Modern legislation is chiefly remarkable for its oppressive interference
with the elegant amusements of the mob. Bartholomew-fair is abolished;
bull-baiting, cock-pits, and duck-hunts are put down by act of Parliament;
prize-fighting, by the New Police--even those morally healthful
exhibitions, formerly afforded opposite the Debtors' Door of Newgate, for
the sake of _example_--that were attended by idlers in hundreds, and
thieves in thousands--are fast growing into disuse. The "masses" see no
pleasure now: even the hanging-matches are cut off.
Deeply compassionating the effects of so illiberal an innovation, Mr. G.
Almar the author to, and Mr. R. Honner the proprietor of, Sadler's Wells
Theatre, have produced an exhibition which in a great degree makes up for
the infrequent performances at the Old Bailey. Those whose moral
sensibilities are refined to the choking point--who can relish stage
strangulation in all its interesting varieties better than Shakspere, are
now provided with a rich treat. They need not wait for the Recorder's
black cap and a black Monday morning--the Sadler's Wells' people hang
every night with great success; for, unless one goes early, there is--as
is the case wherever hanging takes place--no _standing room_ to be had for
love or money.
The play is simply the history of Jack Ketch, a gentleman who flourished
at the beginning of the last century, and who, by industry and
perseverance, attained to the rank of public executioner; an office he
performed with such skill and effect that his successors have, as the
bills inform us, inherited "his soubriquet" with his office. He is
introduced to the audience as a ropemaker's apprentice, living in the
immediate neighbourhood of Execution-Dock, and loving _Barbara Allen_, "a
young spinster residing at the Cottage of Content, upon the borders of
Epping Forest, supporting herself by the produce of her wheel and the
cultivation of her flower-garden." He beguiles his time, while twisting
the hemp, by spinning a tedious yarn about this well-to-do spinster; from
which we infer _Barbara's_ barbarity, and that he is crossed in love. The
soliloquy is interrupted by an elderly man, who enters to remark that he
has come out for a little relaxation after a hard morning's work: no
wonder, for we soon learn that he is the _Jack Ketch_ of his day, and has,
but an hour before, tucked up two brace of pirates. With this pleasing
information, and a sharp dialogue on his favourite subject with the hero,
he retires.
Here the interest begins; three or four foot-stamps are heard behind;
_Jack_ starts--"Ah, that noise," &c.--and on comes the author of the
piece, "his first appearance here these five years." He approaches the
foot-lights--he turns up his eyes--he thumps his breast--and goes through
this exercise three or four times, before the audience understand that
they are to applaud. They do so; and the play goes on as if nothing had
happened; for this is an episode expressive of a "first appearance these
five years." _Gipsy George_ or Mr. G. Almar, whichever you please, having
assured _Jack Ketch_ that he is starving and in utter destitution,
proceeds to give five shillings for a piece of rope, and walks away, after
taking great pains to assure everybody that he is going to hang himself.
Before, however, he has had time to make the first coil of a hempen
collar, _Jack_ looks off, and descries the stranger in the last agonies of
strangulation, amidst the most deafening applause from the audience, whose
disgust is indignantly expressed by silence when he exits to cut the man
down. Their delight is only revived by the apparition of _Gipsy George_,
pale and ghastly, _with the rope round his neck_, and the exclamation that
he is "done for." _Barabbas_, the hangman, who re-appears with the rest,
is upbraided by _Jack_ for coolly looking on and letting the man hang
himself, without raising an alarm. Mr. B. answers, that "it was no
business of his." Like Sir Robert Peel and the rest of the profession, it
was evidently his maxim not to interfere, unless "regularly called in."
The _Gipsy_, so far from dying, recovers sufficiently to make to _Jack_
some important disclosures; but of that mysterious kind peculiar to
melodrama, by which nobody is the wiser. They, however, bear reference to
_Jack's_ deceased father, a clasp-knife, a certain _Sir Gregory_ of "the
gash," and the four gentlemen so recently suspended at Execution-Dock.
The residence of Content and Barbara Allen is a scene, the minute
correctness of which it would be wicked to doubt, when the bills so
solemnly guarantee that it is copied from the "best authorities."
_Barbara_ opens the door, makes a curtsey, produces a purse, and after
saying she is going to pay her rent, is, by an ingenious contrivance of
the Sadler's Wells' Shakspere, confronted with her landlord, the _Sir
Gregory_ before-mentioned. All stage-landlords are villains, who prefer
seduction to rent, and he of the "gash" is no exception. The struggle,
rescue, and duel, which follow, are got through in no time. The last would
certainly have been fatal, had not the assailant's servant come on to
announce that "a gentleman wished to speak to him at his own residence."
The lover (who is of course the rescuer) deems this a sufficient excuse to
let off his antagonist without a scratch; _Barbara_ rewards him with an
embrace and a rose, just as another rival intrudes himself in the person
of _Mr. John Ketch_. The altercation which now ensues is but slight; for
_Jack_, instead of fighting, goes off to Fairlop-fair with another young
lady, who seems to come upon the stage for no other purpose than to oblige
him. At the fair we find _Jack's_ spirits considerably damped by the
prediction of a gipsy, that he will marry a hangman's daughter; but, after
the jumping in sacks, which forms a part of the sports, he rescues
_Barbara_ from being once more assailed by her landlord. Thereupon another
component of the festive scene--our friend the hangman--declares that she
is his daughter! "Horror" tableau, and end of Act I.
After establishing a lapse of four years between the acts, the author
takes high ground;--we are presented with the summit of Primrose-hill, St.
Paul's in the distance, and a gentleman with black clothes, and literary
habits, reading in the foreground. This turns out to be "The Laird
Lawson," _Barbara's_ favoured lover and benevolent duellist. Though on the
top of Cockney Mount, he is suffering under a deep depression of spirits;
for he has never seen _Miss Allen_ during four years, come next
Fairlop-fair. Having heard this, the audience is, of course, quite
prepared for that lady's appearance; and, sure enough, on she comes,
accounting for her presence with great adroitness:--having left the city
to go to Holloway, she is taking a short cut over Primrose-hill. The
lovers go through the mode of recognition never departed from at minor
theatres, with the most frantic energy, and have nearly hugged themselves
out of breath, when the executioner papa interrupts the blissful scene,
without so much as saying how he got there; but "finishers" are mysterious
beings. _Barabbas_ denounces the laird; and when his consent is asked for
the hand of _Miss Barbara_, tells the lover "he will see him hanged
first!"
The moon, a dark stage, and _Jack Ketch_ in the character of a foot-pad,
now add to the romance of the drama. Not to leave anything unexplained,
the hero declares, that he has cut the walk of life he formerly trod in
the rope ditto, and has been induced to take to the road solely by Fate,
brandy and (not salt, but) _Barbara!_ By some extraordinary accident,
every character in the piece, with two exceptions, have occasion to tread
this scene--"Holloway and heath near the village of Holloway" (painted
from the best authorities), just exactly in time to be robbed by _Ketch_;
who shows himself a perfect master of his business, and a credit to his
instructor; for _Gipsy George_ rewards _Jack_ for saving him from hanging,
by showing his friend the shortest way to the gallows.
In the following scene, the plot breaks out in a fresh place. The man with
the "gash," and _Gipsy George_ are together, going over some youthful
reminiscences. It seems that once upon a time there were six pirates; four
were those pendents from the gibbet at Execution-Dock one hears so much
about at the commencement; the fifth is the speaker, _Gipsy George_; and
"you," exclaims that person, striking an attitude, and addressing _Sir
Gregory_, "make up the half-dozen!" They all formerly did business in a
ship called the "Morning Star," and whenever the ex-pirate number five is
in pecuniary distress, he bawls out into the ear of _ci-devant_ pirate
number six, the words "Morning Star!" and a purse of hush-money is forked
out in a trice. In this manner _Gipsy George_ accumulates, by the end of
the piece, a large property; for six or eight purses, all ready filled for
each occasion, thus pass into his pockets.
The "best authorities" furnish us, next, with an interior; that of "the
Mug, a chocolate house and tavern," where a new plot is hatched against
the crown and dignity of the late respected George the First, by a party
of Jacobites. These consist of a half-dozen of Hanoverian Whigs, who
enter, duly decorated with an equal number of hats of every variety of
cock and cockade. The heroine seems to have engaged herself here as
waitress, on purpose to meet her persecutor, _Sir Gregory_, and her late
lover, _Jack Ketch_. What comes of this rencontre it is impossible to make
out, for a general _mélée_ ensues, caused by a discovery of the plot;
which is by no means a gunpowder plot; for although a file of soldiers
present their arms for several minutes full at the conspirators, not a
single musket goes off. Perhaps gunpowder was expensive in the reign of
George the First. _Jack Ketch_ ends the act with a dream--an _apropos
finale_, for we caught several of our neighbours napping. The scene in
which this vision takes place is the crowning result of the painter's
researches amongst the "best authorities;" it being no less than "a garret
in Grub-street, _in which the great Daniel De Foe composed his romance of
Robinson Crusoe!!_"
A fishing-party--whose dulness is relieved by a suicide--opens the last
act: one of the anglers having finished a comic song--which from its
extreme gravity forms an appropriate dirge to the forthcoming
felo-de-se--goes off with his companion to leave the water clear for
_Barbara Allen_, who enters, takes an affecting leave of her laird lover,
and straightway drowns herself. _Jack Ketch_ is now, by a rapid change of
scene, discovered in limbo, and condemned to death; why, we were too
stupid to make out. The fatal cart--very likely modelled after "the best
authorities"--next occupies the stage, drawn by a real horse, and filled
with _Sir Gregory Gash_ (who it seems is going to be hanged) and _Jack
Ketch_ not as a prisoner, but as an officer of the crown; for we are to
suppose that _Mr. Barabbas_, having retired from the public scaffold to
private life, has seceded in favour of _Jack Ketch_, who is saved from the
rope himself, on condition of his using it upon the person of _Sir
Gregory_ and every succeeding criminal. All the characters come on with
the cart, and a _dénouement_ evidently impends. The distracted lover
demands of somebody to restore his mistress, which _Gipsy George_ is
really so polite as to do; for although the bills expressly inform us she
has committed "suicide," and we have actually seen her jump into the river
Lea; yet there she is safe and sound!--carefully preserved in an envelope
formed partly by the _Gipsy_ himself, and partly by his cloak. She, of
course, embraces her lover, and leaves _Jack Ketch_ to embrace his
profession with what appetite he may; all, in fact, ends happily, and _Sir
Gregory_ goes off to be hanged.
This, then, is the state to which the founders of the Newgate school of
dramatic literature, and the march of intellect, have brought us. Nothing
short of actual hanging--the most revolting and repulsive of all possible
subjects to enter, much less to dwell in any mind not actually
savage--must now be provided to meet the refined taste of play-goers. In
the present instance, nothing but the actual _spiciness_ of the subject
saved the piece from the last sentence of even Sadler's Wells' critical
law; for in construction and detail, it is the veriest mass of incoherent
rubbish that was ever shot upon the plains of common sense. The sketch we
have made is in no one instance exaggerated. Our readers may therefore
easily judge whether we speak truly or not.
* * * * *