The _Taming of the Shrew_ was revived here on Wednesday, with the

original words and additional songs. We however missed _Christopher

Sly_, that supreme dramatic critic, who should have sat in lordly

judgment on the piece, and given a drunken relief to it. This

representing of a play within a play (of which Shakspeare was fond)

produces an agreeable theatrical perspective—it is like painting a

picture in a picture—and intimates pointedly enough that all are but

shadows, the pageants of a dream. We also missed Mr. Liston in this

part; for we understand he has some good quips and crotchets about it.

Unless we saw him, we cannot pretend to say how he would do it; for we

consider Mr. Liston in the light of an author rather than of an actor,

and he makes his best parts out of his own head or face, in a sort of

_brown study_, with very little reference to the text. He has

nevertheless more comic humour oozing out of his features and person

than any other actor in our remembrance, or than we have any positive

evidence of since the time of Hogarth. No one is _stultified_, no one is

_mystified_ like him—no one is so deep in absurdity, no one so full of

vacancy; no one puzzles so over a doubt, or goes the whole length of an

extravagance like him—no one chuckles so over his own conceit, or is so

dismayed at finding his mistake:—the genius of folly spreads its shining

gloss over his face, tickles his nose, laughs in his eyes, makes his

teeth chatter in his head, or draws up every muscle into a look of

indescribable dulness, or freezes his whole person into a lump of ice

(as in _Lubin Log_) or relaxes it into the very thaw and dissolution of

all common sense (as in his _Lord Grizzle_). Munden’s acting (which many

prefer, and in this number may be included Mr. Liston himself) was

external, overdone, and aimed at the galleries—it was a sort of

prodigious and inspired _face-making_—Liston’s humour bubbles up of

itself, and runs over from the mere fulness of the conception. If he

does not go out of himself, he looks into himself, and ruminates on the

idea of the idle, the quaint, and the absurd, till it does his heart

good within him, and makes ‘the lungs of others crow like chanticleer.’

Munden’s expressions, if they could have been taken off on the spot,

would have made a capital set of grotesque masks: Liston’s would make a

succession of original comic sketches, as rich as they are true:—Mr.

Wilkie failed in attempting one of them—his pencil was not oily and

unctuous enough. We have seen many better comedians, that is, better

imitators of existing or supposed characters and manners—such as Emery,

Little Simmons, Dowton, and others—we know no other actor who has such a

fund of drollery in himself, or that makes one laugh in the same hearty

unrestrained manner, free from all care or controul, that we do with

_Sancho Panza_ or _Parson Adams_. We have heard a story of Mr. Liston

being prevented by some accident from attending his professional duties,

and wrapping himself up in a flannel gown and heart’s-content over a

winter fire, to read our good old English novelists for a fortnight

together. What fine marginal notes his face would make! Which would he

enjoy most, the blanket falling and discovering philosopher _Square_

behind it, or the drawing up of the curtain and the broad laugh of the

pit? We will answer that question for him. The meanest apprentice that

sees a play for the first time from the gallery, has more pleasure than

the most admired actor that ever trod the stage: there is more

satisfaction in reading one page of a sterling author with good faith

and good will, than the writer had in the composition or even the

success of all his works put together. The admiration we bestow on

others comes from the heart; but never returns back to it. Vanity closes

up the avenues, or envy poisons it. This digression is too long: without

sometimes going out of our way, we should hardly get to the end of our

task.—The revival, on the whole, went off pleasantly, though the acting

was not remarkably good, nor the music by any means enlivening. Jaques’s

recommendation to Amiens—‘Warble, warble,’—seems to be the device of

most modern composers, who think that, if they string a set of unmeaning

notes together, it must be heavenly harmony. ’Tis pitiful. We are sick

to death of this interpolated _sing-song_; nor do we think it much

mended by proceeding from the mouth of Mr. Braham, who is in such cases

a piece of operatic fleecy hosiery. He is a walking woolsack:—‘And when

the bag was opened, the voice began to sing,’ &c. We may be wrong in

this matter, and speak under correction of better judges; but we confess

that the everlasting monotonous alternation of the thunder of the

spheres and the softness of nightingales, of the notes of the trumpet

and the lute, the forked lightning and gentle moon-beams, Mr. Braham’s

thick-set person, infantine gestures and dying cadences, all together

throw us into a fit of despondency. Miss Fanny Ayton’s shrill voice and

acute features did not serve to dispel our chagrin. The rest of the

piece was tolerably cast. Wallack was the hero of it, who does not want

for spirit or confidence; and a man’s good opinion of himself is always

half-way towards deserving it, and obtaining that of others. Cooper did

not play his pretended master well: he is too grave and straight forward

an actor for these sort of sudden shifts and doubtful subterfuges. The

best-done scene was the quarrel between Russell as the tailor, and

Harley as _Petruchio’s_ man, about the gown and cap. The quaint antique

humour was happily hit off, and studiously dallied with, so as not to

slur it over, but to bring it out. Some fastidious critics may object to

the puerile conceit and tenuity of meaning that pleased our ancestors in

such idle squabbles—we think we could cite graver polemics to match it

in shabby excuses and verbal trifling in the present day. The

old-fashioned dresses recalled the image of former times; and the

scenery that of places, which can never grow old. The last scene, in

which the brides are sent for and brought in, had an excellent effect;

and the second representation was announced with every sign of

satisfaction. It may not be improper to add here, that the _Taming of

the Shrew_ is one of the pieces that have been transplanted (not without

a good deal of pruning) to the French stage, and that Mademoiselle Mars

plays the part of _Katharine_ with equal spirit and success.

(_French Play._)

M. Perlet took the _Avare_ for his benefit at this theatre last week. We

are sorry we are about to lose this excellent actor, who has given us

much pleasure and instruction. _Au revoir._ We saw him only in the

latter part of Moliere’s _Miser_: his thinness, his dress, and the keys

at his girdle fitted the character exactly. It was chiefly in the scenes

where he runs mad at losing his casket of gold, or seizes on _Anselme_

as the father of the supposed robber to demand restitution of him, that

the ruling passion and the greater actor broke out. In the first of

these scenes particularly, where he catches hold of his own arm,

thinking to arrest the thief, he shews all the rage and phrensy of the

most tragic vehemence; and in throwing himself exhausted on the ground,

bewailing his hard hap, and appealing to the pity of an imaginary

audience, whom his despair conjures up, and then lashing himself up to

impatience and fury again, proves his entire acquaintance with the ebb

and flow, the risings and sinkings of the human heart. These particular

passages appeared to us, however, like patches or excrescences on the

general texture of the performance (perhaps they are so in the play

itself, which is not one of Moliere’s best). If we may hazard a

conjecture on a subject on which we do not feel altogether _at home_, we

should say that M. Perlet’s _Miser_ was in its ordinary aspect rather

the serving-man in a half-famished house, than a personification of the

demon of selfishness, fretfulness, and avarice. It was hard and

indifferent—not gloating enough, not morbid enough, not restless and

harassed enough. Farther, we suspect there is this fault in his general

acting and in French comedy: we grant it is not gross; is it not, on the

other hand, too slight and evanescent? They charge us with over-doing;

are they not then liable to under-do, and fall short of the mark? If

there is such a thing as caricature, there is also an antithesis to it,

and not only a danger of loading a character to excess, but of giving a

profile or section of it for the whole, and not taking all the licence

that truth and nature gives. We are dreadfully afraid of being misled by

national prejudices; but (that being premised) we cannot but add our

conviction that M. Perlet’s acting, with all its purity, propriety, and

spirit, wants something of richness and breadth.—The little piece which

followed the _Avare_, _Ninette à la cour_, was delightful both in itself

and as giving Mademoiselle Fanny Vertpres an opportunity to display her

_mignon_ figure and provoking ways. There seem to be two styles of

female coquetry in France, extreme flutter and vivacity, or perfect

calmness and self-possession. The one is set in motion by everything;

the other is put out of its way by nothing. Miss Fanny Vertpres is of

the latter class. With great presence of mind and ready wit, she joins

to the symmetry the apparent coolness and indifference of a marble

statue. She takes everything in good part, and slides into a number of

ticklish adventures and situations with all the ease imaginable. She is

only troubled at being laughed at—a misfortune against which no French

patience is proof. The scenes behind the looking-glass and behind her

fan with her rustic lover (Laporte), whom she beguiles in an enchanting

feigned voice (prettier even than her own) are quite delightful, and

dispose one to believe that comedy has not yet exhausted all its

precious stores. Mademoiselle St. Ange played the _Countess_ with all

her country’s ease and grace. Monsieur Laporte strikes us as a

confirmation of the remarks we have made above on French comedy, by the

very circumstance of his being an exception to them. There is nothing

_automatic_ in his manner. He not only utters a jest, but he enjoys it

too—not that he forces it upon us either, except by the gentle violence

of sympathy. There is (so to speak) an atmosphere of humour about him,

which reflects the immediate object with kindly warmth and lustre. His

acting both in _Maître Jacques_ and in the after-piece evinced that easy

play of feeling, that transition from grave to gay, that mixture of wit

and folly, those natural varieties of laughter and tears, which mark the

master in his art and the genuine son of Momus.

We dropped in at Covent Garden to see Mr. Warde in the _Seraglio_ and

Charles Kemble in _Charles the Second_, who seems really born for the

character, and whose fine person and accomplishments are thrown away in

these degenerate days. Mr. Power makes a very passable Irish

_Rochester_: but the wit and the rake had defects enough of his own to

answer for, without having the _brogue_ added to them. The same fault

may be found with Mr. Warde, who would make a very respectable actor in

the middle walk of tragedy, could he but controul his voice within the

compass of the four seas.

MRS. SIDDONS

_The Examiner_] [_May 25, 1828._

There has been no novelty this week at any of our theatres, English or

French, except that little Mademoiselle Jenny Vertpre has been

metamorphosed into a cat, and has been playing in the _Pie Voleuse_ at

the Lyceum. She played the first charmingly; the last prettily, though

we have seen it done better. There is a _calibre_, a weight of metal in

Miss Kelly’s pathos, which the French actress is without. Our lively

neighbours are doubtless ‘born to converse, to live, and _act_ with

ease’—all is set in motion like a feather, stopped like a feather.

Smiles play upon the lips, tears start into their eyes and are dried up

for nothing; an exclamation and a sigh settle the account between life

and death; all is a game at _make-believe_, thoughtless and innocent as

childhood, in the baby-house of their imagination—but if you wish to see

the heart-strings crack, go and see Miss Kelly in the _Maid of

Palisseau_; or if you would see the stately pillar of Tragedy itself

fall and crush the subjected world, then you should have witnessed Mrs.

Siddons formerly in some of her overwhelming parts. That was a flood of

tears indeed—a drinking of the brimming cup of human joys and woes to

the very last drop, the recollection of which may serve one all the rest

of one’s life. We understand that not long ago Sir Walter Scott and Mrs.

Siddons met in the same room before Mr. Martin’s picture of the _Fall of

Nineveh_—two such spectators the world cannot match again, the one by

the common consent of mankind the foremost writer of his age, the other

in the eyes of all who saw her prime or her maturity, the queen and

mistress of the tragic scene. Forgive us, gentle, ever-living shade of

Jenny Deans, agonised soul of Balfour of Burley, heroic spirit of

Rebecca of York, immortal memory of Dumbie Dikes and of a thousand more,

if we should have turned from you and from him who invented you, to bow

the knee and kiss the hem of the garment of her who represented to our

youthful gaze the Mourning Bride, Hermione, Belvidera, Beverley’s wife,

and was the Muse of Tragedy personified. We are sorry that Mrs. Siddons

has abridged _Paradise Lost_, and that Sir Walter has written a

triumphant peroration over ‘the worst, the second fall of man.’ We are

perhaps runagates and Goths; but the smell of the links that used to ply

between Covent garden and Drury lane prevails in our imagination over

all the heather-bloom of Scotland, and we declare that Mrs. Siddons

appears to us the more masculine spirit of the two. Sir Walter (when

all’s said and done) is an inspired butler, a ‘Yes and No, my Lord’

fellow in a noble family—Mrs. Siddons is like a cast from the antique,

or rather like the original, divine or more than human, from which it

was taken. Yet close to each other, within narrow space, were placed two

heads, on which glory sat plumed, beat two hearts over which had rolled

the volume of earth’s bliss or woe, were interchanged glances that had

reflected the brightness of the universe. Who would not rather see Sir

Walter Scott’s fringed eyelids and storied forehead than the vacant brow

of prince or peer? When Mrs. Siddons used to sit in parties and at

drawing-rooms, the Lady Marys and the Lady Dorothys of the day came and

peeped into the room to get a glance of her, with more awe and wonder

than if it had been a queen. This was honour, this was power. There was

but one person in the world who would have drawn the gaping gaze of

curiosity from these and from all the crowned heads in Europe; and Sir

Walter exults that he perished like a felon in the grasp of a jailor. We

must indeed admire the talents, when we forgive the use of them: or is

it that genius, with its lofty crest and variegated colours, seems

destined like the serpent to lick the dust, and crawl all its life with

its belly on the ground? We can reckon up in our time three great tragic

performers; Mrs. Siddons, Mr. Kean, and Madame Pasta. (If there is a

fourth instance, we either know not of it, or it is Miss Kelly: but that

in a parenthesis, as our private opinion, or that of persons no wiser

than ourselves.) Of these three, Mrs. Siddons seemed to command every

source of terror and pity, and to rule over their wildest elements with

inborn ease and dignity. Her person was made to contain her spirit; her

soul to fill and animate her person. Her eye answered to her voice. She

wore a crown. She looked as if descended from a higher sphere, and

walked the earth in majesty and pride. She sounded the full diapason,

touched all chords of passion, they thrilled through her, and yet she

preserved an elevation of thought and character above them, like the

tall cliff round which the tempest roars, but its head reposes in the

blue serene! Mrs. Siddons combined the utmost grandeur and force with

every variety of expression and excellence: her transitions were rapid

and extreme, but were massed into unity and breadth—there was nothing

warped or starting from its place—she produced the most overpowering

effects[42] without the slightest effort, by a look, a word, a gesture.

Mr. Kean, in the intellectual and impassioned part, is in our judgment

equal to any one, but he produces his most striking effects by fits and

starts, without the same general tone and elevation of character, and,

for want of the instrumental advantages, with an appearance of effort

and sometimes of extravagance. Madame Pasta, on the contrary, never goes

out of her way, never aims at effect or startles by any one pointed

passage, nor does she combine a variety of feelings together (as far as

we have seen) but she rises to the very summit of her art, and satisfies

every expectation by absolute and unbroken integrity of purpose, and by

the increasing and unconscious intensity of passion. She has neither Mr.

Kean’s inequalities nor Mrs. Siddons’s scope: she neither deviates from

the passion nor rises above it, but she commits herself wholly to its

impulse, borrows strength from its strength, ascends with it to heaven,

or is buried in the abyss. In a word, she is the creature of truth and

nature, and joins the utmost simplicity with the utmost force. This has

little to do with Mademoiselle Jenny Vertpre: ah! she is charming too,

and we hope to have a great deal to say in her praise—twenty years

hence. She counts her silver spoons inimitably, and when she is

suspected of stealing one of them says, ‘_C’est desagreable_,’ in a

voice and manner that none but a Frenchwoman can. The _Misanthrope_ and

the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ have been repeated at this theatre; and M.

Perlet has done equal justice to Moliere’s sententious gravity in the

one, and to his delightful flighty farce and fanciful exaggeration of

folly in the other. Moliere is our Wycherley and O’Keefe, both in one:

or it might be said that he possessed the critical sense of Montaigne,

with the exuberant mirth and humour of Rabelais.—We believe this little

theatre, with its lively company and excellent pieces, answers tolerably

well, as most French theatres do. We were thinking of this the other

evening, and thought we had accounted for it. The French performances,

with a tenth of the audience, pay better than the English with ten times

the number and receipts. How so? It arises, on a critical inquiry, from

the unity of place, which is the fundamental law of the French drama.

One barbarism leads to another;—a slight technical distinction involves

manager after manager in bankruptcy and ruin. Where there is no change

of situation, the scenery is the same; and where this is the case, it is

no object either of attraction or expense. Little more is required than

a drop-scene. Therefore, all you have to do is to get good plays, and a

good company to perform them: three or four hundred people in the house

will maintain a dozen or a score of comedians on the stage; and the

excellence of the performance and the taste of the town keep pace with

one another, and with the absence of show and extrinsic decoration. But

with us all this is reversed. The scene travels, and our scene-shifters,

scene-painters, mechanists, and the whole theatrical _commissariat_ go

along with it. The variety, the gaudiness, the expense is endless: to

pay for the getting up such an immense apparatus, the houses must be

enlarged to hold a proportionable rabble of ‘barren spectators:’ the

farther off they are thrown, the stronger must be the glare, the more

astonishing the effect, and the play and the players (with all relish

for wit or nature) dwindle into insignificance, and are lost in the

blaze of a huge chandelier or the grin of a baboon. We do not see the

features of the actors, but we admire (very justly) Mr. Stanfield’s

landscape back-grounds, or a castle set on fire by Mr. Farley; we hear

the din and bray of the orchestra, not the honeyed words of the poet;

and still we wonder that operas and melo-drames flourish, and that the

legitimate stage and good old English Comedy languishes. Poor old green

curtain! when thou wast withdrawn to make room for gas lights and

shining marble pillars, the last relic of the heart-felt pageant faded;

and the _Veluti in speculum_ flew after _Astræa_ to the skies!

THE THREE QUARTERS, &c.

_The Examiner_] [_June 1, 1828._

DRURY LANE.

The new comedy in three acts brought out at this theatre on Tuesday

evening is, we apprehend, taken from a French piece, entitled _Les Trois

Quartiers_. The Three Quarters of the town indicate the three sorts or

stages of society, as they are to be met with in the _Rue St. Honoré_,

the _Rue Mont Blanc_, and the _Fauxbourg St. Germain_, which may be

supposed to answer (we speak under correction of the Secretary of the

Admiralty, skilled as he is in the transitions from low to high life) to

our Fish-street-hill, Russell and Grosvenor square. It was thought a

nice distinction in Miss Burney, forty years ago, to place the residence

of the Harrells in Portman square, and to assign Grosvenor square to the

Delville family; the one being considered as the resort of the upstart

fashionables, the other of the old gentry. To know whether this

court-geography holds good in the present year, see the files of the

_John Bull_, or the _Last Series of Sayings and Doings_, where such

matters are noted and discussed with a becoming want of elegance and

decorum, which is made up for by the innate loftiness of the subject. In

the French piece, a rich adventurer from South America is introduced

into these different circles by an officious go-between, as a travelled

prodigy, _un homme qui a vu_ Bolivar; and in each his perplexity and

astonishment increases with the progress and refinement of manners in

the _Three Quarters_ of the town. There is some sense in that; and the

French actors have the skill to make the line of demarcation

intelligible. But here we vow that though we shift the scene, no

progress is made; or we are _at the top of the tree_ in the second

stage. _Kitty Corderoy_ is sufficiently forward and vulgar, it is true;

_Amelia Mammonton_ is naturally elegant and genteel; but we get no

farther; or rather _Lady Charlewood_ is a falling off, having neither

natural nor acquired grace; and the _Countess Dowager Delamere_ is

distinguished by nothing but a rude and harsh familiarity of manner. The

Banker (Mr. Cooper) has evidently the advantage of the Lord (Mr.

Hooper); and _Jack Pointer_ (Mr. Jones) a busybody and toad-eater,

carries it hollow by dint of sheer impudence and impertinence. Mr.

Jones’s Bond street slang—‘She’s a delicious creature’—is echoed every

five minutes by _Lady Delamere’s_—‘You’ll excuse my freedom, _Lady

Charlewood_;’ the changes are rung upon a few and slender notes of

fashion, while the author has the full range of the Cockney dialect, and

sinks deep in the bathos of low life. _Mrs. Corderoy_, we observe, is

played by a Mrs. C. Jones. Is Mr. Jones lately married? If so, we

congratulate him: she is an excellent cook. We could wish the

accomplished author of _Killing no Murder_, he who dips his pen so

carelessly in poison or honey, the expert _improvisatori_ in fact or

fiction, would turn his thoughts to this matter; give us a comedy or

criticism to show our actors or play-wrights what they ought to do in

these degenerate days; and from his ease of access to palaces or

princes, give us a taste of true refinement, the court-air, the

drawing-room grace, the after-dinner conversation, the mornings and the

evenings of the great, instead of confining his abilities to teaching

young gentlemen at Long’s how to eat their fish with a silver fork: the

waiters might do that just as well. Or could not Mr. Croker, now that

Augustus has given peace to sea and land, and who shakes epics and

reviews from his brow ‘like dew-drops from the lion’s mane,’ _smile_ a

comedy that should point the nice gradations from the city to the court—

‘Fine by degrees, and beautifully less,’

and make it for ever impossible for Cheapside to pass Temple-bar or

Russell-square to step into the Regent’s Park? We understand, indeed,

that Mr. Colburn has a plan in contemplation to remedy all this, and

that we may look forward to the dawn of a new era in literature, through

the happy idea which the little bookselling Buonaparte has conceived of

establishing an inviolable _Concordat_ between the world of genius and

fashion. The proposal is to buy up the manuscripts of all authors by

profession, to lock them in a drawer, so as to put the whole corps of

Garretteers and Grub street writers on the shelf, and leave the door

open to none but persons of quality and amateurs, lords, ladies, and

hangers-on of the great. The scheme has in a great measure succeeded in

the periodical department, and only requires a little management to be

extended to the stage. What an air already breathes from the New

Parnassus! What a light breaks over Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden! What

delicacy, what discrimination, what refinement of sentiment! What

halycon days! What peaceable productions! There will be no grossness, no

violence, no political allusions or party spite! The best understanding

will subsist between Government and men of letters, nor will there be

any occasion for a Dramatic Censor, when Ministers of State furnish the

plot, and Peeresses in their own right suggest the last corrections to

the dialogue. There is no doubt the taste for the drama will be revived

by means of such an arrangement—people of fashion will go to see what

people of fashion write—the manners of high life will be reflected on

the stage as in the mirrors at each end of the dress circle—

‘They best can paint them who have known them most;’

the hireling crew will withdraw to hide themselves in a garret or a

jail—the pit will wonder—the galleries be silent or shut up—Lord

Porchester’s tragedy will be crowned with bays, Lord Morpeth’s

transferred from the closet to the stage—Mr. Moore, by particular desire

of several persons of distinction, will try his hand at another

_Blue-Stocking_ affair—and the _Sphynx_, the _Athenæum_, the _Argus_ (a

new evening), and the _Aurora_ (a new morning paper), which Mr.

Buckingham will by that time have set up on the same independent

principles of voluntary contribution, will applaud to the skies the

change which Mr. Colburn’s spirit and genius will have brought like a

perfect paradise upon earth. It is whispered that a certain Duke has got

through the first act of a piece, called ‘The Deaf and Dumb Politician,’

but dreads the vulgar composition of the public taste:—nay, who knows

but the coast being cleared of plebeian scribblers and the rabble of

competitors, Majesty itself might not take the field, the _Lady Godiva_

of the scene, in a night-gown and slippers, with a grand romantic

interlude called ‘The Prince and the Pretender, or the Year 1745’—with

Mr. O—holding the glass-door in Burlington street for three days

together in his hand, and Mr. C—p—b—ll to officiate as _Peeping

Tom_—‘Oh! dearest Ophelia, we are ill at these numbers:’ but neither

_Ups and Downs_ nor _Carron-Side_ suggested anything better. Mr. Liston

in the first played a city fortune-hunter, who pays his addresses to,

who jilts, and is jilted by three mistresses in succession, to whom he

is introduced by _Jack Pointer_ (Jones), his pretensions rising with his

fortune, and with whom he is confronted and exposed without much effect

in the last act. He at first aspires no higher than to _Kitty Corderoy_,

a tradesman’s daughter; but having twenty thousand pounds left him, he

contrives to cut with her, to her great joy, she being secretly in love

with _Mr. Christopher Higgins_ (Russell), her father’s apprentice, a

person by no means approved by her mother _Mrs. Corderoy_ (Mrs. C.

Jones), because he himself is ‘a little sneaking chap,’ and his father a

tailor—as if tailors were not in the order of nature or of civil

society. Our hero, that is, _Mr. Felix Mudberry_, next offers himself,

with a large bunch of flowers and a suit of clothes picked up on the way

at the _Readymade Depôt_, to _Miss Amelia Mammonton_ (the charming Miss

Ellen Tree), a banker’s sister, who is in love with _Earl Delamere_ (Mr.

Hooper), love and romantic sentiment, according to the situation or rank

in which it is found, aiming at still greater and more airy heights. She

laughs at him and his ‘delicate attentions’ (as she well may)—but being

led to suppose that his uncle, _Mr. Stanley_, a Liverpool merchant, or

as he used to call him ‘_Black Boy Billy_,’ is dead, and has left him a

fortune of half a million, he begins to blubber out his sorrow for his

uncle’s death and his own ‘good, he means, bad fortune,’ stammers his

excuses for leaving the company of _Mr. Mammonton_ and his sister, and

is wound up to a Countess by his mischievous prompter. _Lady Charlewood_

(Miss I. Paton) is disgusted with the behaviour of her new and absurd

admirer; her mother, the _Countess Dowager Delamere_ (Mrs. Davison),

admires his fortune, and patronises the match according to the etiquette

of rank and high life. His inconstancy and meanness are however exposed

in the meantime by _Miss Kitty Corderoy_, who is intimate with both the

young ladies, having been at the same school with them somewhere in the

neighbourhood of London, and runs up and down ‘the Ladder of Life’ as

she pleases (in the French play the corresponding character is a

milliner, which is a little more in keeping)—and _Mr. Felix Mudberry_,

in his own emphatic phrase, is ‘blown’ by all the three at once;—the

bubble of his legacy also bursts, and _Jack Pointer_ turning short round

upon him at this extremity, advises him to go abroad again, make another

fortune, and on his return, promises to introduce him to a Princess! Mr.

Liston produced a good deal of laughter in the part, but perhaps from

not being near enough to see his face, the drollery fell flat upon us.

It was (to get within bow-shot of an Hibernicism) like hearing the

report of a pistol, before seeing the flash. Weepers and a round hat do

not move our risible muscles. We think Mr. Liston shines in the cockney,

more than in the cockney and dandy together. ‘He knows his cue best

without a prompter.’ His affectation even must be unaffected. We will

match his lead against anybody’s, we will not answer for the tinsel. We

have a delicate request to make of him, that he would play _Madge_ for

his benefit and our satisfaction—unless _Moll Flagon_ should complain of

it as compromising her dignity. Is this piece Mr. Kenney’s? It shivers

on the brink of nothing, and plunges over head and ears into nonsense.

We wish our authors and architects, if they must give us foreign models,

would give them entire, and not by bits and samples, altering only to

spoil.

COVENT-GARDEN.

_Carron-Side, or the Fête Champêtre_, a new Opera, the words by Mr.

Planche, the music by M. Liverati, was brought out here on Tuesday, and

was repeated on Thursday. The dialogue is tolerable; and so are the

songs. Miss Stephens was the chief attraction in it; though she does not

make much figure by Scottish stream or mountain. Mr. Sapio and Mr. Wood

personated, the one a military, the other a naval hero in it, and

maintained the superiority of their several professions in song and bold

defiance—with equal loudness and skill. Miss Stephens (_Blanche Mackay_)

the supposed daughter of a peasant, is in love with _Captain Allan

Lindsay_ (Sapio), and he with her, though he is about to be married to

_Grace Campbell_ (Miss Cawse), who likes another of her cousins, _Cornet

Hector Lindsay_ (Mr. Wood) quite as well or better, as far as we could

judge by the event. When _Blanche_ has to present a _bouquet_ to the

intended couple on the morning of their nuptials, and to sing a song of

congratulation, her voice falters and she faints away in the midst of

it. She then, partly through shame and partly through vexation, escapes

to the house of the miller (Little Keely) and his wife (Miss Goward),

where she is kindly received, but supposed by her own friends to have

rashly drowned herself. The anguish of _Captain Allan Lindsay_ is not to

be restrained on this occasion, and betrays his passion for the unhappy

girl, who is at the same time discovered not to be the real daughter of

the old trumpeter _Donald Mackay_ (Bartley), but the daughter of _Mrs.

Campbell_, who had been supposed to be lost when an infant in the

Spanish campaign. The mystery being cleared up, the secret of her birth

is communicated to poor _Blanche_ amidst her smiles and tears. _Miss

Grace Campbell_ under the circumstances, and from her previous

indifference, declares for _Cornet Lindsay_, and _Blanche_ is united to

the Captain. Mr. Keely crept on and off the stage as usual; and Miss

Cawse danced and flourished round it as she sung, because Madame Vestris

does so. We are quite satisfied with Madame Vestris, without wishing to

see her imitated.

MR. KEAN

_The Examiner._] [_June 15, 1828._

We do not wonder at Mr. Kean’s want of success in Paris. As they do not

like or understand Shakespear, it is not to be supposed they should like

or understand any one who goes near to represent him, or who gives

anything more than a trite version or modernised paraphrase of him.

Voltaire has borrowed largely from the English dramatist, and has taken

_Othello’s_ dying speech almost entire, as far as the prose-ground of

it, but has contrived to leave out all the striking, picturesque points

of it:—so they would no doubt object to and cancel, by a sweeping

condemnation, all the unexpected and marked beauties of an impassioned

recitation of it. Whatever is not literal and conventional, is with them

extravagant and grotesque: they have so long been accustomed (we are

speaking of serious matters) to consider affectation as nature, that

they consider nature when it comes across them as affectation and

quaintness.

‘The poet’s eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.’

So the actor’s eye (if truly inspired) comprehends more than is set down

for him, starts at hidden fancies that only pale passion sees; and his

voice is the trembling echo and the broken instrument of thoughts and of

an agony that lie too deep for mere words to express. This licence, that

is, this truth of nature is, with our accomplished and more

thorough-bred neighbours, entirely out of the question. Their art,

whether in poetry, acting, painting, is well-drilled regimental art:—it

is art in uniform and on parade. Thus tragic poetry cannot, in its dumb

despair, call on all nature to supply it with an appropriate language,

that places what it feels in palpable and lofty imagery before the

reader: it must, on the contrary, have its rhetorical and didactic

flourishes all ready for the occasion—these may be as tedious, as

pompous, as bombastic as you please, but to pass or allude to anything

beyond them, is vile and Gothic indeed. The actor may mouth, rant, and

whine as much as he pleases, so that he does it in measured time, and

seems in perfect health and spirits all the while; but if he is once

thrown off his guard, and loses sight of himself and the audience in the

sufferings of his hero, it is all over with him. Again, an actor’s face

‘should be as a book where one may read strange matters.’ This would be

an inexpiable offence in France, where there is nothing strange, and

where all must appear upon the surface or be kept quite out of sight, on

the score of decency and good manners. As the poet must introduce no

image or sentiment for which there is not a prescribed _formula_, so the

tragedian must give no shade or inflection of feeling which the entire

audience were not prepared complacently to anticipate. The self-love of

the pit would rise in open rebellion if he did. In France it is a rule

that no person is wiser than another: you cannot be beforehand with

their conceit and infinite superiority in impertinence. So they

themselves tell the story of a man who, hearing of the assassination of

the Duke of Berri, and not willing to allow that his informant had the

start of him on so interesting a topic, made answer—‘Yes, I knew it!’ We

are not therefore surprised that the Parisians find fault with the only

actor of much genius we possess: he must puzzle them almost as much as

the Hetman Platoff; and this assuredly they cannot forgive, as in the

present case their rank cowardice cannot get the better of their

consummate vanity. It is ludicrous too that they should charge us with

extravagance and fustian—they, who have their _Pensions de l’Univers_

and _Diligences de l’Univers_[43] stuck on every pillar and post! As we

know what the most refined people in the universe do not like, we are

also happy in learning what they do like. For others to despise what we

admire, is always to assume an attitude of seeming superiority over us:

to admire what we do not think much of, is to give us our revenge again.

Fastidiousness is here, as in many other cases, the effect not of an

excess of refinement, but of a want of conception. When Voltaire called

Shakespear a barbarian, we were a little staggered in our previous

opinion, as we could not tell what lofty models of excellence he

contemplated in his own mind; but when he pronounced Addison’s _Cato_ to

be a perfect tragedy, we knew what to think of him and ourselves. He

might as well have pronounced a marble slab to be a perfect statue. In

like manner, it might ‘give us pause’ that such competent critics are

dissatisfied with Mr. Kean, if we did not learn in the same breath that

they are in raptures with Mr. C. Kemble, Mr. Macready, and Miss

Smithson; not that we disapprove of the last, but that being our own

country people, we beg leave to judge of their relative merits better

than foreigners. If they scouted our pretentions altogether, we might

despond; but as they _laud_ us in the wrong place, we may smile in our

turn. The contradiction between us is not owing to an inferiority of

nature, but to a difference of opinion. We can understand why, with

reason, they admire Macready: he declaims well, and so far resembles

good French actors. Mr. C. Kemble is not only an excellent actor, but a

very good-looking man; and good looks are a letter of recommendation,

whether among the Laplanders or Hottentots, at Zenith or the Pole. Miss

Smithson is tall; and the French admire tall women. All these come under

a class, and meet with obvious sympathy and approbation. Mr. Kean, on

the other hand, stands alone,—is merely an original; and the French hate

originality: it seems to imply that there is some possible excellence or

talent that they are without! Beside it appears that they expected him

to be a giant. _Mon Dieu qu’il est petit!_—as if this was an insuperable

bar to his bestriding the theatric world like a Colossus. He is

diminutive, it is true: so was the _Little Corporal_: but since the

latter disappeared from the stage, they have ceased to be the _Great

Nation_. They stir up our bile by their arrogance and narrow-mindedness,

and we cannot help its overflowing in some degree of ill-humour and

petulance. We were heartily glad to find that Mr. Knowles’s tragedy of

_Virginius_ is well received in Paris—(we would always rather agree

with, than differ from them, for we know their subtlety and double

edge)—but this is to be attributed to the inherent and classical

excellence of the composition. Its scenes present a series of elegant

bas-reliefs, and are equally enchanting to the eye and to the ear.

We have received a letter from a Correspondent, praying us to put down

the large poke-bonnets which ladies at present take with them to the

theatre, and often persist in keeping on, as a female privilege. We

confess, we do not see the custom in that amiable light: it appears to

us the privilege of annoying others without any object. He says, that on

applying to a gentleman in the gallery of the King’s Theatre, to know if

a lady with him would have any objection to take off her bonnet, which,

with her involuntary movements from side to side, prevented three

persons behind her from seeing or enjoying the Opera, her friend

answered, ‘You see she is in the same situation with yourself,’ pointing

to another lady just before her. So that the evil being doubled was an

argument for it. At this rate, people might go to the play with

umbrellas, and hold them open the whole time,—or ladies with their

parasols, if we must have a more light and portable nuisance,—and by

thus setting up a screen to the performance, and making the absurdity

truly English and complete, put an end to it by common consent of those

who are only bent on incommoding others, when they think they are in

some degree singular in doing it. We expect some novelty (of which we

have had a dreary dearth of late) on the opening of the Haymarket

Theatre next week, and a treat, which we greatly long for, in little

Bartolozzi. But we must not count upon our good fortune too soon.

MUNDEN’S SIR PETER TEAZLE

_The Times._] [_September 8, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

This theatre opened on Saturday with _The School for Scandal_ and _Past

Ten O’clock_. The chief novelty in the former was Munden’s _Sir Peter

Teazle_. We cannot speak very favourably of it. He did not feel at home

in the part, which is indeed quite out of his way. His lengthened visage

and abrupt tones did not suit the character or sentiments of _Sir

Peter_. _Sir Peter_ is a common every-day sort of character, a tetchy

amorous old bachelor, who has married a young wife, with an uneasy

consciousness of his own infirmities, and placed in situations to make

those infirmities more ridiculous. But still he is a classical

character, and not a grotesque; and, therefore, the actor’s peculiar

talents were thrown away upon him, or rather were judiciously kept as

much as possible in the back-ground, and hardly dared to show themselves

once the whole evening. Mr. Munden went through the part with laudable

gravity and decorum, without _making any hole in his manners_; nor did

he purposely play the clown or _pantomime_ in any of the scenes. Yet the

negation of farce is not comedy. _Sir Peter_ was a knight newly dubbed

as well as married, a gentleman on his good behaviour both with his

mistress and the public. We missed the irresistible expansion of his

broad, shining face; and reckoned up a number of suppressed shrugs, and

embryo grimaces, that shrunk from the glare of the new gas lights. His

eyebrows were not lifted up with wonder; his lips were not moistened

with jests as with marmalade; nor did his chin drop down once its whole

length as with a total dislocation of his ideas. In the scene of the

discovery in the fourth act, where his wife as ‘the little _French

Milliner_’ is concealed behind the screen, he took a greater license,

but from the mechanical restraint to which he had been subjected, there

was something even here dolorous and petrified in his manner. If,

however, Mr. Munden did penance in _Sir Peter_, it was a holyday-time

with him, high carnival in _Old Nosy_ in the farce, where he made

himself and the audience amends for all the temptations he had resisted

to indulge his natural genius, and let out his whole faculties of face,

voice, and gesture. In his character, as an old steward, he is

reeling-ripe from the beginning to the end of the piece; and he produces

a dizziness in the heads of the audience as unavoidable, though more

pleasant than that which overtakes the passengers in a Margate hoy. The

_School for Scandal_ was, in the other characters, cast much as usual,

and as well as the strength of the company in genteel comedy would

permit. Mrs. Davison’s _Lady Teazle_, though not without spirit, is too

coarse and hoydening. Wallack’s _Joseph Surface_ wanted dignity and

plausibility. Not to compare him with old Jack Palmer, he does not hit

off the officious condescending solemnity of the character so well as

Young. He seems sulky and reserved, instead of being self-complacent and

ostentatious; to shrink into a cautious contemplation of his own designs

and villainy, instead of protecting others under the shadow of his

assumed virtues, and covering their failings and defects with a veil of

pompous sentiment. It was said of Garrick, that he played the footman

too like the fine gentleman; Mr. Wallack, on the other hand, plays the

fine gentleman too much like the footman. When dressed to most

advantage, he puts us in mind of a valet out of livery. Mr. Rae’s

_Charles Surface_ was without any thing to recommend it, but the wit,

gaiety, and magnanimity of the author. His mode of speaking is more

harsh and untuneable in comedy than in regular declamation, which in

some measure hides its habitual defects. It is a brogue in full gallop

suddenly stopped short by the turnpike gate of criticism. Harley’s _Sir

Benjamin Backbite_ was inoffensive from its insipidity; and Knight as

old _Crabtree_ had painted his eyebrows very naturally. The house was

not very crowded. The curtain drew up punctually at seven, without any

previous expression of impatience; and the play was over before ten: but

the rapidity with which the acts followed one another, and the almost

immediate interruption of the music between the acts as soon as it had

struck up, produced on us an unpleasant effect. It was like going a

journey in the mail-coach, where they do not allow you time for your

meals. A good play, like a hearty dinner, requires some time for

digestion: the music in the orchestra acts upon the imagination, like

wine upon the stomach; and habit makes it as ungrateful to us to be

disappointed of the one as to be deprived of the other.

YOUNG’S HAMLET

_The Times._] [_September 9, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

This theatre opened last night with _Hamlet_, and the _Miller and his

Men_. The chief improvement in the house seems to us to be the large

mirrors at each end of the first row of boxes, which reflect the company

in a brilliant perspective, and have a very magical effect. The great

chandelier suspended from the top of the theatre, we should admire more,

if it did not put out our eyes in looking at it; nor do we think the

glare it produces any addition to the general appearance of the company

or the house. The only advantage resulting from it—that of throwing the

light upon the countenances of the actors from above instead of from

below (which last method inverts the natural shadows of the face, and

distorts the expression), is defeated by the gas lights which are still

retained between the stage and the orchestra. Nor do we know how these

can well be dispensed with, as it is by raising or withdrawing them that

the stage is enlightened or darkened as the occasion requires it. The

house was exceedingly full, and the play went off as well as could be

expected. Mr. Young’s _Hamlet_ is not his most happy or successful

effort. He in a great measure imitates Mr. Kemble, and Mr. Kemble is a

bad model in this part; even where he is original he is not more what he

ought to be, not more like _Hamlet_. He declaims it very well, and rants

it very well; but where is the expression of the feeling?—where the

thought beyond all ordinary means of expression, wrapped up in itself as

in a dim cloud, shown most by being hid, that derives its energy from

rest, not from action, and is as it were audible from its very silence?

Mr. Young, we allow, rehearsed several passages very well, as detached

passages from a school-boy’s exercise: but he wanted keeping—the fine

inflections, sudden or gradual, of the character—the unthought-of

swellings of the passion—the involuntary ebbing and flowing of his idle

purposes. This actor in fact executes his conception well: but then his

conception is either common-place, or wrong. He has not always the

judgment or the genius to pitch each passage in the right key, and in

harmony with the rest. We will mention only two instances. In reciting

the description of man as the noblest of creatures, ‘the paragon of

animals,’ &c., Mr. Young was so vehement, that he seemed quite angry;

and his sudden turning round to the players at the conclusion of the

speech was exactly as if they had given him some serious offence by

their ‘smiling.’ Again, he spoke the soliloquy after the scene in which

the player gives the description of Pyrrhus, in a style not conveying

the idea of his own melancholy and weakness as contrasted with the

theatrical fury of the imaginary hero, but as if he had himself caught

by mere physical infection the very fury which he describes himself to

be without. This was certainly not right, but (what is perhaps better)

it was applauded. Mr. Bonnell Thornton was _Horatio_, and appeared not

to have recovered all the evening from his fright at first seeing the

_Ghost_. His pronunciation is thick, as if he spoke with pebbles in his

mouth; nor is his emphasis judicious. Mr. Egerton’s _Ghost_ is the most

substantial we ever saw. He does not look like one that has ‘peaked or

pined’ long, and has by no means realized _Hamlet’s_ wish—

‘Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.’

Miss Matthews played ‘the pretty _Ophelia_’ very pleasingly. She is as

good an _Ophelia_ as we have lately seen—better, we think than Miss

Stephens, because she does not sing _quite_ so well. This character

ought not indeed to be in general given to a fine singer; for it has

been well observed, that ‘_Ophelia_ does not go mad because she can

sing, but she sings because she has gone mad.’

DOWTON IN THE HYPOCRITE

_The Times._] [_September 19, 1817._

DRURY LANE THEATRE.

The excellent comedy of _The Hypocrite_ was acted here last night.

Dowton’s _Dr. Cantwell_, is a very admirable and edifying performance.

The divine and human affections are ‘very craftily qualified’ in his

composition, which is a mixture of the Methodist parson ingrafted on the

old French pietist, and accomplished Abbé. The courtly air of Moliere’s

_Tartuffe_ has been considerably lowered down and vulgarised to fit the

character to the grossness of modern times and circumstances: only the

general features of the character, and the prominent incidents of the

story, have been retained by the English translator, and they seem to

require the long speeches, the oratorical sentiments, and laboured

casuistry of the original author to render them probable or even

credible. It has been remarked, that the wonderful success of this piece

on the French stage is a lasting monument of the stress laid by that

talking and credulous nation on all verbal professions of virtue and

sincerity, and of the little difference they make between words and

things. With all the pains that have been taken to bring it within the

verge of verisimilitude by the aid of popular allusions and religious

prejudices, it with difficulty _naturalizes_ on our own stage, and

remains at last an incongruous, though a very striking and instructive

caricature. Dowton’s jovial and hearty characters are his best; his

demure and hypocritical ones are only his second best. His _Dr.

Cantwell_ is not so good as his _Major Sturgeon_, or his _Sir Anthony

Absolute_, but still it is very good. Their excellence consists in

giving way to the ebullition of his feelings of social earnestness, or

vainglorious ostentation; the excellence of _this_ in the systematic

concealment of his inmost thoughts and purposes. _Cantwell_ sighs out

his soul with the melancholy formality of a piece of clockwork, and

exhibits the encroachments of amorous importunity under a mask of _still

life_. The locks of his hair are combed with appropriate sleekness and

unpretending humility over his forehead and shoulders: his face looks

godly and greasy; his person and mind are well fortified in a decent

suit of plain broad cloth, and the calves of his legs look stout and

saint-like in stockings of dark pepper-and-salt fleecy hosiery. Bitter

smiles contend with falling tears; the whining tones of the conventicle

with the insolence of success, and the triumph of his unbridled rage in

the last act over his phlegmatic hypocrisy is complete. He was admirably

supported by Mrs. Sparks, as old _Lady Lambert_, and by Oxberry as

_Mawworm_. This last character is as loose and dangling as the sails of

a windmill, and is puffed up and set in motion by one continuous blast

of folly and fanaticism. The other characters in the piece were less

happily supported.

MISS BRUNTON’S ROSALIND

_The Times._] [_September 20, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

At this theatre last night Miss Brunton appeared in _Rosalind_, in _As

you Like it_. She certainly played the part very respectably and very

agreeably, but not _exquisitely_; and if it is not played exquisitely,

in our mind it is spoiled. ‘But would Shakspeare’s _Rosalind_ do so?’ is

a question that, if put home as it ought to be, might deter many an

accomplished young lady from attempting to give life to the careless,

inimitable graces of this ideal creation of the poet’s art. Miss Brunton

recited the different passages with considerable point, intelligence,

and archness, like a lively and sensible school-girl, repeating it as an

exercise; but she was not half giddy, fond, and rapturous enough for

_Rosalind_. She spoke her sentences with ‘good emphasis and discretion,’

instead of running herself and the imaginations of the audience fairly

out of breath with pleasure, love, wit, and playful gaiety. She has,

however, white teeth and black eyes, a clear voice, a pleasing figure,

with youth on her side, and a very good understanding to boot. What more

can be required in a young actress, except by fastidious critics like

us? She sung the _Cuckoo_ song very prettily, and was encored in it. The

other parts were not very elaborately got up. We liked Mr. Duruset’s two

songs as well as any thing else. Mr. Young’s _Jaques_ was less spirited

than we have sometimes seen it: indeed, the character is in some measure

spoiled to his hands by the prompt-book critics, who have put a great

deal of improper praise of himself into the mouth of the melancholy

_Jaques_. It required some contrivance to make him or Shakspeare an

egotist! Mr. Fawcett’s _Touchstone_ was amusing, but too rapid and

slovenly. There are some parts of this character which the actor

probably thinks it becoming his Managerial dignity to hurry over as fast

as possible. Mrs. Gibbs’s _Audrey_ is almost too good. If ‘the gods have

not made her poetical,’ they have at least inspired her with the very

spirit of folly, and with all its bliss. A Russian ballet, and _The

Libertine_, closed the entertainments of the evening. The former of

these is a curious exhibition of Russian costume, but it does not

exhibit the Miss Dennetts to any advantage. The play of _As you Like it_

was given out again for Monday, instead of _The Slave_.

MAYWOOD’S ZANGA

_The Times._] [_October 3, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Mr. Maywood appeared here in _Zanga_ last night. It is not certainly

from any wish to discourage, but we cannot speak so favourably of his

performance of this character as of his _Shylock_. Considerable

diffidence still appears in this actor’s manner, and retards his

progress to reputation and excellence. He does not give sufficient scope

and vehemence to the impassioned parts of the character, nor sufficient

decision and significance to its wily and malignant duplicity. _Zanga’s_

blood is on fire; it boils in his veins; it should dilate, and agitate

his whole frame with the fiercest rage and revenge: and again, the

suppression of his constitutional ardour, of the ungovernable passions

that torment and goad on his mind, ought to be marked with a

correspondent degree of artful circumspection and studied hypocrisy. In

both extremes (for the character is in extremes throughout) we thought

Mr. Maywood failed. His rage and hatred, where it had opportunity to

vent itself in a torrent of exclamations, was not strong or sustained

enough, and appeared in the very tempest and whirlwind of the passion,

to recoil affrighted ‘from the sound itself had made.’ In the

concealment of his purposes, and in the villainous insinuations with

which he fills _Alonzo’s_ mind, ‘distilling them like a leprous poison

in his ear,’ he was ‘too tame,’ too servile and mechanical, and

resembled more the busy, mercenary, credulous tale-bearer, than the

dark, secret assassin of the peace, life, and honour, of his

unsuspecting patron. The passage in which Mr. Maywood failed most, and

in which the greatest symptoms of disapprobation manifested themselves,

was that in which the greatest effect is generally produced, and where

consequently the expectations are raised the highest: we mean, in the

terrific and overpowering exclamation to _Alonzo_, ‘’Twas I that did

it!’ In the long and nasal emphasis which Mr. Maywood laid on the

monosyllable ‘I’ he shocked the ears and tired the patience of the

auditors; less, we apprehend, from any thing wrong in his conception of

the part, than from the remains of a provincial accent hanging on his

pronunciation, and in passages of great vehemence and ardour, preventing

him from having the full command of his utterance. In the less violent

expression of passion, he was more successful; and gave one or two of

the short soliloquies which occur of a more thoughtful and reasoning

cast, with considerable depth of tone and feeling. We are not without

hopes, when Mr. Kean returns, and imparts some of his confidence and

admirable decision to his young rival or pupil, of seeing some very good

acting _between_ them: we say so without meaning a double-entendre.

This play of _The Revenge_ is certainly a very indifferent piece of

work; and in the hero of the story, _Alonzo_, Mr. Rae _bolted_ some very

ranting speeches, blank verse and all, clean out of his mouth like shot

from the mouth of a cannon, with a tone and emphasis that might have

startled ears less accustomed to the ‘forced gait’ and high clattering

hoofs of his voice than ours. By stamping so hard, too, he raises not

only a shout in the upper-gallery, but a cloud of dust from the green

baize on the stage-floor.

KEAN’S RICHARD III.

_The Times._] [_October 7, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Mr. Kean has returned to us again (after no very long absence), in the

character of _Richard the Third_. His performance of the part is so well

known to the public, and has been so often criticised, that it would be

superfluous to enter into particulars again at present. We observe no

great alteration in him. If any thing, his voice is deepened, and his

pauses are lengthened, which did not need to be. His habitual style of

acting is apt to run into an excess of significance; and any studied

addition to that excess necessarily tasks the attention to a painful

degree. Mr. Pope resumed his situation as _King Henry_, and was stabbed

in the Tower, according to the rules of art. We were glad to see him in

the part, though we should have no objection to see the part itself

omitted, to make room for the fine abrupt beginning of Shakspeare’s

_Richard the Third_, with the soliloquy, ‘Now is the winter of our

discontent,’ &c. In our opinion, the _Richard the Third_ which was

manufactured by Cibber, and which has now obtained prescriptive

possession of the stage, is a vile jumble; and we are convinced that a

restoration of the original play (as written by the original author)

would, with the omission of a few short scenes, be an advantage to the

managers, and a gratification to the public. We understand, indeed, that

something of this sort has been in agitation; and in order to contribute

any little aid in our power to so laudable an attempt, we shall here

give a few of the passages which are omitted in the common stage

representation, but which appear to us particularly calculated for stage

effect, and which would also fit Mr. Kean’s peculiar style of acting, as

the glove fits the hand. One of these occurs almost immediately after

the first opening soliloquy, in the dialogue between _Glo’ster_ and

_Brackenbury_:—

_Glo’ster._—Even so! an’ please your worship, Brackenbury,

You may partake of any thing we say;

We speak no treason, man:—we say, the king

Is wise and virtuous; and his noble queen

Well strook in years: fair, and not jealous:

We say that Shore’s wife hath a pretty foot,

A cherry lip, a bonny eye, a passing pleasing tongue:

That the queen’s kindred are made gentle folks:

How say you, Sir? can you deny all this?

_Brackenbury._—With this, my lord, myself have nought to do.

_Glo’ster._—What, naught to do with mistress Shore?

I tell thee, fellow,

He that doth naught with her, excepting one,

Were best to do it secretly, alone,

_Brackenbury._—What one, my Lord?

_Glo’ster._—Her husband, knave:—Would’st thou betray me?

We think, if any thing could give additional effect to the fine taunting

irony of these lines, it would be Mr. Kean’s mode of delivering them. He

is almost the only actor who does not spoil Shakspeare.

Again, a very spirited scene of a different description, which is an

astonishing mixture of violence and duplicity, occurs when _Glo’ster_

rushes into the apartment where the _Queen’s_ friends are assembled, to

complain of their taking advantage of his meekness and simplicity:—

_Glo’ster._—They do me wrong, and I will not endure it.

Who are they that complain unto the king,

That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not?

By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly,

That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours!

Because I cannot flatter, and speak fair,

Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,

Duck with French nods, and apish courtesy,

I must be held a rancorous enemy.

Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,

But thus his simple truth must be abus’d

By silken, sly, insinuating Jacks?

_Grey._—To whom in all this presence speaks your Grace?

_Glo’ster._—To thee, that hast nor honesty, nor grace?

When have I injured thee? When done thee wrong?

Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction?

A plague upon you all!

This is certainly an admirable conclusion to so modest an introduction.

Any one who reads this passage, and who has seen Mr. Kean acquit himself

in similar situations, must, we think, feel with us a desire to see him

in this. We might multiply these instances of characteristic traits in

the adroit and high-spirited _Richard_. We shall give one more, which is

so fine in its effect, and besides, conveys so striking a picture of the

outward demeanour which an actor, to fulfil the poet’s conception, ought

to assume in the part, that we cannot resist giving it entire. It is the

scene where he entraps the unsuspecting _Hastings_:—

_Hastings._—His grace looks cheerfully and smooth this morning:

There’s some conceit or other likes him well,

When he doth bid good-morrow with such spirit.

I think, there’s ne’er a man in Christendom,

Can lesser hide his love or hate than he;

For by his face straight shall you know his heart.

_Stanley._—What of his heart perceive you in his face,

By any likelihood he show’d to-day?

_Hastings._—Marry, that with no man here he is offended;

For, were he, he had shown it in his looks.’

Re-enter _Glo’ster and Buckingham_.

‘_Glo’ster._—I pray you all, tell me what they deserve

That do conspire my death with devilish plots

Of damned witchcraft; and that have prevail’d

Upon my body with their hellish charms?

_Hastings._—The tender love I bear your grace, my lord,

Makes me most forward in this noble presence

To doom the offenders: whosoe’er they be,

I say, my lord, they have deserved death.

_Glo’ster._—Then be your eyes the witness of their evil;

Look how I am bewitch’d; behold, mine arm

Is, like a blasted sapling, wither’d up;

And this is Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch,

Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore,

That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.

_Hastings._—If they have done this deed, my noble lord—

_Glo’ster._—If? thou protector of this damn’d strumpet,

Talk’st thou to me of _ifs_!—Thou art a traitor:—

Off with his head! Now by St. Paul I swear,

I will not dine until I see the same.

Lovell and Catesby, look that it be done.

The rest, that love me, rise and follow me.

Now this is despatching business in the true dramatic style. Poets

cannot take the same bold licenses, with their characters on the stage,

till kings are reinstated in their former plenitude of power. The

incident which is here omitted in the acting play of _Richard III._ has

been transferred to Rowe’s _Jane Shore_. We should like to see it

restored to its original place, and justice done it by Mr. Kean’s

distorted gestures, and smothered voice, suddenly bursting on the ear

like thunder.

THE WONDER

_The Times._] [_October 9, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

_The Wonder_, or _A Woman keeps a Secret_, was performed here last night

with admirable effect. Miss Brunton was the heroine of the piece, the

charming _Violante_. We cannot speak in rapturous terms of her

performance of the part. There is in the character itself an extreme

spirit, and at the same time an extreme delicacy, which it is not easy

to unite. Miss Brunton went through the different scenes, however, with

a considerable degree of grace, vivacity, and general propriety, never

falling below, and seldom rising above mediocrity. She does not

‘Snatch a grace beyond the reach of art;’

nor, according to another line of the same poet, which seems to convey a

perfect idea of female comic acting,

‘Catch ere she falls the Cynthia of the minute.’

We have already objected to this young lady’s recitation, a certain

didactic, monotonous _twang_, and we cannot upon the present occasion

recant our criticism. Miss Foote was _Violante’s_ friend, _Donna

Isabella_, and looked and lisped the part very mincingly. Charles

Kemble’s _Don Felix_ is one of his best parts. He raves, sighs, starts,

frets, grows jealous, and relents, with all the characteristic spirit of

an amorous hero; and in the drunken scene with old _Don Lopez_, where he

produces his pistol as the marriage-contract, is particularly excellent

and edifying. Fawcett played _Lissardo_ as he plays almost every thing:

he chattered like a magpie, and strutted like a crow in a gutter. But

Emery’s _Gibby_ was the thing: the genius of Scotland shone through his

Highland plaid and broad bluff face: he seemed evidently afraid neither

of having his voice heard, nor his face seen. In person he resembled the

figure of the Highlander which we see stuck up as a sign at

tobacconists’ windows. We never see nor wish to see better acting than

this. Emery’s acting is indeed the most perfect imitation of common

nature on the stage. Abbott was respectable as _Colonel Briton_. Mrs.

Gibbs’s _Flora_ was what every waiting-woman ought to be.

VENICE PRESERVED

_The Times._] [_October 10, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Otway’s noble tragedy of _Venice Preserved_ was produced here last

night. The effect upon the whole was not satisfactory. The novelties of

the representation were Mr. H. Johnstone as _Pierre_, and Miss Campbell

(from the Dublin Theatre) as _Belvidera_. Of Mr. Johnstone’s _Pierre_,

after having seen Mr. Kemble in it, or even Mr. Young, we cannot speak

in terms of applause. The character is not one of blunt energy, but of

deep art. It is more sarcastic than fierce, and even the fierceness is

more calculated to wound others than to shake or disturb himself. He is

a master-mind, that plays with the foibles and passions of others and

wields their energies to his dangerous purposes with conscious careless

indifference. Mr. Johnstone was boisterous in his declamation, coarse in

his irony, pompous and common-place in his action. Mr. Rae (as

_Jaffier_), in the famous scene between these two characters, displayed

some strong touches of nature and pathos. Miss Campbell, as _Belvidera_,

did not altogether realize our idea of Otway’s heroine; one of ‘the most

replenished sweet works of art or nature.’ Her face, though not

handsome, is not without expression; but its character is strength,

rather than softness. In her person she is graceful, and has a mixture

of dignity and ease in her general deportment. Her voice is powerful,

but in its higher tones it rises too much into a scream, and in its

gentler ones subsides into a lisp, which is more infantine than

feminine. In her general style of acting she put us sometimes in mind of

Mrs Fawcit, sometimes of Miss Somerville, and more than once of Miss

O’Neill. Her delineation of the part, if not sufficiently tender or

delicate, was however forcible, impassioned, and affecting. We thought

the last scene, in which she goes mad, and digs for her murdered husband

in the grave, the best. We should indeed give her the preference over

Miss O’Neill in this very trying scene. Her expression of the disordered

wanderings of the imagination, and of the last desperate struggles of

passion in her bosom, both by the intonations of her voice, and the

varying actions of her body, were more natural, and less repulsive than

the mere physical violence of Miss O’Neill in the same passage. The play

was given out for repetition with some marks of disapprobation from a

part of the audience.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

_The Times._] [_October 15, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

Goldsmith’s comedy of _She Stoops to Conquer_ was played at this theatre

last night: its reception was highly favourable. It bears the stamp of

the author’s genius, which was an indefinable mixture of the original

and imitative. His plot, characters, and incidents, are all new, and yet

they are all old, with little variation or disguise—that is, the writer

sedulously avoided common-place, and sought for singularity, but found

it rather in the unhackneyed and out-of-the-way inventions of those who

had gone before him than in his own stores. His _Vicar of Wakefield_,

which abounds more than any of his works in delightful and original

traits, is still very much borrowed from Fielding’s _Joseph Andrews_.

Again, the characters and adventures of _Tony Lumpkin_ and his mother in

the present comedy are a counterpart, even to the incident of the theft

of the jewels, of those of the _Widow Blackacre_ and her booby son in

Wycherley’s _Plain Dealer_. The change of character and the rustic

disguise of _Miss Hardcastle_, by which she gains her lover, are also a

faint imitation of _Letitia Hardy_ in _The Belle’s Stratagem_. This sort

of plagiarism, which gives us a repetition of what are comparatively new

and eccentric pictures of human life, is much to be preferred to the

dull routine of trite, vapid, every-day common-places: but it is also

more dangerous, as the stealing of pictures or family plate, where the

goods are immediately identified, is surer of detection than the

stealing of bank-notes or the current coin of the realm. Johnson’s

sarcasm against some writer that ‘his singularity was not his

excellence,’ cannot be applied to Goldsmith’s works in general: but we

do not know whether it might not in severity be applied to _She Stoops

to Conquer_. The incidents and characters are, some of them, exceedingly

amusing; but it is a little at the expense of probability and

_bienseance_. _Tony Lumpkin_ is certainly a very essential, and

unquestionably comic personage; and his absurdities or his humours were

very effectually portrayed by Liston. His impenetrability and

unconscious confusion of mind and face in reading and spelling out the

letter was admirable. Charles Kemble’s bashful scene with his mistress

was irresistibly ludicrous, and excellently well played: but still it

did not quite overcome our incredulity as to the existence of such a

character in such circumstances. It is a highly amusing caricature, a

ridiculous fancy, but no more. One of the finest and most delicate

touches of real acting we ever witnessed was in the transition of this

modest gentleman’s manner to the easy and agreeable tone of familiarity

with the supposed chambermaid, which was not total and abrupt, but

exactly such in kind and degree as such a character of natural reserve

and constitutional timidity would undergo from the change of

circumstances. Miss Brunton’s _Miss Hardcastle_ was a very correct and

agreeable piece of acting. Mrs. Davenport’s _Mrs. Hardcastle_ was like

her acting in all such characters, as good as it could possibly be.

KEAN’S MACBETH

_The Times._] [_October 21, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Macbeth (with Matthew Lock’s music) was played here last night. Mr. Kean

was _Macbeth_, Miss Campbell _Lady Macbeth_. We never saw the former to

such advantage in the part. Mr. Kean’s _Macbeth_ did not use to be a

great favourite with us, except in the murder scene: but he last night,

we thought, lifted the general character to almost an equality with this

single scene. At least, he played the whole in a style of boldness and

grandeur which we have not seen before. He was ‘proud and lion-hearted,

and lacked fear.’ A thousand hearts seemed swelling in his bosom. His

voice rolled from the bottom of his breast like thunder, and his eye

flashed scorching flame. Instead of going back (as some cunning critics

who have been peeping out of their cells at him ever since he began his

career, to watch for his first failure, and to fall upon him

magnanimously at a disadvantage, have been predicting), he advances even

beyond himself with manly steps and a heroic spirit. In the

banquet-scene he was particularly excellent; and called forth, with

complete effect, those deep tones of nature and passion, recoiling upon

and bursting with a convulsive movement from the heart, which are his

very best and surest resource, though he has as yet made the least use

of them. Let him go on, and open all the sluices of passion in his

breast which are yet unlocked. He has done much: let him do as much

more, by giving as much depth of internal emotion (where it is required)

as he has done of external vehemence, by adding stateliness and a

measured march to infinite force and truth, that he may be the greatest

poet, as he unquestionably is the greatest prose-actor of the stage.

When we speak of him as deficient in these qualities, we only do so in

comparison with Mrs. Siddons: it would be a mockery both of him and the

public to compare him with any one else. But she had something of

_divine_ about her which Mr. Kean has not; he in general only shows us

the utmost force of what is _human_. Of Miss Campbell’s _Lady Macbeth_

we are almost afraid to speak, because we cannot speak favourably of it;

yet a failure in this part is by no means decisive against the general

merits of an actress. But she was altogether too tame and drawling for

_Lady Macbeth_; and some attempts at originality failed of effect from

the timidity with which they were executed.

KEAN’S OTHELLO

_The Times._] [_October 27, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

_Othello_ was played here on Saturday to a crowded house. There were two

new appearances—Mr. Maywood as _Iago_, and a young lady as _Desdemona_.

The name of this young _debutante_ is not announced; but her reception

was exceedingly flattering. Her face is handsome, her person elegant,

her voice sweet, and her general deportment graceful and easy. There was

also a considerable portion of tenderness and delicacy of feeling in

several of the passages; but perhaps less than the character would bear.

The only faults which we think it necessary to mention in her

performance were, a too continual movement of the hands up and down, and

sometimes a monotonous cadence in the recitation of the blank verse. Mr.

Maywood’s _Iago_ had some of the faults which we have noticed in his

former characters; but in the most trying scenes in the third act with

_Othello_, we thought him exceedingly happy and successful. His

conception was just, and his execution effective. There was a cold

stillness in his manner which was more frightful than the expression of

the most inveterate malignity. He seemed to crawl and watch for his prey

like the spider, instead of darting upon it like the serpent. In the

commencement of the part his timidity appeared to prevent him from doing

justice to his intention, and once or twice his voice grew loud and

unmanageable, so as to excite some marks of disapprobation. Mr. Kean’s

_Othello_ is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting in the world. It is

impossible either to describe or praise it adequately. We have never

seen any actor so wrought upon, so ‘perplexed in the extreme.’ The

energy of passion, as it expresses itself in action, is not the most

terrific part; it is agony of his soul, showing itself in looks and

tones of voice. In one part, where he listens in dumb despair to the

fiend-like insinuations of _Iago_, he presented the very face, the

marble aspect of Dante’s _Count Ugolino_. On his fixed eyelids ‘Horror

sat plumed.’ In another part, where a gleam of hope or of tenderness

returns to subdue the tumult of his passions, his voice broke in

faltering accents from his overcharged breast. His lips might be said

less to utter words, than to bleed drops of blood gushing from his

heart. An instance of this was in his pronunciation of the line ‘Of one

that loved not wisely but too well.’ The whole of this last speech was

indeed given with exquisite force and beauty. We only object to the

virulence with which he delivers the last line, and with which he stabs

himself—a virulence which _Othello_ would neither feel against himself

at that moment, nor against the turbaned Turk (whom he had slain) at

such a distance of time. His exclamation on seeing his wife, ‘I cannot

think but _Desdemona’s_ honest,’ was ‘the glorious triumph of exceeding

love;’ a thought flashing conviction on his mind, and irradiating his

countenance with joy, like sudden sunshine. In fact, almost every scene

or sentence in this extraordinary exhibition is a master-piece of

natural passion. The convulsed motion of the hands, and the involuntary

swellings of the veins of the forehead in some of the most painful

situations, should not only suggest topics of critical panegyric, but

might furnish studies to the painter or anatomist.

KEAN AND MISS O’NEILL

_The Times._] [_December 2, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

The tragedy of _Venice Preserved_ was acted here last night to rather an

empty house. Mr. Young’s _Pierre_ is one of his very best and most

spirited performances. Mr. C. Kemble did to the character of _Jaffier_

all the justice it deserves. But the great attraction of this piece, as

it is at present acted, is Miss O’Neill’s _Belvidera_. In this, however,

we think her less excellent than on her first appearance in it. Her

pathos is less simple, less touching, and her action more outrageous and

violent. Perhaps the reason of this change may be, that, acting in such

parts from an impulse of real sympathy with the heroine, as she repeats

the character, her immediate interest in it becomes gradually

diminished, and she is compelled to make up for the want of genuine

feeling by the external vehemence of her manner. Be this as it may, she

at present carries this violence of manner to the utmost pitch at which

it can be borne. Her screams almost torture the ear, her looks almost

petrify the sight. It is time that she should return to her first style

of acting, which did not ‘o’erstep the modesty of nature.’ We speak thus

of her from a sense of justice, and of respect, not of contempt, for her

powers: for we think she owes it to those powers _not to abuse them_. As

_Belvidera_ is one of her most prominent characters, we shall take this

opportunity to sum up in a few words our opinion of her general merit as

a tragic actress; and perhaps we shall be able to do this best by

pointing out the difference between her and another celebrated performer

of the day.

Mr. Kean affects the audience from the force of passion rather than of

sentiment, or subsides into the pathetic after the violence of action,

but seldom rises into it from the depth of natural feeling. In this

respect, he presents almost a direct contrast to Miss O’Neill. Her

energy appears to rise out of her sensibility: distress takes possession

of, and overwhelms, her faculties: she triumphs in her weakness, and

vanquishes by yielding. Mr. Kean is chiefly great in the conflict of

passions, and resistance to his fate—in the opposition of his will to

circumstances—in the keen excitement of his understanding. It is not

without some reluctance, and after a good deal of reflection, that we

should say, that the finest parts of his acting are superior to the

finest parts of hers: for instance, to her parting with _Jaffier_ in

_Belvidera_,—to her terror and joy in meeting with _Biron_ in

_Isabella_,—to the death-scene in the same character,—and to the scene

in the prison with her husband as Mrs. Beverley. Her acting is more

correct, equable, and faultless throughout than Mr. Kean’s, and it is

also quite as overpowering at the time, in the most impassioned parts;

but it does not leave the same impression on the mind afterwards. It

adds little to the stock of our ideas, or to our materials for

reflection, but passes away with the momentary illusion of the scene.

And this difference of effect perhaps arises from the difference of the

parts they have to sustain on the stage. In the female characters which

Miss O’Neill plays, the distress is in a great measure physical and

involuntary, or such as is common to every woman in similar

circumstances. She abandons herself to the impulses of grief or

tenderness, and revels in the excess of an uncontrollable affliction.

She can call to her aid with perfect propriety and the greatest effect,

all the weaknesses of her sex; tears, sighs, convulsive sobs, shrieks,

death-like stupefaction, and laughter more terrible than all: but it is

not the same in the parts which Mr. Kean has to act. There must here be

a manly fortitude, as well as a natural sensibility. There must be a

restraint constantly put upon the feelings by the understanding and the

will. He must in part be ‘as one in suffering all, who suffers nothing.’

He cannot give way entirely to his situation or his feelings, but must

endeavour to become master of them and of himself. This, in our

conception, must make it more easy to give the utmost effect and

interest to female characters on the stage, by rendering the expression

of the passion more simple, obvious, and natural; and must also make

them less rememberable afterwards, by leaving less scope for the

exercise of intellect, and for the distinct and complicated reaction of

the character upon circumstances. At least, we can only account in some

such way for the different impression which the acting of these two

admired performers makes on our minds, when we see or when we think of

them. As critics, we particularly feel this. Mr. Kean affords a

never-failing source of observation and discussion: we can only praise

or blame Miss O’Neill. The peculiarity and the strong hold of Mrs.

Siddons’s acting was, that she in a wonderful degree united both the

extremes of excellence here spoken of, that is, the natural frailties of

passion, or its inarticulate and involuntary expression, with a

commanding strength of intellect, and the loftiest flights of

imagination. Her person could also endure more violence of action than

Miss O’Neill’s; whose tender frame is hardly able to ‘abide the beating

of so strong a passion,’ as she often has to assume, and whose fair face

is injured by the least distortion.

THE HONEY MOON

_The Times._] [_December 3, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

The favourite comedy of the _Honey Moon_ was performed here last night;

the part of the _Duke_ by Mr. H. Johnston. Upon the whole he acquitted

himself well in it, with spirit and effect. More than that the character

does not require; and it would be hard if the critic required of the

actor what the poet has not clearly and intelligibly exacted from him.

When, indeed, an accomplished performer, who happens to be a man of

genius, lends additional graces to a character, and places it in a

brilliant light of his own, we are bound to thank him: when he merely

gives ‘what is set down for him’ with force and fidelity, we are bound

to be content. Mr. Johnston, we thought, sometimes too coarse, and

sometimes too sarcastic; but in this sort of assumption of character, it

is hard to say exactly how far the habitual manners and sentiments are

to modify and appear through those which are put on to answer the

purpose of the moment. In this species of the _mock-heroic_, which is a

sort of equivocal mixture of comedy and tragedy, half pompous and half

playful, Elliston, who was the first _Duke Aranza_, excelled all those

who have succeeded him. ‘Plautus was too light, Seneca was too heavy for

him.’ He just aspired to something above comedy, he just fell short of

tragedy; but _he hit the stage between wind and water_. Mr. H.

Johnston’s energy is more fierce, his irony more virulent: but still he

moved, and looked, and spoke, if not like a lord, like a very lordly

husband, and gave the essential interest to the part. He danced much at

his ease, and recited the speech in which the Duke describes his idea of

what his wife’s dress should be, with propriety and feeling. Knight’s

countryman was admirable: his hysteric laughter at the dispute between

his host and hostess, and his sheepish confusion when discovered, were

equally perfect. His wonder at the manner in which Johnston rates his

wife was ecstatic:

‘And near him sat ecstatic Wonder,

Listening the hoarse applauding thunder.’

His jaws relaxed to their utmost expansion, and his nose ‘grew sharp as

a pen.’ Miss Kelly was too pert and forward, and too much like my lady’s

chambermaid. Nor can we speak in praise of Mrs. Davison’s _Juliana_. She

pouts, flounces, and lumbers about the stage strangely. Mr. Harley did

the _Mock Duke_ well; he seemed like Sancho Panza in his government. The

_Honey Moon_ is a very pleasing drama: it is a cento of passages from

old plays modernized; it is an ingenious plagiarism from beginning to

end. The author was a most incorrigible pilferer, but so expert in his

art, that we would say to other authors, ‘Go thou and do likewise!’

MR. KEAN

_The Times._] [_December 16, 1817._

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

_Mr. Kean_, after an absence of nearly six weeks, owing to serious

indisposition, last night resumed his professional duties at this

theatre, in the arduous character of _Richard the Third_. He was

received on his appearance with all that warm greeting and enthusiastic

applause, which are perhaps the highest meed of histrionic talent, and

which are unfailingly called forth by this distinguished actor, after

every suspension, however short, of the exercise of his art. This

expression of good-will was increased, we think, in the present

instance, by the recollection that the privation was caused by illness,

and that it was possible the stage might have been deprived of one of

its greatest ornaments. The acclamations, the waving of hats and

handkerchiefs, continued for some minutes. Mr. Kean looks somewhat

thinner than before his indisposition, but betrayed no deficiency of

power; on the contrary, on account probably of our having for sometime

past been doomed to witness very inferior performances, he appeared to

surpass himself. He exhibited all that energy and discrimination, that

faculty of identifying himself with the character he represents, which

is to be ranked among the greatest efforts of human talents; he realized

our conceptions of a being whose soul

‘Not Fate itself could awe.’

The fine passages of this piece of acting are well known to the public;

to quote them would be to extract the whole play. The conclusion of his

career was marked by nearly as much applause as the commencement. The

theatre was well filled, notwithstanding the extreme wetness of the

evening.

KING JOHN

_The Times._] [_December 18, 1817._

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

Shakspeare’s tragedy of _King John_ was acted last night at this

theatre. Miss O’Neill performed the part of _Constance_; and though

everything undertaken by this excellent actress must have a large

proportion of good in it, we think that she is less successful in this

than in most of her other characters: for this, physical causes, her

youth for example, may be assigned; and her perfect delineation of

_Constance_ is, perhaps, reserved to the maturity of her age and her

talents. She did not convey to us that warmth of temper, that

susceptibility to grief and anger, which mark this injured Princess. Her

speeches on the conclusion of the marriage with _Blanch_, which admit

great variety of expression, were simple declamation, without passion

and nearly in the same tone: but we would rather dwell on beauties than

defects. Two or three lines at the end of the scene just mentioned made

amends for all; when she says,

‘To me, and to the state of my great grief,

Let kings assemble.’

she utters the passage with beautiful feeling, and leaves nothing to be

wished. The burst of indignation when Austria endeavours to silence her,

subsiding instantly into a tone of the keenest contempt, was no less

striking. Her very best effort was on quitting the stage, when, having

uttered those pathetic exclamations for the loss of her son, she goes

out in all the wildness of despair, as if occupied by no other thought

than to seek him through the world. Young was a little too violent in

some parts of the character of _King John_; but, on the whole, it may be

considered a fine piece of acting: the two scenes with _Hubert_, and his

‘dying scene, were excellent. _Faulconbridge_, the bastard, is one of

Charles Kemble’s happiest hits; his manly figure, and martial

appearance, well bear him out in his scoffs at the _Duke of Austria_; he

is no sooner knighted, than he seems made for his rank, and leads out

_Queen Elinor_ like a ‘lordly gallant.’ Some of the nobles of _John’s_

court did not convey the idea of much dignity either in their dress or

persons: we wish that the managers, who have the power of issuing

patents of nobility at pleasure, would consider whether the general

effect might not be improved by a little more attention to this point.

THE PRESS—COLERIDGE, SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND BENTHAM

_The Yellow Dwarf._] [_January 3, 1818._

A debate has been lately going on, in the French House of Commons,

respecting the Liberty of the Press. M. Jollivet said, ‘the Liberty of

the Press is less necessary in a Representative Government than in any

other.’ ‘The press’ he added, ‘is represented as the only instrument by

which truth can be made known; but the passions of men are too

impetuous, to permit the Press that liberty which some demand. _The real

national representation is in the King_;[44]—the legitimate inheritance

of his Crown, from whence all powers and honours are derived, fixes

there, with the destinies of the people. This is the primitive

representation, from which all others emanate. There is the sacred depot

of sovereignty. The powers established by the Charter are only the means

of that sovereignty, for the dispensation of order and justice. We must

then leave out of the question this pretended influence of the Liberty

of the Press upon our representative Government, in favour of the branch

called the Democratic. We must reject principles which can never return

in France. By this course we may perhaps lose some commentaries upon the

rights of man, but all classes of society will find their repose in it.’

So says M. Jollivet; and so sings a modern bard:—

‘Kiuprili—Had’st thou believ’d thine own tale, had’st thou _fancied_

Thyself the rightful successor of Andreas,

Would’st thou have pilfer’d from our school-boys’ themes

These shallow sophisms of a _popular choice_?

What people? How convened? or, if convened,

Must not the magic power that charms together

Millions of men in council, needs have power

To win or wield them? Better, O far better

Shout forth thy titles to yon circling mountains

And with a thousand-fold reverberation

Make the rocks flatter thee, and the volleying air,

Unbribed, shout back to thee, King Emerick!

By wholesome laws t’imbank the sov’reign power,

To deepen by restraint, and by prevention

Of lawless will t’amass and guide the flood,

In its majestic channel, is man’s task

And the true patriot’s glory! _In all else

Men safelier trust to Heaven, than to themselves_

When least themselves in the mad whirl of crowds

Where folly is contagious, and too oft

Even wise men leave their better sense at home

To chide and wonder at them when return’d.’

_Coleridge’s Zapolya._

Whether M. Jollivet, the French speaker, was one of the Orators of the

Human Race in the time of Robespierre, we do not know; but this we know,

that Mr. Coleridge was at that time delivering _Conciones ad populum_ in

a tone of mob-sycophancy, the height and heat of which could, it seems,

only be qualified by the doctrines of Divine Right and Passive

Obedience. The above exquisite morceau of political logic, and dramatic

recantation of the author’s popular harangues, was intended for

representation at Drury-Lane Theatre, and was one of the passages

pointed out, if we are to believe Mr. Coleridge, as a reason for the

rejection of this spurious offspring of his loyal Muse.

Mr. Southey has not yet given us a poetical version of the true _Jus

Divinum_. We should like to know what he says to this speech of M.

Jollivet—Content or Not Content—and whether this was the result he

anticipated when he so sweetly and loudly, about three years ago,

invited France ‘restored and shaking off her chain’ to join in his (Mr.

Southey’s) triumphal song,—

‘_Glory to God on high, Deliverance to Mankind._’

Can that laurel wreathe which adorns his brows (if it still adorns them)

any longer hide or prevent those blushes, deep and lasting, which should

suffuse his once well-meaning face for having been the shameful dupe of

a cozenage so shameful?

As to Mr. Wordsworth, another of these heroic deliverers, he is ‘a full

solemne man,’ and you cannot get much out of him. But we should like to

hear his opinion—Aye or No—of M. Jollivet’s allied notions of liberty

and the rights of man. Is this sort of legitimate clapping down under

the hatches the deliverance for which he mouthed out deep-toned Odes and

Sonnets? Is this repose, the repose of lasting slavery and avowed,

barefaced annihilation of the rights of human nature, the consummation

devoutly to be wished, which kindled in him so much disinterested zeal

against all his old friends and feelings? If he were to say so, the very

echoes of his favourite mountains, ‘with thousand-fold reverberation,’

would contradict him. But he says nothing. He is profoundly silent. He

will not answer Mum to our Budget. From the elevation of his former

well-timed enthusiasm against tyrants and conquerors, he slid into a

place: and he will never rise out of it by any ill-timed intemperance.

_Snug’s the word._ St. Peter is well at Rome; and Mr. Wordsworth is

attached to the Excise. What is it to him, seated on Rydal Mount, what

M. Jollivet, a prating Frenchman, says to that poor creature, Louis

XVIII? It is enough for Mr. Wordsworth that he signs his stamped

receipts and distributes them:—he is not bound, _by his office_, to

subscribe to M. Jollivet’s doctrines, or to circulate them in this

country. He is a customhouse officer, and no longer a citizen of the

world. He keeps himself quiet, like the philosopher of old, lest the

higher powers should hear him. If he were to mutter a syllable against

any one act of legitimate despotism, he knows (in his sleeve) that not

all his odes on Hoffer and Schill, and the Cortes, or even to the King,

would save him one hour. He is wise. After having endorsed the

accommodation bills of the Allied Sovereigns on liberty and

independence, with a pen which ought to have been sacred to humanity, he

now leaves it to the people of France, Spain, Italy, to us, to the

world, to take up these dishonoured forgeries, and will not utter a word

of resentment or indignation, or contempt, against those who have made

him a poor accomplice in a fraud upon mankind!

This sort of shuffling on the side of principle, and tenaciousness on

the side of power, seems to be the peculiar privilege of the race of

modern poets. The philosophers, if not much wiser, appear to be

honester. Some of these had been taken in, but they want to be let out.

They declare off in time to save at least their own characters, and will

not sign and seal ‘a dateless bargain to all-engrossing despotism,’ when

she unfolds the long dark scroll of her rotten parchment bonds to them,

and they see it ‘stretching out even to the crack of doom.’ They had got

into a bad house, it is true, thinking, though the owners were the same,

they had changed their calling, in company with an old bawd masked, who

pretended to have just escaped being robbed and ravished, if not

murdered. They were proud of such an opportunity of shewing their

gallantry. But as soon as the old lady pulled off her mask of

Legitimacy, and shewed herself ‘the same, that is, that was, and is to

be,’ our philosophers went to the window, threw up the sash, and alarmed

the neighbourhood; while the poets, either charmed, with the paint and

patches of the hag, or with her gold and trinkets, put a grave face upon

the matter, make it a point of conscience, a match for life—_for better

or worse_, stick to their filthy bargain, go to bed, and by lying quiet

and keeping close, would fain persuade the people out of doors that all

is well, while they are fumbling at the regeneration of mankind out of

an old rotten carcase, and threatening us, as the legitimate consequence

of their impotent and obscene attempts, with the spawn of Bible and

Missionary Societies, Schools for All, and a little aiery of children,

with a whole brood of hornbooks and catechisms,—a superfetation more

preposterous than that of Mrs. Tofts, the rabbit-breeding lady in

Hogarth.—Mr. Bentham was one of the philosophers who were so taken in by

the projects of the Holy Alliance, but who did not chuse to continue so

with his eyes open. He had lent an ear to the promises of kings. He

thought tyrants had taken a sudden fancy to the abstract principles of

sound legislation. With a little exuberance of philosophical vanity, and

a little want of philosophical penetration, he thought he could ‘charm

these deaf adders wisely.’ He thought absolute sovereigns, having

suffered persecution, had learnt mercy: that they were convinced, by

their own experience, of the value of justice, truth, and liberty. He

did not suspect their appeal to humanity was the cry of the crocodile to

allure and destroy: he, like many more, thought their tears were ‘drops

which sacred pity had engendered.’ Not so. He soon found his mistake;

and no sooner found, than he hastes to amend it. He does not try (half

fool, half knave) to hush up the affair, to screen their villainy, or

salve his own idle vanity. Out the whole story comes, in a book which he

has just published,[45] containing an account of the papers, and

correspondence which passed between himself and the Emperor Alexander.

Mr. Bentham sent the autocrat a plan of legislation, and the sovereign

sent him a snuff-box in return. The Emperor however took no other notice

of the plan, and the legislator returned the snuff-box. This was as it

should be. It is of course the favourite object of Alexander to be lord

over millions of slaves: it must be Mr. Bentham’s greatest ambition to

be a wise and honest man. He had committed his character for wisdom

sufficiently in supposing that the lord of millions of slaves would, in

the pure coxcombry of his heart, and in the giddy round of gold

snuff-boxes, and in his delight in the infinite multiplication of his

own pictures set in brilliants, set millions of slaves free! The Emperor

would as soon let Mr. Bentham cuckold him as resign his people to the

Platonic embraces of Mr. Bentham’s legislative genius. But having gone

thus far on a wrong calculation of the characters of rulers, Mr. Bentham

was too honest a man to try to repeat the imposition upon others of

which he had been made the momentary dupe himself. He was not ambitious

any longer to remain that tool

‘Which knaves do work with, called a fool.’

He would not be made a mild decoy of humanity, and go a dottrel-catching

with the Emperor Alexander in Finland, in Poland, or in South America.

He would not be made an amiable stalking-horse of liberty and equality

for royal sportsmen to catch their silly prey, the human race, and then

to be turned loose, stripped of his netting and his ribbons, to graze

where he could. He had a spirit above it. He could not brook this league

with detected hypocrisy and barefaced power. He had not the stomach to

swallow a lie for truth. He could not bring himself to say, or by any

tampering with his own mind to believe that a thing _was_ what he knew

_it was not_. He was by habit a logician—by nature, a plain, literal

man. ‘The Gods had not made him poetical.’ That is, Mr. Bentham had not,

like Messrs. Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, been playing at fast

and loose with fiction, till he could like them believe whatever he

pleased of matter of fact, and stand to it stoutly too with ‘a mingled

air of cunning and of impudence,’—to the equal satisfaction of his

understanding and his conscience!

MR. COLERIDGE’S LECTURES

_The Yellow Dwarf._] [_February 21, 1818._

‘On Friday evening Mr. Coleridge gave his first Lecture on Shakspeare to

a numerous and genteel audience. He stated the permanent objects

Shakspeare had in view in drawing his characters, and how obviously he

disregarded those that were of a transitory nature. The character of

_Caliban_, as an original and caricature of Jacobinism, so fully

illustrated at Paris during the French Revolution, he described in a

vigorous and lively manner, exciting repeated bursts of applause. He

commenced an inquiry into the order of succession in which Shakspeare

wrote his plays, and decided that _Love’s Labour Lost_ must have been

the first, as there are so many allusions in it such as a youth would

make, few or none resulting from an experience of the world. That play

and _The Tempest_ were the chief objects of his discourse, into which,

however, he introduced a great variety of new and striking remarks, not

confined to any particular play. As for instance, he said, wherever

Shakspeare had drawn a character addicted to sneering, and contempt for

the merits of others, that character was sure to be a villain. Vanity,

envy, and malice, were its certain accompaniments: too prudent to praise

itself, it fed its concentrated egotism by sarcasm and lowering others.

This is but a poor description of the very glowing language, ample

detail, and profound thought, Mr. Coleridge displayed on this topic,

which produced a thunder of applause.’—_Courier_, Feb. 9.

Mr. Coleridge, in his prospectus, modestly observed, that the attending

his course of Lectures on Poetry, and ‘those fair parts that there

adjacent lie,’ would enable any grown gentleman to talk on all subjects

of polite conversation, except religion and politics. By the above

extract, and from what we have heard, it should appear that Mr.

Coleridge has gone beyond his engagement, and given his grown gentleman

a slice of religion and politics in the same dish with his account of

the Dark Ages. Not like a lady who puts her mind into the postscript,

Mr. C. does that first which he promised last. Whatever may be the case

with his metaphysical hypercriticisms, his religious and political

opinions seem pretty transparent. As he has sent a passage against

Jacobinism to his friend Mr. Stuart, of the _Courier_, we wonder that he

could not (as he still retains all his old sentiments, with only the

advantage of new light added to them) have vamped up a sly passage from

his _Conciones ad Populum_, in favour of the _so-called_ Jacobin

principles he formerly professed, to have sent it to us. We should

gladly do all in our power to assist Mr. Coleridge in publishing a

harmony of his opinions, which are, we suspect, too liberal and

multifarious to be comprised, in all their speculative and practical

bearings, in a shabby Evening Paper. As to this argument about

_Caliban_, we suspect it must have been sadly curtailed and _scissarsed_

by Mr. Stuart, in order to fit his cloth to his coat, and to bring Mr.

Coleridge’s ‘unhouselled free conditions into the circumscription and

confine’ of the Editor’s party politics. _Caliban_ is so far from being

a prototype of modern Jacobinism, that he is strictly the legitimate

sovereign of the isle, and _Prospero_ and the rest are usurpers, who

have ousted him from his hereditary jurisdiction by superiority of

talent and knowledge. ‘This island’s mine, by _Sycorax_ my mother;’ and

he complains bitterly of the artifices used by his new friends to cajole

him out of it. He is the Louis XVIII. of the enchanted island in _The

Tempest_: and Dr. Stoddart would be able to prove by the civil law, that

he had the same right to keep possession of it, ‘independently of his

conduct or merits, as Mr. Coke has to his estate at Holkham.’ Even his

affront to the daughter of that upstart philosopher _Prospero_, could

not be brought to bar his succession to the natural sovereignty of his

dominions. His boast that ‘he had peopled else this isle with

_Calibans_,’ is very proper and dignified in such a person; for it is

evident that the right line would be supplanted in failure of his issue;

and that the superior beauty and accomplishments of _Ferdinand_ and

_Miranda_ could no more be opposed to the legitimate claims of this

deformed and loathsome monster, than the beauty and intellect of the

Bonaparte family can be opposed to the bloated and ricketty minds and

bodies of the Bourbons, cast, as they are, in the true _Jus Divinum_

mould! This is gross. Why does Mr. Coleridge provoke us to write as

great nonsense as he talks? Why also does he not tell, in his general

‘lunes and abstractions,’ what to think of _Prospero’s_ brother, the

Duke, who usurped his crown, and drove him into banishment; or of those

finished Court-practitioners, _Sebastian_ and _Antonio_, who wanted to

murder the sleeping King? Were they Jacobins like _Caliban_, or

legitimate personages, like Mr. Coleridge? Did they belong to the new

school or the old? That is the question; but it is a question which our

lay-preacher will take care not to answer. Shakespear, says Mr.

Coleridge, always spoke of mobs with contempt, but with kindness. Mr.

Coleridge does better: he speaks of mobs with contempt, and of Courts

with kindness. Again, says this critical discoverer of a meaning in a

millstone, _Caliban_ had that envy of superior genius and virtue, which

was a mark of the true Jacobins in the time of the French Revolution. We

are sorry to hear, that on one occasion Mr. C. was interrupted in a

tirade upon this favourite topic, on which he was led out of pure

generosity, to enlighten the grown gentlemen who came to hear him, by a

person calling out in good broad Scotch, ‘But you once praised that

Revolution, Mr. Coleridge!’ The worst is, that Mr. Coleridge praised

that Revolution when it was triumphant, going on ‘conquering and to

conquer,’ as it was thought; and now that it is fallen, this man of

mighty mind,—of gigantic genius, and superiority to interested motives

and mob-sycophancy, insults over it,—tramples on the carcase,—kicks it

with his asinine hoofs,—and brays a long, loud, dreary, doleful bravura

over it. Of what the Jacobins were in the year 1793, this person has a

right to speak, both from experience and observation. The worst he can

say of them is, that he was once one of the set. He says that Jacobins

are envious people,—and that envious people, not being able to praise

themselves openly, take an indirect method of doing this, by

depreciating and secretly slandering others. Was it upon this principle

that the reformed Jacobin, Mr. Coleridge (what is bred in the bone will

never come out of the flesh) took such pains, two years ago, to praise

himself by depreciating and canting profound German mysticism against

Mr. Maturin’s successful tragedy of _Bertram_, which he proved, being

himself in the secret, to be ultra-Jacobinism, and quite different in

its philosophical and poetical tendency from his own sweet injured

_Zapolya_,—the harbinger of Legitimacy and the Bourbons, which was

offered to Mr. Whitbread for his acceptance, as a piece of

ultra-Royalism, and accordingly rejected by that friend of

constitutional government and the people; but which any one may see

represented to the life at the Royal Circus, accompanied with music, and

compressed into three acts, to make it ‘tedious and brief.’ Or was it

from the remains of the Jacobin leaven in our philosophical poet, that

in a public library at Bristol he endeavoured to advance his own

reputation on the ruins of that of a friend, by that lofty panegyric

which he pronounced on our laurel-honouring laureat:—‘The man may indeed

be a reviewer, but God help him if he fancies himself a poet?’ And is

this the man to talk about the envy of the people towards hereditary

virtue and wisdom, as the cause and root of Jacobinism? This—

‘Fie, Sir! O fie! ’tis fulsome,

Sir, there’s a soil for that rank weed flattery

To trail its poisonous and obscene clusters:

A poet’s soul should bear a richer fruitage—

The aconite grew not in Eden. Thou,

That thou, with lips tipt with the fire of Heaven,

’Th’ excursive eye, that in its earth-wide range

Drinks in the grandeur and the loveliness,

That breathes along this high-wrought world of man,

That hast within thee apprehensions strong

Of all that’s pure, and passionless, and heavenly—

That thou, a vapid and mawkish parasite,

Should’st pipe to that witch Fortune’s favourites!

’Tis coarse—’tis sickly—’tis as though the eagle

Should spread his sail-broad wings to flap a dunghill;

As though a pale and withering pestilence

Should ride the golden chariot of the sun;

As one should use the language of the Gods

To chatter loose and ribald brothelry.’—FAZIO.

It is well for the author of this tragedy that it has been praised in

the _Quarterly Review_,—or we should not wonder to see Mr. Coleridge, as

well from these lines as from its being acted with universal applause at

the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, set about proving it to be a very

ultra-Jacobinical performance.—But ‘to leave this keen encounter of the

wits, and fall to something of a slower method.’ The reason—(for Mr.

Coleridge knows, that if we have not ‘reason as plenty as blackberries,’

yet what we have, we are ready ‘to give to any man without

compulsion’)—the reason why Mr. Coleridge is not what he might be, is,

that he would be thought what he is not. His motto is, to be nothing or

every thing. His levity or his vanity is not satisfied with being

admired for what he is, but for all that he is capable of becoming, wise

or foolish, knave or not. He is not contented to be ‘the inconstant

moon,’ unless he can be the halo round it. He would glitter in the

sunshine of public favour, and yet he would cast no shadow. Please all

and please none is his rule, he has succeeded. He thinks it a great

disparagement of his parts, a proof of a narrow and contracted mind, to

be thought to hold only the sentiments which he professes. His capacious

mind has room for all opinions, both those which he believes and those

which he does not. He thinks he shews the greatest magnanimity when he

shews the greatest contempt for his own principles, past, present, and

to come. He would be esteemed greatly superior, not only to the rest of

the world, but to himself. Would any one catch him in the trammels of a

sect? Would any one make him swear to the dogmas of a party? Would any

one suppose that he has any prejudices in favour of his own notions?

That he is blindly wedded to one single view of a subject, as a man is

wedded to one wife? He is shocked at any such imputation of intellectual

uxoriousness. Would the Presbyterians try to hook him in?—he knows

better than Socinus or old John Knox. Would the Established Church

receive him at her wide portals?—he carries too great a weight of the

Fathers and school divinity at his back. Would the Whigs patronise

him?—he is too straitened in antiquated notions and traditional

prejudices. Would the Tories take him in?—he is too liberal,

enlightened, and transcendental for them. Would principle bind him?—he

shuffles out of it, as a clog upon his freedom of thought, ‘his large

discourse of reason, looking before and after.’ Would interest lay dirty

hands upon him?—he jockies her too by some fetch or conundrum, borrowed

from the great clerks of the so-called Dark Ages. You can no more know

where to have him than an otter. You might as well hedge the cuckoo. You

see him now squat like a toad at the ear of the _Courier_; and oh! that

we could rouse him up once more into an archangel’s shape. But what is

it to him what so poor a thing as he himself is, who is sublimely

indifferent to all other things, and who may be looked upon as a

terrible petrification of religion, genius, and the love of liberty. Yet

it is too much to think that he who began his career with two Sonnets to

Lord Stanhope and Mary Wolstonecraft, in the _Morning Chronicle_, should

end with slimy, drivelling abuse of Jacobinism and the French

Revolution, in the _Courier_;—that, like some devoted fanatic, he should

seek the praise of martyrdom by mangling his own soul with a

prostituted, unpaid-for pen, and let out his last breath as a pander to

that which would be a falsehood, but that it means nothing.

CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE (CANTO IV.)

_The Yellow Dwarf._] [_May 2, 1818._

‘I do perceive a fury in your words, but nothing wherefore.’