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25. Thus far the Times critic: from all which it appears that Miss
Hannah More is not like Shakespear. The writer afterwards tries his
hand at a comparison between Miss More and Virgil; and the result,
after due deliberation, is, that Virgil was the wiser man. The part,
however, to which the learned commentator has the most decided
objection, is that ‘where Elwina steps out of her way to preach rather
a lengthy sermon to her father, against war in general, as offensive to
the Prince of Peace.’—Now if this writer had thought proper, he
might have discovered that the whole play is ‘a lengthy sermon,’
without poetry or interest, and equally deficient in ‘sculptured grace,
and Promethean fire.’—We should not have made these remarks, but
that the writers in the above paper have a greater knack than any
others, of putting a parcel of tall opaque words before them, to blind
the eyes of their readers, and hoodwink their own understandings.
There is one short word which might be aptly inscribed on its
swelling columns—it is the word which Burchell applies to the
conversation of some high-flown female critics in the Vicar of
Wakefield.
But to have done with this subject. We shall not readily forgive
Miss Hannah More’s heroine Elwina, for having made us perceive
what we had not felt before, that there is a considerable degree of
manner and monotony in Miss O’Neill’s acting. The peculiar
excellence which has been ascribed to Miss O’Neill (indeed over
every other actress) is that of faultless nature. Mrs. Siddons’s acting
is said to have greater grandeur, to have possessed loftier flights of
passion and imagination; but then it is objected, that it was not a
pure imitation of nature. Miss O’Neill’s recitation is indeed nearer
the common standard of level speaking, as her person is nearer the
common size, but we will venture to say that there is as much a tone,
a certain stage sing-song in her delivery as in Mrs. Siddons’s.
Through all the tedious speeches of this play, she preserved the same
balanced artificial cadence, the same melancholy tone, as if her
words were the continued echo of a long-drawn sigh. There is the
same pitch-key, the same alternation of sad sounds in almost every
line. We do not insist upon perfection in any one, nor do we mean to
decide how far this intonation may be proper in tragedy; but we
contend, that Miss O’Neill does not in general speak in a natural tone
of voice, nor as people speak in conversation. Her great excellence is
extreme natural sensibility; that is, she perfectly conceives and
26. expresses what would be generally felt by the female mind in the
extraordinary and overpowering situations in which she is placed. In
truth, in beauty, and in that irresistible pathos, which goes directly to
the heart, she has at present no equal, and can have no superior.
There were only one or two opportunities for the display of her
delightful powers in the character of Elwina, but of these she made
the fullest use. The expression of mute grief, when she hears of the
death of Percy, in the last act, was as fine as possible: nor could any
thing be more natural, more beautiful or affecting, than the manner
in which she receives his scarf, and hurries out with it, tremulously
clasping it to her bosom. It was one of those moments of still, and
breathless passion, in which the tongue is silent, while the heart
breaks. We did not approve of her dying scene at all. It was a mere
convulsive struggle for breath, the representation of a person in the
act of suffocation—one of those agonies of human nature, which, as
they do not appeal to the imagination, should not certainly be
obtruded on the senses. Once or twice Miss O’Neill dropped her
voice so low, and articulated so internally, that we gathered what she
said rather from the motion of her lips, than from distinguishing the
sound. This in Mr. Kean would be called extravagance. We were
heartily glad when the play was over. From the very construction of
the plot, it is impossible that any good can come of it till all the
parties are dead; and when this catastrophe took place, the audience
seemed perfectly satisfied.
28. WHERE TO FIND A FRIEND
The Examiner.
November 26, 1815.
A new Comedy, entitled Where to find a Friend, and said to be
from the pen of a Mr. Leigh, has been brought out at Drury-Lane
Theatre. The Dramatis Personæ are as follows:
General Torrington Mr. Bartley.
Sir Harry Moreden Mr. Wallack.
Heartly Mr. Dowton.
Young Bustle Mr. Knight.
Barney Mr. Johnstone.
Tim Mr. Oxberry.
Lady Moreden Mrs. Davison.
Maria Miss Kelly.
Mrs. Bustle Mrs. Sparks.
The story is not easily told, for it is a story almost destitute of
events. Sir Harry Moreden has been for some years married to an
heiress, a woman of exemplary principles and amiable feelings; but
who, as it appears, through no other misconduct than a little playful
gaiety of manner, has so far provoked the capricious and irritable
temper of her husband, that he writes off to General Torrington, her
guardian, gravely proposing a separation. This letter brings the
General down from London, in order to learn from the Baronet his
real cause of quarrel with his wife; and a singular conversation
ensues, in which, to every conjecture of the General’s as to the nature
of Lady M.’s offences, the unaccountable husband answers in the
negative, leaving it to the discernment of her guardian to find out the
actual source of his disquietude. This, it appears, in the course of the
play, is a certain fashionable levity and sportiveness of manner, with
which it is rather extraordinary that Sir Harry should be displeased,
as another objection on which he sometimes dwells is the rusticity of
his wife’s taste, in not having any inclination for the dissipation and
frivolities of a town life. Some improbable scenes are however
29. introduced to explain the merits of this matrimonial question, in
which the studied levity on one side is contrasted with the
unconscious violence on the other, until at length Lady Moreden,
hearing from her guardian that her husband is much embarrassed in
his circumstances, and almost on the point of ruin, reproaches
herself with her thoughtless habit of tormenting him; and prevails
upon the General to concur with her in applying her own large
fortune, left to her separately by her father’s will, to the relief of her
husband’s distresses: at the moment when Sir Harry is complaining
of his not knowing ‘where to find a friend,’ all his applications to
those whom he had considered such having proved unsuccessful, her
guardian introduces his wife to him, which produces the
reconciliation between them, and gives rise to the title of the play.
In the progress and developement of this story there is very little to
interest or surprise: the sentimental part of the comedy is founded
on the story of Heartly, whose daughter Maria has run away from
him, and been privately married to a man of fashion, but who having,
for family reasons, enjoined secresy upon her in his absence abroad,
subjects her, in her father’s eyes, to the supposed disgrace of a
criminal connection. Old Heartly retires into the country in a
melancholy state of mind, and Maria, finding herself unexpectedly
near to his cottage, determines to throw herself upon his forgiveness,
prevails upon an honest old servant to admit her to his presence,
supplicates for pardon, and is again received into his affections. This
reconciliation is not well brought about. Her seeking the interview
with her father through the connivance of a servant, after the
repeated rejection of every application to his tenderness, and when
she has an advocate in General Torrington, an old friend of Heartly’s,
who has undertaken to bring about a reconciliation, is not
exceedingly probable. After her clandestine introduction by the
servant, the reconciliation is first effected between Heartly and
Maria, on the supposition of her guilt, and is afterwards acted as it
were twice over, when the sight of a ring on her finger leads to the
discovery of her innocence. The comedy opens with the arrival of
Maria at a country inn, near Moreden-hall, kept by the widow Bustle.
The introductory scene between this veteran lady of the old school,
and her son Jack Bustle, who is infected with the modern cant of
humanity, and is besides very indecorous in his manners, is tediously
long. Maria’s depositing the hundred pounds in the hands of Mrs.
30. Bustle is a gratuitous improbability; and it is with some difficulty
that the notes are retrieved for the use of the right owner by the busy
interference of Mr. Jack Bustle and the generosity of Mr. Barney
O’Mulchesen, an honest Irishman, who at the beginning of the play is
the ostler, but at the end of it, as he himself informs us, becomes ‘the
mistress of the Black Lion.’
Johnstone gave great spirit, and an appearance of cordial good
humour, to this last character. He has a great deal of ‘the milk of
human kindness’ in all his acting. There is a rich genial suavity of
manner, a laughing confidence, a fine oily impudence about him,
which must operate as a saving grace to any character he is
concerned in, and would make it difficult to hiss him off the stage. In
any other hands we think Mr. Barney O’Mulchesen would have stood
some chance of being damned. Oxberry’s Tim was excellent: in those
kind of loose dangling characters, in which the limbs do not seem to
hang to the body nor the body to the mind, in which he has to display
meanness and poverty of spirit together with a natural love of good
fellowship and good cheer, there is nobody equal to Oxberry. His
scene with Dowton, his master, who comes home, and finds him just
returning from the fair, from the passionateness of the master and
the meekness of the man, had a very comic effect. This was the best
scene in the play, and the only one in it, which struck us as
containing any thing like originality in the conception of humour and
character. Of Mrs. Davison’s Lady Moreden, we cannot speak
favourably, if we are to speak what we think. Her acting is said to
have much playfulness about it; if so, it is horse-play.
A singularity in the construction of the scenes of this comedy is,
that they are nearly an uninterrupted series of tête-à-têtes: the
personages of the drama regularly come on in couples, and the two
persons go off the stage to make room for two others to come on, just
like the procession to Noah’s Ark. Perhaps this principle might be
improved upon, by making an entire play of nothing but soliloquies.
Covent-Garden.
Cymon, an opera, by Garrick, was brought out on Monday. It is not
very interesting, either in itself or the music. Mr. Duruset played
Cymon very naturally, though the compliment is, perhaps, somewhat
equivocal. Miss Stephens looked very prettily in Sylvia; but the songs
31. had not any great effect: ‘Sweet Passion of Love’ was the best of
them.
‘It is silly sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love.’
Mrs. Liston, who played a little old woman, was encored in the
burlesque song, ‘Now I am seventy-two.’ Mr. Liston’s Justice Dorus
is a rich treat: his face is certainly a prodigious invention in
physiognomy.
33. MISS O’NEILL’S BELVIDERA
The Examiner.
December 10, 1815.
Miss O’Neill repeated her usual characters last week. We saw her
in Belvidera, and were disappointed. We do not think she plays it so
well as she did last year. We thought her representation of it then as
near perfection as possible; and her present acting we think
chargeable in many instances, with affectation and extravagance. She
goes into the two extremes of speaking so loud as to ‘split the ears of
the groundlings’ and so low as not to be heard. She has (or we
mistake) been taking a bad lesson of Mr. Kean: in our opinion, the
excellences of genius are not communicable. A second-rate actor may
learn of a first; but all imitation in the latter must prove a source of
error: for the power with which great talent works, can only be
regulated by its own suggestions and the force of nature. The bodily
energy which Mr. Kean exhibits cannot be transferred to female
characters, without making them disgusting instead of impressive.
Miss O’Neill during the two last acts of Belvidera, is in a continual
convulsion. But the intention of tragedy is to exhibit mental passion
and not bodily agony, or the last only as a necessary concomitant of
the former. Miss O’Neill clings so long about Jaffier, and with such
hysterical violence, before she leaps upon his neck and calls for the
fatal blow, that the connection of the action with the sentiment is lost
in the pantomime exhibition before us. We are not fastidious; nor do
we object to having the painful worked up with the catastrophe to the
utmost pitch of human suffering; but we must object to a constant
recurrence of such extreme agony, as a convenient common-place or
trick to bring down thunders of applause. Miss O’Neill twice, if we
remember, seizes her forehead with her clenched fists, making a
hissing noise through her teeth, and twice is thrown into a fit of
agonized choking. Neither is her face fine enough in itself not to
become unpleasant by such extreme and repeated distortion. Miss
O’Neill’s freedom from mannerism was her great charm, and we
34. should be sorry to see her fall into it. Mr. C. Kemble’s Jaffier had very
considerable effect. Mr. Young’s Pierre is his best character.
A new Farce was brought out here on Monday week, the title of
which is What’s a Man of Fashion? a question which it does not
solve. A young lady (Miss Mathews) is left a fortune by her father, on
condition of her marrying a man of fashion within a year of his
death. Her aunt (Mrs. Davenport) is left her guardian, and locks her
up to prevent her marrying any one, that the fortune may devolve to
her. Old Project (personated by Fawcett) is instigated by the young
lady, through the key-hole of the door where she is locked up, to find
her a husband who shall also be a man of fashion; and just as the old
gentleman, who is a very strange mixture of the sailor, fox-hunter,
and Bond-street lounger, has undertaken this laudable task, he
meets his nephew (Mr. Jones), whom he fixes upon as the candidate
for the young lady and for fifty thousand pounds. The whole business
of the piece arises out of the attempts of Old Project to bring them
together, and the schemes of the aunt to prevent the conclusion of
the marriage before the expiration of the year, that is, before it
strikes twelve o’clock at night. After many trifling and improbable
adventures, Old Project and his nephew succeed. The clock strikes
twelve, but the man of fashion and his mistress have been married a
few minutes before, though nobody knows how. We do not think this
farce a bit better than some we have lately noticed. The author seems
to have sat down to write it without a plot. There is neither dialogue
nor character in it, nor has it any thing to make it amusing, but the
absurdity of the incidents.
We have seen Miss O’Neill in the Orphan, and almost repent of
what we have said above. Her Monimia is a piece of acting as
beautiful as it is affecting. We never wish to see it acted otherwise or
better. She is the Orphan that Otway drew.
35. ‘With pleas’d attention ‘midst his scenes we find
Each glowing thought that warms the female mind;
Each melting sigh and every tender tear,
The lover’s wishes, and the virgin’s fear,
His every strain the Smiles and Graces own.’
This idea of the character, which never leaves the mind in reading
the play, was delightfully represented on the stage. Miss O’Neill did
not once overstep the limits of propriety, and was interesting in every
part. Her conversation with the page was delicately familiar and
playful. Her death was judiciously varied, and did not affect the
imagination less, because it gave no shock to the senses. Her greatest
effort, however, was in the scene with Polydore, where she asks him,
‘Where did you rest last night?’ and where she falls senseless on the
floor at his answer. The breathless expectation, the solemn
injunction, the terror which the discovery strikes to her heart as if
she had been struck with lightning, had an irresistible effect. Nothing
could be pourtrayed with greater truth and feeling. We liked Charles
Kemble’s Castalio not much, and Mr. Conway’s Polydore not at all. It
is impossible that this gentleman should become an actor, unless he
could take ‘a cubit from his stature.’ Mr. Young’s Chamont was quite
as good as the character deserves.
Mr. Kean’s appearance at Drury-Lane on Tuesday, in the Duke
Aranza, in the Honey Moon, excited considerable expectations in the
public. Our own were not fulfilled. We think this the least brilliant of
all his characters. It was Duke and no Duke. It had severity without
dignity; and was deficient in ease, grace, and gaiety. He played the
feigned character as if it were reality. Now we believe that a spirit of
raillery should be thrown over the part, so as to carry off the gravity
of the imposture. There is in Mr. Kean an infinite variety of talent,
with a certain monotony of genius. He has not the same ease in doing
common things that he has energy on great occasions. We seldom
entirely lose sight of his Richard, and to a certain degree, in all his
acting, ‘he still plays the dog.’ His dancing was encored. George II.
encored Garrick in the Minuet de la Cour: Mr. Kean’s was not like
court dancing. It had more alacrity than ease.
37. THE MERCHANT OF BRUGES
The Examiner.
December 17, 1815.
The Merchant of Bruges; or, The Beggars’ Bush, altered from
Beaumont and Fletcher, was brought out at Drury-Lane on
Thursday, with great preparation, applause, and effect. Contrary, we
believe, to Green-room expectation, it answered completely. This,
assuredly, is not a classical drama; but the spirit of poetry constantly
peeps out from beneath the rags, and patches, and miserable
disguise, in which it is clothed. Where the eye was most offended by
the want of costume, songs and music came to its relief. The airs
selected by Mr. T. Cooke were admirably adapted to the situations,
and we need not remind the critical reader, that the lyrical effusions
in Beaumont and Fletcher are master-pieces in their kind. They are
exactly fitted to be either ‘said or sung’ under the green-wood tree.
One or two of these were sung separately, with a good deal of
sweetness and characteristic naiveté, by Miss L. Kelly, who is one of
the supposed beggars, but a princess in disguise. Either we mistook
certain significant intimations, or she wished to make this appear
before the proper time. One of the oddest transformations in the
Beggars’ Bush, was, that it inspired Mr. Holland with no small degree
of animation and fancy; for he depicted the worthy Clause, who is at
the same time the King of the Beggars, the Father of the Merchant of
Bruges, and the old Earl of Flanders, inimitably well.
Again, Mr. Oxberry and Harley were most respectable Beggars,
and had their cues perfect (which was more than Mr. Pope had in the
prologue); Mr. Kean topped his part as the Merchant-Earl, Mr.
Munden was not far behind him as the drunken Burgo-master, and
Mr. S. Penley, Mr. Rae, and Mr. Raymond, served to fill the stage.
The scenes from which this play derived its interest, and which both
for sentiment and situation were admirable, are those in which Mr.
Kean vindicates his character as a Merchant and his love for
Gertrude against the arrogant assumptions of her uncle (Raymond),
and disarms the latter in the fight. His retort upon the noble baron,
38. who accuses him of being a barterer of pepper and sugar, ‘that every
petty lord lived upon his rents or the sale of his beves, his poultry, his
milk and his butter,’ made a forcible appeal to John Bull, nor did the
manner in which Munden, who is bottle-holder on the occasion,
vociferated, ‘Don’t forget butter,’ take away from the effect. The
whole of this scene is (if not in the best) in the most peculiar and
striking manner of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is the very petulance of
youthful ardour and aspiring self-opinion, defying and taunting the
frigid prejudices of age and custom. If Mr. Kean’s voice failed him,
his expression and his action did full justice to the heroic spirit and
magnanimity of conception of the poet, where he says to his
mistress, after depriving his antagonist of his sword, ‘Within these
arms thou art safe as in a wall of brass,’ and again, folding her to his
breast, exclaims, ‘Come, kiss me, love,’ and afterwards rising in his
extravagant importunity, ‘Come, say before all these, say that thou
lov’st me.’ We do not think any of the German dramatic paradoxes
come up to this in spirit, and in acting as it were up to the feeling of
the moment, irritated by a triumph over long-established and
insolent pretension. The scene between Mr. Kean and Gertrude (Mrs.
Horn), where he is in a manner distracted between his losses and his
love, had great force and feeling. We have seen him do much the
same thing before. There is a very fine pulsation in the veins of his
forehead on these occasions, an expression of nature which we do
not remember in any other actor. One of the last scenes, in which
Clause brings in the money-bags to the creditors, and Kean bends
forward pointing to them, and Munden after him, repeating the same
attitude, but caricaturing it, was a perfect coup-de-théatre. The last
scene rather disappointed our expectations; but the whole together
went off admirably, and every one went away satisfied.
The story of the Merchant of Bruges is founded on the usurped
authority of Woolmar, as Earl of Flanders, to the exclusion of Gerald,
the rightful heir, and his infant son Floris; the latter of whom, on his
father being driven out by the usurper, has been placed with a rich
merchant of Bruges; whilst the father, with his infant daughter, takes
refuge among a band of Beggars, whose principal resort is in a wood
near the town of Bruges. Young Floris is brought up by the merchant
as his own son; and on the death of his protector, whom he considers
as his real father, succeeds to his property, and becomes the
principal merchant in Bruges. Gerald, in the mean time, is elected
39. King of the Beggars; and, by the influence which his authority gives
him over the fraternity, he is enabled to assist his son with a large
sum of money at a time when he is on the verge of bankruptcy, owing
to the non-arrival of several vessels richly laden, and which are
detained by contrary winds. This circumstance gives the supposed
Beggar considerable influence over the actions of his son, who
declares himself ready to pay him the duties of a son, without being
at all suspicious that it is indeed his real parent whom he is thus
obeying; and Gerald, determining to reveal to his son the mystery of
his birth, appoints an interview with him at midnight, near the
Beggar’s Bush, in the Forest. In the mean time Woolmar, having
learnt that Gerald and Floris, whom he supposes dead, are still
living, and that Gerald is concealed amongst the Beggars, goes with a
troop of horse at midnight to the Beggar’s Bush, for the purpose of
surprising him. His plan is, however, circumvented by Hubert, a
nobleman at the court of Woolmar, but who is secretly attached to
the right heir. Hubert conveys intelligence of the intended attempt of
Woolmar to Gerald, and a strong band of the Beggars are armed, and
set in readiness to seize him on his entering a particular part of the
forest, to which he is enticed by Hubert, under pretence of leading
him to the spot where Gerald is concealed. Here they arrive just at
the time Floris, by appointment, meets his father Gerald. Woolmar
falls into the trap prepared for him, and is, with his principal
confidant, Hemskirk, secured. An explanation takes place, and
Gerald resigning his pretensions to his son, Floris, the Merchant is
restored to the possession of the earldom of Flanders, and Woolmar,
the usurping Earl, is banished for life.
41. SMILES AND TEARS
The Examiner.
December 24, 1815.
A new piece in five acts, called Smiles and Tears; or the Widow’s
Stratagem, has been produced, with very considerable success, at
Covent-Garden Theatre. The Dramatis Personæ are:
Mr. Fitzharding Mr. Young.
Sir Henry Chomley Mr. C. Kemble.
Colonel O’Donolan Mr. Jones.
Mr. Stanley Mr. Fawcett.
Mr. Delaval Mr. Abbott.
Lady Emily Mrs. C. Kemble.
Mrs. Belmore Mrs. Faucit.
Miss Fitzharding Miss Foote.
The plot is as follows: Lady Emily, a young widow supposed to
possess every amiable quality of body and mind, has for her intimate
friend Mrs. Belmore, who is also a widow, and engaged in a law-suit
with Sir Henry Chomley, by which she is likely to lose her whole
fortune. Sir Henry has by chance met Lady Emily at a masquerade,
where he has become deeply enamoured of her figure, wit, and
vivacity, without having ever seen her face; and having at length
obtained information who she is, and where she resides, writes to
her, soliciting an interview, and declaring the impression which her
person and conversation had made on his heart. Lady Emily being
herself sincerely attached to Colonel O’Donolan, determines to
convert the passion of Sir Henry to the advantage of her friend Mrs.
Belmore; and as they have never seen each other, to introduce Mrs.
Belmore to Sir Henry as Lady Emily: but, aware that Mrs. Belmore
will not receive Sir Henry’s addresses, whom she regards as her
enemy, on account of the law-suit between them, she writes to Sir
Henry that she will admit his visits, but that it must, for particular
reasons, be under the assumed name of Grenville; and as Mr.
Grenville, she prevails on Mrs. Belmore to receive him in the name of
42. Lady Emily, assigning as her reason for this request, her fear of
seeing him herself, lest the Colonel’s jealousy should be excited.
Several interviews take place between Sir Henry and Mrs. Belmore,
who conceive so warm an attachment for each other, under their
assumed characters, that when the widow’s stratagem is discovered,
they gladly agree to put an end to their law-suit by a matrimonial
union. The other, and the most afflicting part of the plot, turns on a
stratagem conceived by Lady Emily (who it must be allowed is
fruitful in stratagems), to restore Fitzharding to his reason, and his
daughter to his affections, both of which had been lost by the
dishonourable conduct of Delaval, who had first seduced, and then
deserted the lovely and unsuspecting Cicely Fitzharding.
All that is particularly good in this play arises from the mistakes
and surprises produced by the double confusion of the names of the
principal characters concerned in the Widow’s Stratagem. The scene
between Charles Kemble and Jones, when the former acquaints him
with his success with the supposed Lady Emily, and in which Jones
testifies a resentment against his rival as violent as it is in reality
groundless, was in the true spirit of comedy. Jones’s scene with the
Widow Belmore (Mrs. Faucit), in which the mystery is cleared up to
him, is also conceived and executed with great spirit and effect. The
character which Jones represents, an Irish Colonel, is one of the
most misplaced and absurd we remember to have seen, and the only
excuse for whose blunders, rudeness, officiousness, and want of
common sense, is (as far as we could learn), that he is a countryman
of Lord Wellington. This is but an indifferent compliment to his
Grace, and perhaps no great one to Colonel O’Donolan. There were
two direct clap-traps aimed directly at the Duke’s popularity, which
did not take. The truth, we suspect, is, that his Lordship is not very
popular at present in either of his two great characters, as liberator of
Ferdinand VII. or as keeper of Louis XVIII. Charles Kemble played the
part of Sir Henry Chomley with that gentlemanly ease, gaiety, and
good nature, which always gain him the entire favour of the audience
in such characters. He indeed did as much for this play as if it had
been his own. Mrs. Faucit played Mrs. Belmore exceedingly well.
There was something that reminded us of a jointure and a view to a
second match in her whole look and air. We cannot speak a word of
praise of Mrs. C. Kemble’s Lady Emily. Neither her person nor her
manner at all suited the character, nor the description of it which is
43. several times interlarded in the dialogue. Her walk is not the fine
lady; she is nearly the worst actress we ever saw in the artificial
mimmine-pimmine style of Miss Farren. We hope she will
discontinue such characters, and return to nature; or she will make
us forget her Lucy Lockitt, or what we should hope never to forget,
her acting in Julio in Deaf and Dumb.
There is a great deal of affectation of gentility, and a great deal of
real indecorum, in the comic dialogue of this play. The tragic part is
violent and vulgar in the extreme. Mr. Young is brought forward as a
downright common madman, just broke loose from a madhouse at
Richmond, and is going with a club to dash out the brains of his
daughter, Miss Foote, and her infant. This infant is no other than a
large wooden doll: it fell on the floor the other evening without
receiving any hurt, at which the audience laughed. This dreadful
interlude is taken, we suppose, from Mrs. Opie’s tale of Father and
Daughter, of which we thought never to have heard or seen any thing
more. As the whole of this part is conceived without the smallest
poetical feeling, so Mr. Young did not contrive to throw one ray of
genius over it. Miss Foote behaved throughout very prettily, dutifully
and penitently; and in the last scene, where, to bring back her
father’s senses, she is made to stand in a frame and to represent her
own portrait playing on the harp, she looked a perfect picture.
45. GEORGE BARNWELL
The Examiner.
December 31, 1815.
George Barnwell has been acted as usual at both Theatres during
the Christmas week. Whether this is ‘a custom more honoured in the
breach or the observance,’ we shall not undertake to decide. But
there is one error on this subject which we wish to correct; which is,
that its defects arise from its being too natural. It is one of the most
improbable and purely arbitrary fictions we have ever seen. Lillo is
by some people considered as a kind of natural Shakespear, and
Shakespear as a poetical Lillo. We look upon Shakespear to have
been a greater man than the Ordinary of Newgate; and we at the
same time conceive that there is not any one of the stories in the
Newgate Calendar so badly told as this tragedy of Lillo’s. Lillo seems
to have proceeded on the old Scotch proverb,
‘The kirk is gude, and the gallows is gude.’
He comes with his moral lessons and his terrible examples; a sermon
in the morning and an execution at night; the tolling of the bell for
Tyburn follows hard upon the bell that knolls to church. Nothing can
be more virtuous or prudent than George Barnwell at the end of the
first act, or a more consummate rogue and fool than he is at the
beginning of the second. This play is a piece of wretched cant; it is an
insult on the virtues and the vices of human nature; it supposes that
the former are relinquished and the others adopted without common
sense or reason, for the sake of a Christmas catastrophe, of a
methodistical moral. The account of a young unsuspecting man
being seduced by the allurements of an artful prostitute is natural
enough, and something might have been built on this foundation,
but all the rest is absurd, and equally senseless as poetry or prose. It
is a caricature on the imbecility of goodness, and of the unprovoked
and gratuitous depravity of vice. Shakespear made ‘these odds more
even;’ that is, he drew from nature, and did not drag the theatre into
46. the service of the conventicle. George Barnwell first robs his master
at Milwood’s instigation: (this lady has the merit of being what Dr.
Johnson would have called ‘a good hater’). He then, being in want of
money, proceeds to rob and murder somebody; and in the way of
deliberation and selection fixes upon his uncle, his greatest friend
and benefactor, as if he were the only man in the world who carried a
purse. He therefore goes to seek him in his solitary walks, where,
good man, he is reading a book on the shortness and uncertainty of
human life, bursting out, as he reads, into suitable comments, which,
as his ungracious nephew, who watches behind him in crape, says,
shews that ‘he is the fitter for heaven.’ Well, he turns round, and sees
that he is way-laid by some one; but his nephew, at the sight of his
benign and well-known aspect, drops the pistol, but presently after
stabs him to the heart. This is no sooner effected without remorse or
pity, but the instant it is over, he loses all thought of the purpose
which had instigated him to the act, the securing his property (not
that it appears he had any about him), and this raw, desperate
convert to vice returns to his mistress, to say that he had committed
the murder, and omitted the robbery. On being questioned as to the
proceeds of so nefarious a business, our retrospective enthusiast
asks, ‘Could he lay sacrilegious hands on the body he had just
murdered?’ to which his cooler and more rational accomplice replies,
‘That as he had robbed him of his life, which was no doubt precious
to him, she did not see why he should not rifle his pockets of that
which, being dead, could be of no farther use to him.’ However,
Barnwell makes such a noise with his virtue and his penitence, that
she is alarmed for the consequences; and anticipating a discovery of
the whole, calls in the constable, and gives up her companion as a
measure of precaution. Her maid, however, who is her confidante,
has been before-hand with her, and she is also taken into custody,
and both are hanged. Such is the morality of this piece.
48. THE BUSY BODY
The Examiner.
January 7, 1816.
The admirable Comedy of the Busy Body was brought out at
Drury-Lane Theatre on Wednesday, for the purpose of introducing
Mrs. Mardyn in Miranda. She acted the part very delightfully, and
without at all overdoing it. We seem to regret her former luxuriance
of manner, and think she might take greater liberties with the public,
without offence. Though she has lost some of the heyday vivacity of
her natural spirits, she looks as charmingly as ever.
Mr. Dowton’s Gripe was not one of his best performances. It is
very much a character of grimace, and Munden perhaps would do it
better on this account, for he is the greatest caricaturist on the stage.
It was the character in which he originally appeared. We never saw
him in it, but in several parts we missed his broad shining face, the
orbicular rolling of his eye, and the alarming drop of his chin. Mr.
Dowton, however, gave the whining tones and the dotage of fondness
very well, and ‘his voice pipes and whistles in the sound, like second
childishness.’ If any thing, he goes too far in this, and drawls out his
ecstasies too much into the tabernacle sing-song.
Mr. Harley played Marplot in a very lively and amusing manner.
He presented a very laughable picture of blundering vivacity and
blank stupidity. This gentleman is the most moveable actor on the
stage. He runs faster and stops shorter than any body else. There was
but one fault in his delineation of the character. The officious
Marplot is a gentleman, a foolish one, to be sure; but Harley played it
like a footman. We observed also, that when Mr. Harley got very
deserved applause by his manner of strutting, and sidling, and
twisting himself about in the last scene, where he fights, he
continued to repeat the same gestures over again, as if he had been
encored by the audience.
We cannot close these remarks, without expressing the satisfaction
which we received from this play. It is not so profound in wit or
49. character as some other of the old Comedies, but it is nothing but
bustle and gaiety from beginning to end. The plot never ceases. The
ingenuity of contrivance is admirable. The developement of the story
is an uninterrupted series of what the French call coups de théatre,
and the situations succeed one another like the changes of machinery
in a pantomime. It is a true comic pantomime.
A lady of the name of Barnes has appeared in Desdemona at this
Theatre. Her voice is powerful, her face is pretty, but her person is
too petite and undignified for tragedy. Her conception of the part
was good, and she gave to some of the scenes considerable feeling
and effect; but who shall represent ‘the divine Desdemona?’
Mr. Kean’s Othello is his best character, and the highest effort of
genius on the stage. We say this without any exception or reserve. Yet
we wish it was better than it is. In parts, we think he rises as high as
human genius can go: at other times, though powerful, the whole
effort is thrown away in a wrong direction, and disturbs our idea of
the character. There are some technical objections. Othello was tall;
but that is nothing: he was black, but that is nothing. But he was not
fierce, and that is every thing. It is only in the last agony of human
suffering that he gives way to his rage and his despair, and it is in
working his noble nature up to that extremity, that Shakespear has
shewn his genius and his vast power over the human heart. It was in
raising passion to its height, from the lowest beginnings and in spite
of all obstacles, in shewing the conflict of the soul, the tug and war
between love and hatred, rage, tenderness, jealousy, remorse, in
laying open the strength and the weaknesses of human nature, in
uniting sublimity of thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, in
putting in motion all the springs and impulses which make up this
our mortal being, and at last blending them in that noble tide of deep
and sustained passion, impetuous, but majestic, ‘that flows on to the
Propontic and knows no ebb,’ that the great excellence of Shakespear
lay. Mr. Kean is in general all passion, all energy, all relentless will.
He wants imagination, that faculty which contemplates events, and
broods over feelings with a certain calmness and grandeur; his
feelings almost always hurry on to action, and hardly ever repose
upon themselves. He is too often in the highest key of passion, too
uniformly on the verge of extravagance, too constantly on the rack.
50. This does very well in certain characters, as Zanga or Bajazet, where
there is merely a physical passion, a boiling of the blood to be
expressed, but it is not so in the lofty-minded and generous Moor.
We make these remarks the more freely, because there were parts
of the character in which Mr. Kean shewed the greatest sublimity and
pathos, by laying aside all violence of action. For instance, the tone of
voice in which he delivered the beautiful apostrophe, ‘Then, oh,
farewell!’ struck on the heart like the swelling notes of some divine
music, like the sound of years of departed happiness. Why not all so,
or all that is like it? why not speak the affecting passage—‘I found not
Cassio’s kisses on her lips’—why not speak the last speech, in the
same manner? They are both of them, we do most strenuously
contend, speeches of pure pathos, of thought, and feeling, and not of
passion, venting itself in violence of action or gesture. Again, the
look, the action, the expression of voice, with which he accompanied
the exclamation, ‘Not a jot, not a jot,’ was perfectly heart-rending.
His vow of revenge against Cassio, and his abandonment of his love
for Desdemona, were as fine as possible. The whole of the third act
had an irresistible effect upon the house, and indeed is only to be
paralleled by the murder scene in Macbeth. Mr. Pope’s Iago was
better acted than usual, but he does not look the character. Mr.
Holland’s drunken scene was, as it always is, excellent.
52. A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS
The Examiner.
January 14, 1816.
Massinger’s play of A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which has been
brought out at Drury-Lane Theatre to introduce Mr. Kean in the part
of Sir Giles Overreach, must have afforded a rich treat to theatrical
amateurs. There is something in a good play well acted, a peculiar
charm, that makes us forget ourselves and all the world.
It has been considered as the misfortune of great talents for the
stage, that they leave no record behind them, except that of vague
rumour, and that the genius of a great actor perishes with him,
‘leaving the world no copy.’ This is a misfortune, or at least a
mortifying reflection, to actors; but it is, we conceive, an advantage
to the stage. It leaves an opening to originality. The stage is always
beginning anew; the candidates for theatrical reputation are always
setting out afresh, unencumbered by the affectation of the faults or
excellences of their predecessors. In this respect, we conceive that
the average quantity of dramatic talent remains more nearly the
same than that in any other walk of art. In the other arts, (as painting
and poetry), it may be supposed that what has been well done
already, by giving rise to endless vapid imitations, is an obstacle to
what might be done hereafter: that the models or chef d’œuvres of
art, where they are accumulated, choke up the path to excellence;
and that the works of genius, where they can be rendered permanent,
and transmitted from age to age, not only prevent, but render
superfluous, future productions of the same kind. We have not,
neither do we want, two Shakespears, two Miltons, two Raphaels,
two Popes, any more than we require two suns in the same sphere.
Even Miss O’Neill stands a little in the way (and it is paying her a
great compliment to say so) of our recollections of Mrs. Siddons. But
Mr. Kean is an excellent substitute for the memory of Garrick, whom
we never saw! When an author dies, it is no matter, for his works
remain. When a great actor dies, there is a void produced in society,
53. a gap which requires to be filled up. Who does not go to see Kean?
Who, if Garrick were alive, would go to see him? At least, either one
or the other must have quitted the stage; ‘For two at a time there’s no
mortal could bear.’ Again, we know that Mr. Kean cannot have been
spoiled by Garrick. He might indeed have been spoiled by Mr.
Kemble or Mr. Cooke, but he fortunately has not. The stage is a place
where genius is sure to come upon its legs in a generation or two. We
cannot conceive of better actors than some of those we now have. In
Comedy, Liston is as good as Edwin was when we were school-boys.
We grant that we are deficient in genteel comedy; we have no fine
gentlemen or ladies on the stage—nor off it. That which is merely
artificial and local is a matter of mimicry, and must exist, to be well
copied. Players, however, have little reason to complain of their
hard-earned, short-lived popularity. One thunder of applause from
pit, boxes, and galleries, is equal to a whole immortality of
posthumous fame; and when we hear an actor whose modesty is
equal to his merit, declare that he would like to see a dog wag his tail
in approbation, what must he feel when he sets the whole house in a
roar? Besides, Fame, as if their reputation had been entrusted to her
alone, has been particularly careful of the renown of her theatrical
favourites; she forgets one by one, and year by year, those who have
been great lawyers, great statesmen, and great warriors in their day;
but the name of Garrick still survives, with the works of Reynolds
and of Johnson.
We do not know any one now-a-days, who could write Massinger’s
Comedy of A New Way to Pay Old Debts, though we do not believe
that it was better acted at the time it was first brought out, than it is
at present. We cannot conceive of any one’s doing Mr. Kean’s part of
Sir Giles Overreach so well as himself. We have seen others in the
part, superior in the look and costume, in hardened, clownish, rustic
insensibility; but in the soul and spirit, no one equal to him. He is a
truly great actor. This is one of his very best parts. He was not at a
single fault. The passages which we remarked as particularly striking
and original, were those where he expresses his surprise at his
nephew’s answers, ‘His fortune swells him!—’Tis rank, he’s married!’
and again, where, after the exposure of his villanies, he calls to his
accomplice Marall in a half-wheedling, half-terrific tone, ‘Come
hither Marall, come hither.’ Though the speech itself is absurd and
out of character, his manner of stopping when he is running at his
54. foes, ‘I’m feeble, some widow’s curse hangs on my sword,’ was
exactly as if his arm had been suddenly withered, and his powers
shrivelled up on the instant. The conclusion was quite overwhelming.
Mr. Kean looked the part well, and his voice does not fail as it used to
do. Mr. Munden’s Marall was an admirable piece of acting, and
produced some of the most complete comic contrasts we ever saw.
He overdoes his parts sometimes, and sometimes gets into parts for
which he is not fit: but he has a fine broad face and manner which
tells all the world over. His manner of avoiding the honour of a salute
from the Lady Allworth, was a most deliberate piece of humour; and
the account of the unexpected good fortune of young Welborn almost
converts his eyes into saucers, and chokes him with surprise.
Mr. Oxberry’s Justice Greedy was very entertaining, both from the
subject and from his manner of doing it. Oxberry is a man of a
practical imagination, and the apparitions of fat turkeys, chines of
bacon, and pheasants dressed in toast and butter, evidently floated in
rapturous confusion before his senses. There is nothing that goes
down better than what relates to eating and drinking, on the stage, in
books, or in real life. Mr. Harley’s Welborn was indifferent, but he is
upon the whole a very pleasant actor. Mrs. Glover, as Lady Allworth,
puts on some very agreeable frowns; and Mr. Holland’s Lord Lovell
was one continued smile, without any meaning that we could
discover, unless this actor, after his disguise in the Beggar’s Bush,
was delighted with the restoration of his hat and feather.