omit to mention the part of Miss Lætitia Macnab, which was performed to the life by a Mrs. Kennedy of Covent-Garden Theatre, whom we never saw here before, but whom we shall certainly remember. Her hoop-petticoats, flying lappets, high head-dress, face, voice, and figure, reminded us but too well of that obsolete class of antiquated maidens of old families that flourished about fifty years ago, who had no idea of any thing but the self-importance which they derived from their ancestors, and of the personal attractions which were to be found in the ridiculousness of their dress. The effect was as surprising as it was painful. It was as if Miss Macnab had come in person from the grave. It was like the restoration of the Bourbons!

After this melancholy casualty, we had the Agreeable Surprise. Mrs. Gibbs played Cowslip delightfully. Fawcett was exceedingly laughable in Lingo; and would have been more so, if he had played it with more gravity. Fawcett’s fault of late is, that he has not respect enough for his art. This is a pity; for his art is a very good art. At the scene between him and Mrs. Cheshire, (Mrs. Davenport), the house was in a roar. We never knew before that Lingo and Cowslip were descendants of Touchstone and Audrey. This is one of O’Keeffe’s best farces, and his farces are the best in the world except Moliere’s. O’Keeffe is (for he is still living) our English Moliere, and we here return him our most hearty thanks for all the hearty laughing he has given us. C’est un bon garçon. 320There are in the Agreeable Surprise some of the most irresistible double entendres that can be conceived, and in Lingo’s superb replication, ‘A scholar! I was a master of scholars!’ he has hit the height of the ridiculous.

MISS MERRY’S MANDANE

The Examiner.

July 21, 1816.

A young lady whose name is Miss Merry, has appeared with great applause in the part of Mandane, in Artaxerxes, at the New English Opera. Miss Merry is not tall, but there is something not ungraceful in her person: her face, without being regular, has a pleasing expression in it; her action is good, and often spirited; and her voice is excellent. The songs she has to sing in this character are delightful, and she sung them very delightfully. Her timidity on the first night of her appearing was so great, as almost to prevent her from going on. But her apprehensions, though they lessened the power of her voice, did not take from its sweetness. She appears to possess very great taste and skill; and to have not only a fine voice, but (what many singers want) an ear for music. Her tones are mellow, true, and varied; sometimes exquisitely broken by light, fluttering half-notes—at other times reposing on a deep-murmuring bass. The general style of her singing is equable, and unaffected; yet in one or two passages, we thought she added some extraneous and unnecessary ornaments, and (for a precious note or two) lost the charm of the expression, by sacrificing simplicity to execution. This objection struck us most in the manner in which Miss Merry sung the beautiful air, ‘If o’er the cruel tyrant Love,’ which is an irresistible appeal to the sentiments, and seems, in its genuine simplicity, above all art. This song, and particularly the last lines, ‘What was my pride, is now my shame,’ &c. ought to be sung, as we have heard them sung, as if the notes fell from her lips like the liquid drops from the bending flower, and her voice fluttered and died away with the expiring conflict of passion in her bosom. If vocal music has an advantage over instrumental, it is, we imagine, in this very particular; in the immediate communication between the words and the expression they suggest, between the voice and the soul of the singer, which ought to mould every tone, whether deep or tender, according to the impulse of true passion. Miss Merry’s execution does not rest entirely upon the ground of expression: she is not always thinking of the subject. Her ‘Soldier tired,’ and ‘Let not rage thy bosom firing,’ were both admirable. Her voice has not the piercing softness of Miss Stephens’s, its clear 321crystalline qualities. Neither has her style of singing the same originality, and simple pathos. Miss Stephens’s voice and manner are her own: Miss Merry belongs to a class of singers, but that class is a very pleasing one, and she is at present at the head of it. She is an undoubted acquisition both to the New English Opera, and to the English stage.

Mr. Horn’s Arbaces was very fine. He sings always in tune, and in an admirable sostenuto style. He keeps his voice (perhaps indeed) too much under him, and does not let it loose often enough. His manner of singing ‘Water parted from the sea’ was of this internal and suppressed character. Though this may be the feeling suggested by part of the words, yet certainly in other parts the voice ought to be thrown out, and as it were, go a journey, like the water’s course. Of the other performers we can say nothing favourable.

EXIT BY MISTAKE

The Examiner.

July 28, 1816.

We insert the following letter, which has been sent us, merely to show our impartiality:

‘Mr. Editor,—I have been to see the new Comedy Exit by Mistake, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. As this piece is sans moral and sans interest, I am surprised at its being called a Comedy, for many of our old Farces are more worthy of the name. Perhaps the author fondly anticipated much pathos from Mrs. Kendal’s scene with her son (Mr. Barnard), but it would have been much better if both mother and son had been omitted, for the latter is a hot-headed blockhead, who commits a most unjustifiable assault upon a stranger, in a stranger’s house, by turning him out, which gross affront is in the last Act overlooked. In consequence of a letter about Mr. Roland’s departure, accompanied by his will, it is supposed he had departed from the world instead of the country where he was. This is the ‘Exit by Mistake,’ but the chief mistakes arise from the entrances of the performers. The executor hearing that Roland (Mr. Terry) is alive and in town, goes to an inn to meet him, but most unaccountably mistakes Mr. Rattletrap (Russel) an actor just arrived from America, for his own friend, and even calls the actor by the name of Rattletrap. Poor Mr. Roland, in order to recover his property, inquires for an attorney, and is told there’s one below. Soon after the executor enters, and though dressed in a brown coat, he is mistaken for an attorney. There are other inferior mistakes in the piece, but the greatest mistake is the author’s—for it is a Farce instead of a Comedy. As the play-bills state, that this piece has since been applauded by ‘brilliant and crowded audiences,’ and that ‘no orders can be admitted;’ the proprietors have no right to complain of their rival, the Lyceum Theatre, except Mr. Arnold should produce a good Opera to 322oppose this Farcical Comedy, and then the public will see the utility of rival theatres. Mr. Tokely’s character in it (Crockery) is the same which the same gentleman performs in the author’s ‘Love and Gout,’ with this difference, that in one he is a dissatisfied gentleman, and in the other a whining servant. Mr. Jones’s character (Restless Absent) keeps him in motion the first two Acts, but in the last he is quite stationary.

‘Dramaticus.

‘July 25, 1816.’

We do not agree with Dramaticus on the subject of the piece, which he so resolutely condemns. He puts us a little (though not much) in mind of John Dennis, who drew his sword on the author of a successful tragedy, without any other provocation. As to the title of this play, to which our critic so vehemently objects, we leave him to settle that point with the author. We do not judge of plays, or of any thing else by their titles.

The writer says, the Proprietors of the Haymarket have no right to complain, ‘except Mr. Arnold should produce a good Opera to oppose this Farcical Comedy, and then the public will see the utility of rival theatres.’ We wish Mr. Arnold would lose no time in convincing the public. As we have not the same faith as our correspondent in the power of rival theatres in screwing up the wits of their opponents, we did not go to the new comedy of Exit by Mistake, expecting either a profound moral or high interest; and so far we were not disappointed. But with a good deal of absurdity, there is some whim in it: there are several very tolerable puns in it, and a sufficient stock of lively passing allusions. It is light and laughable, and does well enough for a summer theatre. The part of Crockery in particular is very droll, and to us quite new, for we are not acquainted with ‘the dissatisfied gentleman,’ his predecessor, in Love and Gout. Crockery is a foolish fat servant (personated exceedingly well by Mr. Tokely) who complains that every thing is altered since he went abroad with his master, ‘cries all the way from Portsmouth, because the mile-stones are changed, and is in despair because an old pigstye has been converted into a dwelling-house.’ This whimpering, maudlin philosopher, is as tenacious of innovation as the late Mr. Burke, and as great an admirer of the good old times, as the editor of a modern Journal. In one thing we agree with honest Crockery, where he does not like to see the sign of the Duke of Marlborough’s head pulled down for the Duke of Wellington’s; in the first place, because the Duke of Marlborough had a very good head, and the Duke of Wellington’s is a mere sign-post; in the second, because we think it a more meritorious act to drive out the English Bourbons, the Stuarts, than 323to restore the French Stuarts, the Bourbons, to the throne of their ancestors. So much for the politics of the Theatre.

There is another new piece, A Man in Mourning for Himself, come out at the new English Theatre, which, whether it is Comedy, Opera, or Farce, we do not know. But—de mortuis nil nisi bonum. So let it pass. But there is a Mr. Herring in it, whom we cannot pass by without notice. He is the oddest fish that has lately been landed on the stage. We are to thank Mr. Arnold for bringing him ashore. This did require some sagacity, some discrimination. We never saw any thing more amphibious,—with coat-pockets in the shape of fins, and a jowl like gills with the hook just taken out. He flounders and flounces upon the stage with the airs and genius of a Dutch plaise. His person detonates with boisterous wit and humour, and his voice goes off like a cracker near a sounding-board. With these preparatory qualifications, he played a valet who is his own master; and the jumble of high life below stairs was very complete. This gentleman’s gentleman was very coarse and very mawkish; very blustering and very sheepish; and runs his head into scrapes without the slightest suspicion. We have never seen Mr. Herring before; but on this occasion he was, according to our tastes, in fine pickle and preservation.

The Beggar’s Opera was performed on Thursday, when Miss Merry appeared in the part of Polly, and Mr. Horn as Captain Macheath. Miss Merry displayed great sweetness and taste in most of the songs, and her acting was pleasing, though she laboured under considerable embarrassment. We liked her ‘Ponder well,’ and ‘My all’s in my possession,’ the best. She seemed to us not to be quite perfect either in ‘Cease your funning,’ or in the exquisite little air of ‘He so teased me.’ We have no doubt, however, that she will make in time a very interesting representative of one of the most interesting characters on the stage, for we hardly know any character more artless and amiable than Gay’s Polly, except perhaps Shakespear’s Imogen. And Polly has the advantage on the stage, for she may be sung, but Imogen cannot be acted.

Mr. Horn’s Macheath was much better than what we have lately seen. He sung the songs well, with a little too much ornament for the profession of the Captain: and his air and manner, though they did not fall into the common error of vulgarity, were rather too precise and finical. Macheath should be a fine man and a gentleman, but he should be one of God Almighty’s gentlemen, not a gentleman of the black rod. His gallantry and good-breeding should arise from 324impulse, not from rule; not from the trammels of education, but from a soul generous, courageous, good-natured, aspiring, amorous. The class of the character is very difficult to hit. It is something between gusto and slang, like port-wine and brandy mixed. It is not the mere gentleman that should be represented, but the blackguard sublimated into the gentleman. This character is qualified in a highwayman, as it is qualified in a prince. We hope this is not a libel. Miss Kelly’s Lucy was excellent. She is worthy to act Gay.

THE ITALIAN OPERA

The Examiner.

(King’s Theatre) August 4, 1816.

In Schlegel’s work on the Drama, there are the following remarks on the nature of the Opera:

‘In Tragedy the chief object is the poetry, and every other thing is subordinate to it; but in the Opera, the poetry is merely an accessary, the means of connecting the different parts together, and it is almost buried under its associates. The best prescription for the composition of the text of an Opera is to give a poetical sketch, which may be afterwards filled up and coloured by the other arts. This anarchy of the arts, where music, dancing, and decoration endeavour to surpass each other by the most profuse display of dazzling charms, constitutes the very essence of the Opera. What sort of opera music would it be, where the words should receive a mere rhythmical accompaniment of the simplest modulations? The fantastic magic of the Opera consists altogether in the luxurious competition of the different means, and in the perplexity of an overflowing superfluity. This would at once be destroyed by an approximation to the severity of the ancient taste in any one point, even in that of costume; for the contrast would render the variety in all the other departments quite insupportable. The costume of the Opera ought to be dazzling, and overladen with ornaments; and hence many things which have been censured as unnatural, such as exhibiting heroes warbling and trilling in the excess of despondency, are perfectly justifiable. This fairy world is not peopled by real men, but by a singular kind of singing creatures. Neither is it any disadvantage to us, that the Opera is conveyed in a language which is not generally understood; the text is altogether lost in the music, and the language, the most harmonious and musical, and which contains the greatest number of open vowels and distinct accents for recitative, is therefore the best.’

The foregoing remarks give the best account we have seen of that 325splendid exhibition, the Italian Opera. These German critics can explain every thing, and upon any given occasion, make the worse appear the better reason. Their theories are always at variance with common sense, and we shall not in the present instance, undertake to decide between them. There is one thing, however, which we will venture to decide, which is, that the feelings of the English people must undergo some very elaborate process (metaphysical or practical) before they are thoroughly reconciled to this union of different elements, the consistency and harmony of which depends on their contradiction and discord. We take it, the English are so far from being an opera-going, that they are not even a play-going people, from constitution. You can hardly get them to speak their sentiments, much less to sing them, or to hear them sung with any real sympathy. The boxes, splendid as they are, and splendid as the appearance of those in them is, do not breathe a spirit of enjoyment. They are rather like the sick wards of luxury and idleness, where people of a certain class are condemned to perform the quarantine of fashion for the evening. The rest of the spectators are sulky and self-important, and the only idea which each person has in his head, seems to be that he is at the opera. Little interest is shewn in the singing or dancing, little pleasure appears to be derived from either, and the audience seem only to be stunned and stupified with wonder. The satisfaction which the English feel in this entertainment is very much against the grain. They are a people, jealous of being pleased in any way but their own.

We were particularly struck with the force of these remarks the other evening in the gallery, where our fellow-countrymen seemed to be only upon their good behaviour or self-defence against the ill-behaviour of others, some persons asserting their right of talking loud about their own affairs, and others resenting this, not as an interruption of their pleasures, but as an encroachment on their privileges. Soon after a Frenchman came in, and his eye at once fastened upon the ballet. At a particular air, he could no longer contain himself, but joined in chorus in an agreeable under-voice, as if he expected others to keep time to him, and exclaiming, while he wiped his forehead from an exuberance of satisfaction, his eyes glistening, and his face shining, ‘Ah c’est charmant, c’est charmant!’ Now this, being ourselves English, we confess, gave us more pleasure than the opera or the ballet, in both of which, however, we felt a considerable degree of melancholy satisfaction, selon la coutume de notre pays—according to the custom of our country.

The opera was Cosi fan Tutti, with Mozart’s music, and the ballet was the Dansomanie. The music of the first of these is really 326enough (to borrow a phrase from a person who was also a great man in his way) ‘to draw three souls out of one weaver:’ and as to the ballet, it might make a Frenchman forget his country and all other things. This ballet is certainly the essence of a ballet. What a grace and a liveliness there is in it! What spirit and invention! What can exceed the ingenuity of the dance in which the favoured lover joins in with his mistress and the rival, and makes all sorts of advances to her, and receives her favours, her pressures of the hand, and even kisses, without being found out by the other, who thinks all these demonstrations of fondness intended for him! What an enthusiasm for art in the character of the master of the house, who is seized by the Dansomanie! What a noble and disinterested zeal in the pursuit and encouragement of his favourite science! What a mechanical sprightliness in all about him, particularly in the servant who throws down a whole equipage of china, while he is dancing with it on his head, and is rewarded by his master for this proof of devotion to his interests! What a sympathy throughout between the heels and the head, between the heart and the fingers’ ends! The Minuet de la Cour, danced in full dresses, and with the well-known accompaniment of the music, put us in mind of the old chivalrous times of the Duke de Nemours and the Princess of Cleves, or of what really seems to us longer ago, the time when we ourselves used to be called out at school before the assembled taste and fashion of the neighbourhood, to go through this very dance with the partner whom we had selected for this purpose, and presented with a bunch of flowers on the occasion!

The Opera had less justice done it than the Ballet. The laughing Trio was spoiled by Mr. Naldi, who performs the part of an ‘Old Philosopher’ in it, but who is more like an impudent valet or major-domo of an hotel. We never saw any one so much at home; who seems so little conscious of the existence of any one but himself, and who throws his voice, his arms and legs about with such a total disregard of bienseance. The character is a kind of Opera Pandarus, who exposes the inconstancy of two young ladies, by entangling them in an intrigue with their own lovers in disguise. Mr. Braham, we are told, sings Mozart with a peculiar greatness of gusto. But this greatness of gusto does not appear to us the real excellence of Mozart. The song beginning Secondate, in which he and his friend (Signor Begri) call upon the gentle zephyrs by moonlight to favour their design, is exquisite, and ‘floats upon the air, smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiles.’

‘And Silence wish’d, she might be never more

Still to be so displaced.’

327Madame Fodor’s voice does not harmonize with the music of this composer. It is hard, metallic, and jars like the reverberation of a tight string. Mozart’s music should seem to come from the air, and return to it. Madame Vestris is a pretty little figure, and is in this respect a contrast to Madame Fodor.

OLD CUSTOMS

The Examiner.

August 11, 1816.

We have suffered two disappointments this week, one in seeing a farce that was announced and acted at the English Opera, and the other in not seeing one that was announced and not acted at the Haymarket. We should hope that which is to come is the best; for the other is very bad, as we think. Old Customs is a farce or operetta, in which an uncle (Mr. Bartley) and his nephew (Mr. Wrench) court the same young lady (Miss L. Kelly). She prefers the nephew, from whom she has received several letters. These, with her answers, she sends to Mr. Bartley in a packet or basket, to convince him of her real sentiments, and of the impropriety of his prosecuting his rivalry to his nephew. In the mean time, it being Christmas or New Year’s Day (we forget which), Bartley’s servant (Russell) receives a visit from his old mother, who, in this season of compliments and presents, brings him a little sister in a basket, and leaves it to his care, while she goes to see her acquaintance in the village. Russell, after singing a ludicrous lullaby to the baby, goes out himself and leaves it in the basket on the table, a great and improbable neglect, no doubt, of his infant charge. His master (Bartley) soon after comes in, and receives the letter from his mistress (Miss L. Kelly) informing him of a present she has sent him in a basket, meaning her packet of love-letters, and apologizing for the abrupt method she has taken of unfolding the true state of her heart and progress of her affections. Bartley looks about for this important confidential basket, and finds that which the old woman had left with her son, with its explanatory contents. At this indecency of the young lady, and indignity offered to himself, he grows very much incensed, struts and frets about the stage, and when Miss L. Kelly herself, with her father and lover, comes to ask his decision upon the question after the clear evidence which she has sent him, nothing can come up to the violence of his rage and impatience, but the absurdity of the contrivance by which it is occasioned. His nephew (Mr. Wrench) provokes him still farther, by talking of a present which he has left with him that morning, an embryo production of his efforts 328to please, meaning a manuscript comedy, but which Mr. Bartley confounds with the living Christmas-box in the basket. A strange scene of confusion ensues, in which every one is placed in as absurd and ridiculous a situation as possible, till Russell enters and brings about an unforeseen denouement, by giving an account of the adventures of himself and his little brother.

Such is the plot, and the wit is answerable to it. There was a good deal of laughing, and it is better to laugh at nonsense than at nothing. But really the humours of punch and the puppet-shew are sterling, legitimate, classical comedy, compared with the stuff of which the Muse of the new English Opera is weekly delivered. But it is in vain to admonish. The piece, we understand, has since been withdrawn.

MY LANDLADY’S NIGHT-GOWN

The Examiner.

August 18, 1816.

The new Farce at the Haymarket-Theatre, called My Landlady’s Night-Gown, is made of very indifferent stuff. It is very tedious and nonsensical. Mr. Jones is the hero of the piece, and gives the title to it; for being closely pressed by some bailiffs, he suddenly slips on his Landlady’s Night-gown, and escapes in disguise from his pursuers, by speaking in a feigned female voice to one of them, and knocking the other down by an exertion of his proper and natural prowess. Such is the story which he himself tells, to account for the oddity of his first appearance. Yet the apology is not necessary. Mr. Jones himself is always a greater oddity than his dress. There is something in his face and manner that bids equal defiance to disguise or ornament. The mind is affirmed by a great poet to be ‘its own place:’ and Nature, in making Mr. Jones, said to the tailor, You have no business here. Whether he plays my Lord Foppington in point-lace, or personates an old woman in My Landlady’s Night-Gown, he is just the same lively, bustling, fidgetty, staring, queer-looking mortal; and the gradations of his metamorphosis from the nobleman to the footman are quite imperceptible. Yet he is an actor not without merit; the town like him, and he knows it; and as to ourselves, we have fewer objections to him the more we see of him. Use reconciles one to any thing. The only part of this entertainment which is at all entertaining, is the scene in which Russell, as the tailor, measures Jones for a new suit of clothes. This scene is not dull, but it is very gross, and the grossness is not carried off by a proportionable degree of wit. We could point out the 329instances, but not with decency. So we shall let it alone. Tokely’s character is very well, but not so good as Crockery. He is an actor of some humour, and he sometimes shews a happy conception of character; but we hope he will never play Sir Benjamin Backbite again.

New English Opera.

Miss Merry has disappointed us again, in not appearing in Rosetta. We may perhaps take our revenge, by not saying a word about her when she does come out. It was certainly a disappointment, though Miss Kelly played the part in her stead, who is a fine sensible girl, and sings not amiss. But there is that opening scene where Rosetta and Lucinda sit and sing with their song-books in their hands among the garden bowers and roses, for which we had screwed up our ears to a most critical anticipation of delight, not to be soothed but with the sweetest sounds. To enter into good acting, requires an effort; but to hear soft music is a pleasure without any trouble. Besides, we had seen Miss Stephens in Rosetta, and wanted to compare notes. How then, Miss Merry, could you disappoint us?

Mr. Horn executed the part of Young Meadows with his usual ability and propriety, both as an actor and a singer. We also think that Mr. Chatterley’s Justice Woodcock was a very excellent piece of acting. The smile of recognition with which he turns round to his old flame Rosetta, in the last scene, told completely. Mrs. Grove’s Deborah Woodcock reminded us of Mrs. Sparks’s manner of acting it, which we take to be a high compliment.

Mr. Incledon appeared for the first time on this stage, as Hawthorn, and sung the usual songs with his well-known power and sweetness of voice. He is a true old English singer, and there is nobody who goes through a drinking song, a hunting song, or a sailor’s song like him. He makes a very loud and agreeable noise without any meaning. At present he both speaks and sings as if he had a lozenge or a slice of marmalade in his mouth. If he could go to America and leave his voice behind him, it would be a great benefit—to the parent country.

CASTLE OF ANDALUSIA

The Examiner.

(New English Opera) Sept. 1, 1816.

We hear nothing of Miss Merry; and there is nothing else at this theatre that we wish to hear. Even Mr. Horn is nothing without her; he stands alone and unsupported; and the ear loses its relish and its power of judging of harmonious sounds, where it has nothing 330but harshness and discordance to compare them with. We are sorry to include in this censure Miss Kelly, whose attempts to supply the place of Prima Donna of the English Opera, do great credit to her talents, industry, and good-nature, but still they have not given her a voice, which is indispensable to a singer, as singing is to an Opera. If the Managers think it merely necessary to get some one to go through the different songs in Artaxerxes, the Beggar’s Opera, or Love in a Village, they might hire persons to read them through at a cheaper rate; and in either case, we fear they must equally have to hire the audience as well as the actors. Mr. Incledon sung the duet of ‘All’s well,’ the other night, with Mr. Horn, in the Castle of Andalusia, and has repeated it every evening since. Both singers were very much and deservedly applauded in it. Mr. Incledon’s voice is certainly a fine one, but its very excellence makes us regret that its modulation is not equal to its depth and compass. His best notes come from him involuntarily, or are often misplaced. The effect of his singing is something like standing near a music-seller’s shop, where some idle person is trying the different instruments; the flute, the trumpet, the bass-viol, give forth their sounds of varied strength and sweetness, but without order or connection.

One of the novelties of the Castle of Andalusia, as got up at this theatre, was Mr. Herring’s Pedrillo; an odd fish certainly, a very outlandish person, and whose acting is altogether incoherent and gross, but with a certain strong relish in it. It is only too much of a good thing. His oil has not salt enough to qualify it. He has a great power of exhibiting the ludicrous and absurd; but by its being either not like, or over-done, the ridicule falls upon himself instead of the character. Indeed he is literally to the comedian, what the caricaturist is to the painter; and his representation of footmen and fine gentlemen, is just such as we see in Gillray’s shop-window. The same thing perhaps is not to be borne on the stage, though we laugh at it till we are obliged to hold our sides, in a caricature. We do not see, however, why this style of acting might not make a distinct species of itself, like the Italian opera buffa, with Scaramouch, Harlequin, and Pantaloon, among whom Mr. Herring would shine like a gold fish in a glass-case.

TWO WORDS

The Examiner.

Sept. 8, 1816.

It was the opinion of Colley Cibber, a tolerable judge of such matters, that in those degenerate days, the metropolis could only 331support one legitimate theatre, having a legitimate company, and acting legitimate plays. In the present improved state of the drama, which has ‘gone like a crab backwards,’ we are nearly of the same opinion, in summer time at least. We critics have been for the last two months like mice in an air-pump, gasping for breath, subsisting on a sort of theatrical half-allowance. We hate coalitions in politics, but we really wish the two little Theatres would club their stock of wit and humour into one. We should then have a very tight, compact little company, and crowded houses in the dog-days.

The new after-piece of ‘Two Words,’ at the English Opera, is a delightful little piece. It is a scene with robbers and midnight murder in it; and all such scenes are delightful to the reader or spectator. We can conceive nothing better managed than the plot of this. The spell-bound silence and dumb-show of Rose, the servant girl at the house in the forest, to which the benighted travellers come, has an inimitable effect; and to make it complete, it is played by Miss Kelly. The signals conveyed by the music of a lone flute in such a place, and at such a time, thrill through the ear, and almost suspend the breath. Mr. Short did not spoil the interest excited by the story, and both Mr. Wilkinson and Mrs. Grove did justice to the parts of the terrified servant, and the mischievous old housekeeper, who is a dextrous accomplice in the dreadful scene. The fault of the piece is, that the interest necessarily falls off in the second act, which makes it rather tiresome, though the second appearance of Miss Kelly in it, as the ward of Bartley at his great castle, is very ingeniously contrived, and occasions some droll perplexities to her lover, Don ——, whose life she has just saved from the hands of the assassins, only escaping from their vengeance herself by the arrival of her valorous guardian and a party of his soldiers. On the whole, this is the best novelty that has been brought out during the season at the English Opera, and we wish it every possible success.

Mr. Terry last week had for his benefit the Surrender of Calais. He played the part of Eustace de St. Pierre in it with judgment and energy, but without a pleasing effect. When Mr. Terry plays these tragic characters,

‘The line too labours, and the thoughts move slow.’

He sticks in tragedy like a man in the mud; or to borrow a higher figure from a learned critic, ‘he resembles a person walking on stilts in a morass.’ We shall always be glad to lift him out of it into the common path of unpretending comedy: there he succeeds, and is himself. The Surrender of Calais is as interesting as a tragedy can 332be without poetry in it. It has considerable pathos, though of a kind which borders on the shocking too much. It requires accomplished actors to carry it off; but it was not, in the present instance, very heroically cast. The Haymarket Theatre inclines more to comedy than to tragedy; and there are several scenes in this tragedy (for such it really is till it is over), which, ‘not to be hated,’ should be seen at the greatest possible distance that the stage allows. One advantage, at least, of our overgrown theatres is, that they throw the most distressing objects into a milder historical perspective.

THE WONDER

The Examiner.

(Covent Garden) Sept. 15, 1816.

The Wonder is one of our good old English Comedies, which holds a happy medium between grossness and refinement. The plot is rich in intrigue, and the dialogue in double entendre, which however is so light and careless, as only to occasion a succession of agreeable alarms to the ears of delicacy. This genuine comedy, which is quite as pleasant to read as to see (for we have made the experiment within these few days, to our entire satisfaction) was written by an Englishwoman, before the sentimental, Ultra-Jacobinical German School, of which a short and amusing account has been lately given in the Courier, had spoiled us with their mawkish platonics and maudlin metaphysics. The soul is here with extreme simplicity considered as a mere accessary to the senses in love, and the conversation of bodies preferred to that of minds as much more entertaining. We do not subscribe our names to this opinion, but it is Mrs. Centlivre’s, and we do not chuse to contradict a lady. The plot is admirably calculated for stage-effect, and kept up with prodigious ingenuity and vivacity to the end. The spectator is just beginning to be tired with the variety of stratagems that follow and perplex one another, when the whole difficulty is happily unravelled in the last scene. The dove-tailing of the incidents and situations (so that one unexpected surprise gives place to another, and the success of the plot is prevented by the unluckiest accident in the world happening in the very nick of time) supplies the place of any great force of character or sentiment. The time for the entrance of each person on the stage is the moment when they are least wanted, and when their arrival makes either themselves or somebody else look as foolish as possible. The Busy Body shews the same talent for invention and coup-d’œil for theatrical effect, and the laughableness of both comedies depends on a brilliant series of mis-timed exits and entrances. The Wonder is not, 333however, without a moral; it exhibits a rare example of a woman keeping a secret, for the sake of a female friend, which she is under every temptation to break, and her resolution and fidelity are, after a number of mortifying accidents and fears, happily rewarded by the triumph both of her friendship and her love. The situation of Violante is more prominent than her character; or, at least, the character is more moral than entertaining. She is a young lady of great goodness of heart and firmness of principle, but who neither displays any great superiority of wit in extricating herself from the difficulties in which her regard for the safety of her friend involves her, nor of spirit in repelling the insinuations to which her reputation is exposed in the eyes of her lover. She submits to her situation with firmness of purpose and conscious reliance on her own innocence.

Miss Boyle, the young lady who appeared in this character on Friday, shewed herself not incompetent to its successful delineation. Her figure is tall, and her face, though her features are small, is pretty and expressive. Her articulation (for a first appearance) was remarkably distinct, and her voice is full and sweet. It is however rather sentimental than comic. She rounds her words too much, nor do they come ‘trippingly from the tongue.’ It is sufficient if the dialogue of genteel comedy comes with light-fluttering grace and gay animation from the lips; it should not come labouring up all the way from the heart. This young lady’s general demeanour is easy and unaffected; and when she has overcome her timidity, we have no doubt she will give considerable spirit and dignity to the more serious scenes of the story. Her smile has much archness and expression; and we hope, from the promise of taste and talent which she gave through her whole performance, that she will prove an acquisition to the stage, in a line of comedy in which we are at present absolutely deficient. She was very favourably received throughout.

We do not think the play in general was well got up. Charles Kemble seemed to be rehearsing Don Felix with an eye to Macduff, or some face-making tragic character. He was only excellent in the drunken scene. Mrs. Gibbs at one time fairly took wing across the stage, and played the chamber-maid with too little restraint from vulgar decorums. Mr. Abbott never acts ill, but he does not answer to our idea of Colonel Briton. Emery’s Gibby was sturdy enough, and seemed to prove what he himself says, that ‘a Scotchman is not ashamed to shew his face any where.’

334

THE DISTRESSED MOTHER

The Examiner.

September 22, 1816.

A Mr. Macready appeared at Covent-Garden Theatre on Monday and Friday, in the character of Orestes, in the Distressed Mother, a bad play for the display of his powers, in which, however, he succeeded in making a decidedly favourable impression upon the audience. His voice is powerful in the highest degree, and at the same time possesses great harmony and modulation. His face is not equally calculated for the stage. He declaims better than any body we have lately heard. He is accused of being violent, and of wanting pathos. Neither of these objections is true. His manner of delivering the first speeches in this play was admirable, and the want of increasing interest afterwards was the fault of the author, rather than the actor. The fine suppressed tone in which he assented to Pyrrhus’s command to convey the message to Hermione was a test of his variety of power, and brought down repeated acclamations from the house. We do not lay much stress on his mad-scene, though that was very good in its kind, for mad-scenes do not occur very often, and when they do, had in general better be omitted. We have not the slightest hesitation in saying, that Mr. Macready is by far the best tragic actor that has come out in our remembrance, with the exception of Mr. Kean. We however heartily wish him well out of this character of Orestes. It is a kind of forlorn hope in tragedy. There is nothing to be made of it on the English stage, beyond experiment. It is a trial, not a triumph. These French plays puzzle an English audience exceedingly. They cannot attend to the actor, for the difficulty they have in understanding the author. We think it wrong in any actor of great merit (which we hold Mr. Macready to be) to come out in an ambiguous character, to salve his reputation. An actor is like a man who throws himself from the top of a steeple by a rope. He should chuse the highest steeple he can find, that if he does not succeed in coming safe to the ground, he may break his neck at once, and so put himself and the spectators out of farther pain.

Ambrose Phillips’s Distressed Mother is a very good translation from Racine’s Andromache. It is an alternation of topics, of pros and cons, on the casuistry of domestic and state affairs, and produced a great effect of ennui on the audience. When you hear one of the speeches in these rhetorical tragedies, you know as well what will be the answer to it, as when you see the tide coming up the river—you know that it will return again. The other actors filled their parts with successful mediocrity.

We highly disapprove of the dresses worn on this occasion, and 335supposed to be the exact Greek costume. We do not know that the Greek heroes were dressed like women, or wore their long hair strait down their backs. Or even supposing that they did, this is not generally known or understood by the audience; and though the preservation of the ancient costume is a good thing, it is of more importance not to shock our present prejudices. The managers of Covent-Garden are not the Society of Antiquaries. The attention to costume is only necessary to preserve probability: in the present instance, it could only violate it, because there is nothing to lead the public opinion to expect such an exhibition. We know how the Turks are dressed, from seeing them in the streets; we know the costume of the Greek statues, from seeing casts in the shop-windows: we know that savages go naked, from reading voyages and travels: but we do not know that the Grecian Chiefs at the Siege of Troy were dressed as Mr. Charles Kemble, Mr. Abbott, and Mr. Macready were the other evening in the Distressed Mother. It is a discovery of the Managers; and they should have kept their secret to themselves.—The epithet in Homer, applied to the Grecian warriors, κάρη κομόωντες, is not any proof. It signifies not long-haired, but literally bushy-headed, which would come nearer to the common Brutus head, than this long dangling slip of hair. The oldest and most authentic models we have are the Elgin Marbles, and it is certain the Theseus is a crop. One would think this standard might satisfy the Committee of Managers in point of classical antiquity. But no such thing. They are much deeper in Greek costume and the history of the fabulous ages than those old-fashioned fellows, the Sculptors who lived in the time of Pericles. But we have said quite enough on this point.

Drury-Lane.

The chief novelties at this Theatre for the present week, have been a Mr. Bengough, from the Theatre Royal, Bath, and a Mrs. Knight, of the York Theatre, who have appeared in the characters of Baron Wildenheim and Agatha Friburg, in Lovers’ Vows. Both have been successful. Mr. Bengough is an actor who shews considerable judgment and feeling, and who would produce more effect than he does, if he took less pains to produce it. The appearance of study takes from that of nature, and yet the expression of natural pathos is what he seems to excel in. He treads the stage well, and is, we think, an acquisition to the company.

We wonder the long-winded, heavy-handed writer in the Courier, who has been belabouring Bertram so woefully, does not fall foul of Lovers’ Vows, as the quintessence of metaphysical licentiousness and 336the ultra-Jacobinism of ultra-Jacobinical poetry. We think that everlasting writer might build thirty columns of lumbering criticisms, ‘pointing to the skies,’ on any single passage of this effusion of German sentiment and genius. We hope the worthy author will take this hint, and after he has exhausted upon this work the inexhaustible stores of his unspeakable discoveries and researches into the theory of mill-stones, we would recommend him to turn his pen to an almost forgotten play, called Remorse, at the bottom of which, if he will look narrowly, he will find ‘a vaporous drop profound’ of the same pernicious leaven; and by setting it fermenting, with the help of transcendental reasoning, and the mechanical operations of the spirit, may raise mists and clouds that will ascend above the moon, and turn the Courier office into a laundry!—Oh, we had forgot: Mrs. Mardyn played her old character of Amelia Wildenheim more charmingly than ever. She acts even with more grace and spirit than when she first came out in it, and looks as handsome as she used to do.

MISS BOYLE’S ROSALIND

The Examiner.

October 6, 1816.

We have had a considerable treat this week, in Miss Boyle’s Rosalind, at Covent-Garden Theatre. It is one of the chastest and most pleasing pieces of comic acting we have seen for some time. We did not think much of her in Violante, which might be owing to the diffidence of a first appearance, or to the little she has to do in the character. But she rises with her characters, and really makes a very charming Rosalind. The words of Shakespear become her mouth, and come from it with a delicious freshness, which gives us back the sense. There should be in the tones of the voice, to repeat Shakespear’s verses properly, something resembling the sound of musical glasses. He has himself given us his idea on this subject, where he says, ‘How silver sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night.’ We were not satisfied with Miss Boyle’s enunciation in Violante. It wanted lightness and grace. Her Rosalind was spoken with more effect, and with more gaiety at the same time. The sentiment seemed to infuse into her the true comic spirit, and her acting improved with the wit and vivacity of the passages she had to deliver. This would be a defect in a character of mere manners, like Lady Townley, where there is always supposed to be an air or affectation of a certain agreeable vivacity or fashionable tone; but in a character of nature, like Rosalind, who is supposed to speak only what she 337thinks, and to express delight only as she feels it, it was a great beauty. Her eyes also became more sparkling, and her smile more significant, according to the naiveté and force of what she had to utter. The highest compliment we can pay her acting is by applying to it what Shakespear has somewhere said of poetry—

‘Our poesy is a gum that issues

From whence ’tis nourish’d. The fire i’th’ flint

Shews not till it be struck. Our gentle flame

Provokes itself, and like the current flies

Each bound in chafes.’

To realize this description would be the perfection of comic acting. We must not forget her Cuckoo-song; indeed we could not, if we would. It was quite delightful. The tone and manner in which she repeated the word Cuckoo, was as arch and provoking as possible, and seemed to grow more saucy every time by the repetition, but still, though it hovered very near them, it was restrained from passing the limits of delicacy and propriety. She was deservedly encored in it; though this circumstance seemed to throw her into some little confusion. We have, however, two faults to find, both of which may be easily remedied. The first is, that there is a tendency to a lisp in some of her words: the second is, that there is a trip in her gait, and too great a disposition to keep in motion while she is speaking, or to go up to the persons she is addressing, as if they were deaf. Both these are defects of inexperience: the two necessary qualities for any young actress to set out with, in the higher comedy, are liveliness and elegance, or in other words, feeling with delicacy, and these we think Miss Boyle possesses. We were a good deal pleased with Mr. Young’s Jaques. He spoke several passages well, and is upon the whole an improving actor.

Mr. Macready’s Bentevole, in the Italian Lover, is very highly spoken of. We only saw the last act of it, but it appeared to us to be very fine in its kind. It was natural, easy, and forcible. Indeed, we suspect some parts of it were too natural, that is, that Mr. Macready thought too much of what his feelings might dictate in such circumstances, rather than of what the circumstances must have dictated to him to do. We allude particularly to the half significant, half hysterical laugh, and distorted jocular leer, with his eyes towards the persons accusing him of the murder, when the evidence of his guilt comes out. Either the author did not intend him to behave in this manner, or he must have made the other parties on the stage interrupt him as a self-convicted criminal. His appeal 338to Manoah (the witness against him) to suppress the proofs which must be fatal to his honour and his life, was truly affecting. His resumption of a spirit of defiance was not sufficiently dignified, and was more like the self-sufficient swaggering airs of comedy, than the real grandeur of tragedy, which should always proceed from passion. Mr. Macready sometimes, to express uneasiness and agitation, composes his cravat, as he would in a drawing-room. This is, we think, neither graceful nor natural in extraordinary situations. His tones are equally powerful and flexible, varying with the greatest facility from the lowest to the highest pitch of the human voice.

MR. MACREADY’S OTHELLO

The Examiner.

October 13, 1816.

We have to speak this week of Mr. Macready’s Othello, at Covent-Garden Theatre, and though it must be in favourable terms, it cannot be in very favourable ones. We have been rather spoiled for seeing any one else in this character, by Mr. Kean’s performance of it, and also by having read the play itself lately. Mr. Macready was more than respectable in the part; and he only failed because he attempted to excel. He did not, however, express the individual bursts of feeling, nor the deep and accumulating tide of passion which ought to be given in Othello. It may perhaps seem an extravagant illustration, but the idea which we think any actor ought to have of this character, to play it to the height of the poetical conception, is that of a majestic serpent wounded, writhing under its pain, stung to madness, and attempting by sudden darts, or coiling up its whole force, to wreak its vengeance on those about it, and falling at last a mighty victim under the redoubled strokes of its assailants. No one can admire more than we do the force of genius and passion which Mr. Kean shews in this part, but he is not stately enough for it. He plays it like a gipsey, and not like a Moor. We miss in Mr. Kean not the physiognomy, or the costume, so much as the architectural building up of the part. This character always puts us in mind of the line—

‘Let Afric on its hundred thrones rejoice.’

It not only appears to hold commerce with meridian suns, and that its blood is made drunk with the heat of scorching skies; but it indistinctly presents to us all the symbols of eastern magnificence. It wears a crown and turban, and stands before us like a tower. All this, it may be answered, is only saying that Mr. Kean is not so 339tall as a tower: but any one, to play Othello properly, ought to look taller and grander than any tower. We shall see how Mr. Young will play it. But this is from our present purpose. Mr. Macready is tall enough for the part, and the looseness of his figure was rather in character with the flexibility of the South: but there were no sweeping outlines, no massy movements in his action.

The movements of passion in Othello (and the motions of the body should answer to those of the mind) resemble the heaving of the sea in a storm; there are no sharp, slight, angular transitions, or if there are any, they are subject to this general swell and commotion. Mr. Kean is sometimes too wedgy and determined; but Mr. Macready goes off like a shot, and startles our sense of hearing. One of these sudden explosions was when he is in such haste to answer the demands of the Senate on his services: ‘I do agnise a natural hardness,’ &c. as if he was impatient to exculpate himself from some charge, or wanted to take them at their word lest they should retract. There is nothing of this in Othello. He is calm and collected; and the reason why he is carried along with such vehemence by his passions when they are roused, is, that he is moved by their collected force. Another fault in Mr. Macready’s conception was, that he whined and whimpered once or twice, and tried to affect the audience by affecting a pitiful sensibility, not consistent with the dignity and masculine imagination of the character: as where he repeated, ‘No, not much moved,’ and again, ‘Othello’s occupation’s gone,’ in a childish treble. The only part which should approach to this effeminate tenderness of complaint is his reflection, ‘Yet, oh the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!’ What we liked best was his ejaculation, ‘Swell, bosom, with thy fraught, for ’tis of aspick’s tongues.’ This was forcibly given, and as if his expression were choaked with the bitterness of passion. We do not know how he would have spoken the speech, ‘Like to the Pontic sea that knows no ebb,’ &c. which occurs just before, for it was left out. There was also something fine in his uneasiness and inward starting at the name of Cassio, but it was too often repeated, with a view to effect. Mr. Macready got most applause in such speeches as that addressed to Iago, ‘Horror on horror’s head accumulate!’ This should be a lesson to him. He very injudiciously, we think, threw himself on a chair at the back of the stage, to deliver the farewell apostrophe to Content, and to the ‘pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.’ This might be a relief to him, but it distressed the audience.—On the whole, we think Mr. Macready’s powers are more adapted to the declamation than to the acting of 340passion: that is, that he is a better orator than actor. As to Mr. Young’s Iago, ‘we never saw a gentleman acted finer.’ Mrs. Faucit’s Desdemona was very pretty. Mr. C. Kemble’s Cassio was excellent.

Drury-Lane.

The town has been entertained this week by seeing Mr. Stephen Kemble in the part of Sir John Falstaff, as they were formerly with seeing Mr. Lambert in his own person. We see no more reason why Mr. Stephen Kemble should play Falstaff, than why Louis XVIII. is qualified to fill a throne, because he is fat, and belongs to a particular family. Every fat man cannot represent a great man. The knight was fat; so is the player: the Emperor was fat, so is the King who stands in his shoes. But there the comparison ends. There is no sympathy in mind—in wit, parts, or discretion. Sir John (and so we may say of the gentleman at St. Helena) ‘had guts in his brains.’ The mind was the man. His body did not weigh down his wit. His spirits shone through him. He was not a mere paunch, a bag-pudding, a lump of lethargy, a huge falling sickness, an imminent apoplexy, with water in the head.

The Managers of Drury-Lane, in providing a Sir John Falstaff to satisfy the taste of the town, seem to ask only with Mr. Burke’s political carcass-butchers, ‘How he cuts up in the cawl: how he tallows in the kidneys!’ We are afraid the Junto of Managers of Drury-Lane are not much wiser than the junto of Managers of the affairs of Europe. This, according to the luminous and voluminous critic in the Courier, is because their affairs are not under the management of a single person. Would the same argument prove that the affairs of Europe had better have been under the direction of one man? ‘The gods have not made’ the writer in the Courier logical as well as ‘poetical.’ By the rule above hinted at, every actor is qualified to play Falstaff who is physically incapacitated to play any other character. Sir John Falstaffs may be fatted up like prize oxen. Nor does the evil in this case produce its own remedy, as where an actor’s success depends upon his own leanness and that of the part he plays. Sir Richard Steele tells us (in one of the Tatlers) of a poor actor in his time, who having nothing to do, fell away, and became such a wretched meagre-looking object, that he was pitched upon as a proper person to represent the starved Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet. He did this so much to the life, that he was repeatedly called upon to play it: but his person improving with his circumstances, he was in a short time rendered unfit to play it with the same effect as before, and laid aside. Having no other resource, 341he accordingly fell away again with the loss of his part, and was again called upon to appear in it with his former reputation. Any one, on the contrary, who thrives in Falstaff, is always in an increasing capacity to overlay the part.—But we have done with this unpleasant subject.

THEATRICAL DEBUTS

The Examiner.

October 20, 1816.

There have been two theatrical or operatic debuts, to which we are in arrears, and of which we must say a word—Miss Mori’s Rosetta in Love in a Village, at Covent-Garden, and Miss Keppel’s Polly in the Beggar’s Opera, at Drury-Lane. Both of them appeared to us to be indifferent. Miss Mori is by much the best singer of the two, but there is something exceedingly unprepossessing and hard both in her voice and manner. She sings without the least feeling, or lurking consciousness that such a thing is required in a singer. The notes proceed from her mouth as mechanically, as unmitigated by the sentiment, as if they came from the sharp hautboy or grating bassoon. We do not mean that her voice is disagreeable in itself, but it wants softness and sweetness of modulation. The words of the songs neither seem to tremble on her lips, nor play around her heart. Miss Mori did not look the character. Rosetta is to be sure a waiting-maid, but then she is also a young lady in disguise. There was no appearance of the incognita in Miss Mori. She seemed in downright earnest, like one of the country girls who come to be hired at the statute-fair. She was quite insensible of her situation, and came forward to prove herself a fine singer, as one of her fellow-servants might have done to answer to a charge of having stolen something. We never saw a debutante more at ease with the audience: we suppose she has played in the country. Miss Matthews, who is a good-natured girl, and wished to patronize her on so delicate an emergency, presently found there was no occasion for her services, and withdrew from the attempt with some trepidation.

If Miss Mori did not enchant us by her incomprehensible want of sensibility, neither did Miss Keppel by the affectation of it. Sensibility is a very pretty thing, but it will not do to make a plaything of, at least in public. It is not enough that an actress tries to atone for defects by throwing herself on the indulgence of the audience:—their eyes and ears must be satisfied, as well as their self-love. Miss Keppel acts with very little grace, and sings very much out of tune. 342There were some attempts made to prejudice the audience against this young lady before she appeared: but they only had the effect which they deserved, of procuring a more flattering reception than she would otherwise have met with: but we do not think she will ever become a favourite with the town.

MR. KEMBLE’S CATO

The Examiner.

October 27, 1816.

Mr. Kemble has resumed his engagements at Covent-Garden Theatre for the season; it is said in the play-bills, for the last time. There is something in the word last, that, ‘being mortal,’ we do not like on these occasions: but there is this of good in it, that it throws us back on past recollections, and when we are about to take leave of an old friend, we feel desirous to settle all accounts with him, and to see that the balance is not against us, on the score of gratitude. Mr. Kemble will, we think, find that the public are just, and his last season, if it is to be so, will not, we hope, be the least brilliant of his career. As his meridian was bright, so let his sunset be golden, and without a cloud. His reception in Cato, on Friday, was most flattering, and he well deserved the cheering and cordial welcome which he received. His voice only failed him in strength; but his tones, his looks, his gestures, were all that could be required in the character. He is the most classical of actors. He is the only one of the moderns, who both in figure and action approaches the beauty and grandeur of the antique. In the scene of the soliloquy, just before his death, he was rather inaudible, and indeed the speech itself is not worth hearing; but his person, manner, and dress, seemed cast in the very mould of Roman elegance and dignity.

THE IRON CHEST

The Examiner.

December 1, 1816.

The Iron Chest is founded on the story of Caleb Williams, one of the best novels in the language, and the very best of the modern school: but the play itself is by no means the best play that ever was written, either in ancient or modern times, though really in modern times we do not know of any much better. Mr. Colman’s serious style, which is in some measure an imitation of Shakespear’s, is natural and flowing; and there is a constant intermixture as in our elder drama, a melange of the tragic and comic; but there is rather 343a want of force and depth in the impassioned parts of his tragedies, and what there is of this kind, is impeded in its effect by the comic. The two plots (the serious and ludicrous) do not seem going on and gaining ground at the same time, but each part is intersected and crossed by the other, and has to set out again in the next scene, after being thwarted in the former one, like a person who has to begin a story over again in which he has been interrupted. In Shakespear, the comic parts serve only as a relief to the tragic. Colman’s tragic scenes are not high-wrought enough to require any such relief; and this perhaps may be a sufficient reason why modern writers, who are so sparing of their own nerves, and those of their readers, should not be allowed to depart from the effeminate simplicity of the classic style. In Shakespear, again, the comic varieties are only an accompaniment to the loftier tragic movement: at least the only exception is in the part of Falstaff in Henry IV. which is not however a tragedy of any deep interest:—in Colman you do not know whether the comedy or tragedy is principal; whether he made the comic for the sake of the tragic, or the tragic for the sake of the comic; and you suspect he would be as likely as any of his contemporaries to parody his own most pathetic passages, just as Munden caricatures the natural touches of garrulous simplicity in old Adam Winterton, to make the galleries and boxes laugh. The great beauty of Caleb Williams is lost in the play. The interest of the novel arises chiefly from two things: the gradual working up of the curiosity of Caleb Williams with respect to the murder, by the incessant goading on of which he extorts the secret from Falkland, and then from the systematic persecution which he undergoes from his master, which at length urges him to reveal the secret to the world. Both these are very ingeniously left out by Mr. Colman, who jumps at a conclusion, but misses his end.

The history of the Iron Chest is well known to dramatic readers. Mr. Kemble either could not, or would not play the part of Sir Edward Mortimer (the Falkland of Mr. Godwin’s novel)—he made nothing of it, or at least, made short work of it, for it was only played one night. He had a cough and a cold, and he hemmed and hawed, and whined and drivelled through the part in a marvellous manner. Mr. Colman was enraged at the ill-success of his piece, and charged it upon Kemble’s acting, who he said did not do his best. Now we confess he generally tries to do his best, and if that best is no better, it is not his fault. We think the fault was in the part, which wants circumstantial dignity. Give Mr. Kemble only the man to play, why, he is nothing; give him the 344paraphernalia of greatness, and he is great. He ‘wears his heart in compliment extern.’ He is the statue on the pedestal, that cannot come down without danger of shaming its worshippers; a figure that tells well with appropriate scenery and dresses; but not otherwise. Mr. Kemble contributes his own person to a tragedy—but only that. The poet must furnish all the rest, and make the other parts equally dignified and graceful, or Mr. Kemble will not help him out. He will not lend dignity to the mean, spirit to the familiar; he will not impart life and motion, passion and imagination, to all around him, for he has neither life nor motion, passion nor imagination in himself. He minds only the conduct of his own person, and leaves the piece to shift for itself. Not so Mr. Kean. ‘Truly he hath a devil;’ and if the fit comes over him too often, yet as tragedy is not the representation of still-life, we think this much better than being never roused at all. We like

‘The fiery soul that working out its way,

Fretted the pigmy body to decay,

And o’er informed the tenement of clay.’

Mr. Kean has passion and energy enough to afford to lend it to the circumstances in which he is placed, without leaning upon them for support. He can make a dialogue between a master and a servant in common life, tragic, or infuse a sentiment into the Iron Chest. He is not afraid of being let down by his company. Formal dignity and studied grace are ridiculous, except in particular circumstances; passion and nature are every where the same, and these Mr. Kean carries with him into all his characters, and does not want the others. In the last, however, which are partly things of manner and assumption, he improves, as well as in the recitation of set speeches; for example, in the Soliloquy on Honour, in the present play. His description of the assassination of his rival to Wilford was admirable, and the description of his ‘seeing his giant form roll before him in the dust,’ was terrific and grand. In the picturesque expression of passion, by outward action, Mr. Kean is unrivalled. The transitions in this play, from calmness to deep despair, from concealed suspicion to open rage, from smooth decorous indifference to the convulsive agonies of remorse, gave Mr. Kean frequent opportunities for the display of his peculiar talents. The mixture of common-place familiarity and solemn injunction in his speeches to Wilford when in the presence of others, was what no other actor could give with the same felicity and force. The last scene of all—his coming to life again after his swooning at the fatal discovery of his guilt, and then falling back after a ghastly struggle, like a man waked from the 345tomb, into despair and death in the arms of his mistress, was one of those consummations of the art, which those who have seen and have not felt them in this actor, may be assured that they have never seen or felt any thing in the course of their lives, and never will to the end of them.

MR. KEMBLE’S KING JOHN

The Examiner.

(Covent Garden) December 8, 1816.

We wish we had never seen Mr. Kean. He has destroyed the Kemble religion; and it is the religion in which we were brought up. Never again shall we behold Mr. Kemble with the same pleasure that we did, nor see Mr. Kean with the same pleasure that we have seen Mr. Kemble formerly. We used to admire Mr. Kemble’s figure and manner, and had no idea that there was any want of art or nature. We feel the force and nature of Mr. Kean’s acting, but then we feel the want of Mr. Kemble’s person. Thus an old and delightful prejudice is destroyed, and no new enthusiasm, no second idolatry comes to take its place. Thus, by degrees, knowledge robs us of pleasure, and the cold icy hand of experience freezes up the warm current of the imagination, and crusts it over with unfeeling criticism. The knowledge we acquire of various kinds of excellence, as successive opportunities present themselves, leads us to acquire a combination of them which we never find realized in any individual, and all the consolation for the disappointment of our fastidious expectations is in a sort of fond and doating retrospect of the past. It is possible indeed that the force of prejudice might often kindly step in to suspend the chilling effects of experience, and we might be able to see an old favourite by a voluntary forgetfulness of other things, as we saw him twenty years ago; but his friends take care to prevent this, and by provoking invidious comparisons, and crying up their idol as a model of abstract perfection, force us to be ill-natured in our own defence.

We went to see Mr. Kemble’s King John, and he became the part so well, in costume, look, and gesture, that if left to ourselves, we could have gone to sleep over it, and dreamt that it was fine, and ‘when we waked, have cried to dream again.’ But we were told that it was really fine, as fine as Garrick, as fine as Mrs. Siddons, as fine as Shakespear; so we rubbed our eyes and kept a sharp look out, but we saw nothing but a deliberate intention on the part of Mr. Kemble to act the part finely. And so he did in a certain sense, but not by any means as Shakespear wrote it, nor as it might 346be played. He did not harrow up the feelings, he did not electrify the sense: he did not enter into the nature of the part himself, nor consequently move others with terror or pity. The introduction to the scene with Hubert was certainly excellent: you saw instantly, and before a syllable was uttered, partly from the change of countenance, and partly from the arrangement of the scene, the purpose which had entered his mind to murder the young prince. But the remainder of this trying scene, though the execution was elaborate—painfully elaborate, and the outline well conceived, wanted the filling up, the true and master touches, the deep piercing heartfelt tones of nature. It was done well and skilfully, according to the book of arithmetic; but no more. Mr. Kemble, when he approaches Hubert to sound his disposition, puts on an insidious, insinuating, fawning aspect, and so he ought; but we think it should not be, though it was, that kind of wheedling smile, as if he was going to persuade him that the business he wished him to undertake was a mere jest; and his natural repugnance to it an idle prejudice, that might be carried off by a certain pleasant drollery of eye and manner. Mr. Kemble’s look, to our apprehension, was exactly as if he had just caught the eye of some person of his acquaintance in the boxes, and was trying to suppress a rising smile at the metamorphosis he had undergone since dinner. Again, he changes his voice three several times, in repeating the name of Hubert; and the changes might be fine, but they did not vibrate on our feelings; so we cannot tell. They appeared to us like a tragic voluntary. Through almost the whole scene this celebrated actor did not seem to feel the part itself as it was set down for him, but to be considering how he ought to feel it, or how he should express by rule and method what he did not feel. He was sometimes slow, and sometimes hurried: sometimes familiar, and sometimes solemn: but always with an evident design and determination to be so. The varying tide of passion did not appear to burst from the source of nature in his breast, but to be drawn from a theatrical leaden cistern, and then directed through certain conduit-pipes and artificial channels, to fill the audience with well regulated and harmless sympathy.

We are afraid, judging from the effects of this representation, that ‘man delight not us, nor woman neither:’ for we did not like Miss O’Neill’s Constance better, nor so well as Mr. Kemble’s King John. This character, more than any other of Shakespear’s females, treads perhaps upon the verge of extravagance; the impatience of grief, combined with the violence of her temper, borders on insanity: her imagination grows light-headed. But still the boundary between poetry and phrensy is not passed: she is neither a virago nor mad. 347Miss O’Neill gave more of the vulgar than the poetical side of the character. She generally does so of late. Mr. Charles Kemble in the Bastard, had the ‘bulk, the thews, the sinews’ of Falconbridge: would that he had had ‘the spirit’ too. There was one speech which he gave well—‘Could Sir Robert make this leg?’ And suiting the action to the word, as well he might, it had a great effect upon the house.

CORIOLANUS

The Examiner.

December 15, 1816.

Coriolanus has of late been repeatedly acted at Covent-Garden Theatre. Shakespear has in this play shewn himself well versed in history and state-affairs. Coriolanus is a storehouse of political common-places. Any one who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke’s Reflections, or Paine’s Rights of Man, or the Debates in both Houses of Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and against aristocracy, or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet, and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespear himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it. The cause of the people is indeed but ill calculated as a subject for poetry: it admits of rhetoric, which goes into argument and explanation, but it presents no immediate or distinct images to the mind, ‘no jutting frieze, buttress, or coigne of vantage’ for poetry ‘to make its pendant bed and procreant cradle in.’ The language of poetry naturally falls in with the language of power. The imagination is an exaggerating and exclusive faculty: it takes from one thing to add to another: it accumulates circumstances together to give the greatest possible effect to a favourite object. The understanding is a dividing and measuring faculty: it judges of things, not according to their immediate impression on the mind, but according to their relations to one another. The one is a monopolizing faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of present excitement by inequality and disproportion; the other is a distributive faculty, which seeks the greatest quantity of ultimate good by justice and proportion. The one is an aristocratical, the other a republican 348faculty. The principle of poetry is a very anti-levelling principle. It aims at effect, it exists by contrast. It admits of no medium. It is every thing by excess. It rises above the ordinary standard of sufferings and crimes. It presents an imposing appearance. It shews its head turretted, crowned and crested. Its front is gilt and blood-stained. Before it, ‘it carries noise, and behind it, it leaves tears.’ It has its altars and its victims, sacrifices, human sacrifices. Kings, priests, nobles, are its train-bearers; tyrants and slaves its executioners—‘Carnage is its daughter!’ Poetry is right royal. It puts the individual for the species, the one above the infinite many, might before right. A lion hunting a flock of sheep or a herd of wild asses, is a more poetical object than they; and we even take part with the lordly beast, because our vanity, or some other feeling, makes us disposed to place ourselves in the situation of the strongest party. So we feel some concern for the poor citizens of Rome, when they meet together to compare their wants and grievances, till Coriolanus comes in, and, with blows and big words, drives this set of ‘poor rats,’ this rascal scum, to their homes and beggary, before him. There is nothing heroical in a multitude of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved, or complaining that they are like to be so; but when a single man comes forward to brave their cries, and to make them submit to the last indignities, from mere pride and self-will, our admiration of his prowess is immediately converted into contempt for their pusillanimity. The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tame submission to usurped authority, or even the natural resistance to it, has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination; it is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others, that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed.

The love of power in ourselves, and the admiration of it in others, are both natural to man; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong, dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance, has more attraction than abstract right.—Coriolanus complains of the fickleness of the people: yet the instant he cannot gratify his pride and obstinacy at their expense, he turns his arms against his country. If his country was not worth defending, why did he build his pride on its defence? He is a conqueror and a hero; he conquers other countries, and makes this a plea for enslaving his own; and when he is prevented from doing so, he leagues with its enemies to destroy his country. He rates the people ‘as if he were a God to punish, and not a man of their infirmity.’ He scoffs at one of their tribunes for maintaining their rites and franchises: ‘Mark you his absolute shall?’ not marking his own absolute will to take every thing from 349them; his impatience of the slightest opposition to his own pretensions being in proportion to their arrogance and absurdity. If the great and powerful had the beneficence and wisdom of gods, then all this would have been well: if with greater knowledge of what is good for the people, they had as great a care for their interest as they have for their own; if they were seated above the world, sympathising with their welfare, but not feeling the passions of men, receiving neither good nor hurt from them, but bestowing their benefits as free gifts on them, they might then rule over them like another Providence. But this is not the case. Coriolanus is unwilling that the Senate should shew their ‘cares’ for the people, lest their ‘cares’ should be construed into ‘fears,’ to the subversion of all due authority; and he is no sooner disappointed in his schemes to deprive the people not only of the cares of the state, but of all power to redress themselves, than Volumnia is made madly to exclaim,