Chapter XXI: Preface (12)

The first of these in tragedy is Mr. Kean. To show that we do not
conceive that tragedy regularly declines in every successive
generation, we shall say, that we do not think there has been in our
remembrance any tragic performer (with the exception of Mrs.
Siddons) equal to Mr. Kean. Nor, except in voice and person, and the
conscious ease and dignity naturally resulting from those
advantages, do we know that even Mrs. Siddons was greater. In truth
of nature and force of passion, in discrimination and originality,
we see no inferiority to any one on the part of Mr. Kean: but there
is an insignificance of figure, and a hoarseness of voice, that
necessarily _vulgarize_, or diminish our idea of the characters he
plays: and perhaps to this may be added, a want of a certain
correspondent elevation and magnitude of thought, of which Mrs.
Siddons’s noble form seemed to be only the natural mould and
receptacle. Her nature seemed always above the circumstances with
which she had to struggle: her soul to be greater than the passion
labouring in her breast. Grandeur was the cradle in which her genius
was rocked: for _her_ to be, was to be sublime! She did the greatest
things with child-like ease: her powers seemed never tasked to the
utmost, and always as if she had inexhaustible resources still in
reserve. The least word she uttered seemed to float to the end of
the stage: the least motion of her hand seemed to command awe and
obedience. Mr. Kean is all effort, all violence, all extreme
passion: he is possessed with a fury, a demon that leaves him no
repose, no time for thought, or room for imagination. He perhaps
screws himself up to as intense a degree of feeling as Mrs. Siddons,
strikes home with as sure and as hard a blow as she did, but he does
this by straining every nerve, and winding up every faculty to this
single point alone: and as he does it by an effort himself, the
spectator follows him by an effort also. Our sympathy in a manner
ceases with the actual impression, and does not leave the same grand
and permanent image of itself behind. The Othello furnishes almost
the only exception to these remarks. The solemn and beautiful manner
in which he pronounces the farewell soliloquy, is worth all
gladiatorship and pantomime in the world. His Sir Giles is his most
equal and energetic character: but it is too equal, too energetic
from the beginning to the end. There is no reason that he should
have the same eagerness, the same _impetus_ at the commencement as
at the close of his career: he should not have the fierceness of the
wild beast till he is goaded to madness by the hunters. Sir Giles
Mompesson (supposed to be the original character) we dare say, took
things more quietly, and only grew desperate with his fortunes.
Cooke played the general casting of the character better in this
respect: but without the same fine breaks and turns of passion.
Cooke indeed, compared to Kean, had only the _slang_ and _bravado_
of tragedy. Neither can we think Mr. Kemble equal to him, with all
his study, his grace, and classic dignity of form. He was the statue
of perfect tragedy, not the living soul. Mrs. Siddons combined the
advantage of form and other organic requisites with nature and
passion: Mr. Kemble has the external requisites, (at least of face
and figure) without the internal workings of the soul: Mr. Kean has
the last without the first, and, if we must make our election
between the two, we think the _vis tragica_ must take precedence of
every thing else. Mr. Kean, in a word, appears to us a test, an
_experimentum crucis_, to shew the triumph of genius over physical
defects, of nature over art, of passion over affectation, and of
originality over common-place monotony.—Next to Mr. Kean, the
greatest tragic performer now on the stage is undoubtedly Miss
O’Neill. She cannot take rank by the side of her great predecessor,
but neither can any other actress be at all compared with her. If we
had not seen Mrs. Siddons, we should not certainly have been able to
conceive any thing finer than some of her characters, such as
Belvidera, Isabella in the Fatal Marriage, Mrs. Beverly, and Mrs.
Haller, which (as she at first played them) in tenderness of
sensibility, and the simple force of passion, could not be
surpassed. She has, however, of late, carried the expression of
mental agony and distress to a degree of physical horror that is
painful to behold, and which is particularly repulsive in a person
of her delicacy of frame and truly feminine appearance.—Mrs. Bunn is
a beautiful and interesting actress in the sentimental drama; and in
the part of Queen Elizabeth, in Schiller’s Tragedy of Mary Stuart,
which she played lately, gave, in the agitation of her form, the
distracted thoughts painted in her looks, and the deep but fine and
mellow tones of her voice, earnest of higher excellence than she has
yet displayed. Her voice is one of the finest on the stage. It
resembles the deep murmur of a hive of bees in spring-tide, and the
words drop like honey from her lips.—Mr. Macready is, in our
opinion, a truly spirited and impassioned declaimer, with a noble
voice, and great fervour of manner; but, we apprehend, his _forte_
is rather in giving a loose to the tide of enthusiastic feeling or
sentiment, than in embodying individual character, or discriminating
the diversity of the passions. There is a gaiety and tip-toe
elevation in his personal deportment, which Mr. Kean has not, but in
other more essential points there is no room for competition. Of his
Coriolanus and Richard, we may have to speak in detail hereafter.

We shall conclude this introductory sketch with a few words on the
comic actors. Emery at Covent Garden might be said to be the best
_provincial_ actor on the London boards. In his line of rustic
characters he is a perfect actor. He would be a bold critic who
should undertake to show that in his own walk Emery ever did any
thing wrong. His Hodge is an absolute reality; and his Lockitt is as
sullen, as gloomy, and impenetrable as the prison walls of which he
is the keeper. His Robert Tyke is the sublime of tragedy in low
life.—Mr. Liston has more comic humour, more power of face, and a
more genial and happy vein of folly, than any other actor we
remember. His farce is not caricature: his drollery oozes out of his
features, and trickles down his face: his voice is a pitch-pipe for
laughter. He does some characters but indifferently, others
respectably; but when he _puts himself whole_ into a jest, it is
unrivalled.—Munden with all his merit, his whim, his imagination,
and with his broad effects, is a caricaturist in the comparison. He
distorts his features to the utmost stretch of grimace, and trolls
his voice about with his tongue in the most extraordinary manner,
but he does all this with an evident view to the audience: whereas
Liston’s style of acting is the unconscious and involuntary; he
indulges his own risibility or absurd humours to please himself, and
the odd noises he makes come from him as naturally as the bleating
of a sheep.—Elliston is an actor of great merit, and of a very
agreeable class: there is a joyousness in his look, his voice, and
manner; he treads the stage as if it was his ‘best-found, and latest
as well as earliest choice;’ writes himself comedian in any book,
warrant, or acquittance; hits the town between wind and water,
between farce and tragedy; touches the string of a mock heroic
sentiment with due pathos and vivacity; and makes the best strolling
gentleman, or needy poet, on the stage. His Rover is excellent: so
is his Duke in the Honeymoon; and in Matrimony he is best of
all.—Dowton is a genuine and excellent comedian; and, in speaking of
his Major Sturgeon, we cannot pass over, in disdainful silence,
Russell’s Jerry Sneak, and Mrs. Harlowe’s Miss Molly Jollop. Oxberry
is an actor of a strong rather than of a pleasant comic vein (his
Mawworm is particularly emphatical). Harley pleases others, for he
seems pleased himself; and little Knight, in the simplicity and good
nature of the country lad, is inimitable.

Of the particular parts in which these and other performers display
their talents to advantage, we must speak in future articles on this
subject; as well as of the merits of the modern drama itself; the
management of our theatres; and a variety of other topics, to which
we propose to give the best attention in our power—determined
neither to ‘extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.’

L. M.

No. II

[_February, 1820._

Since we wrote a former article on this subject, the stage has lost
one of its principal ornaments and fairest supports, in the person
of Miss O’Neill. As Miss Somerville changed her name for that of
Mrs. Bunn, and still remains on the stage, so Miss O’Neill has
altered hers for Mrs. Beecher, and has, we fear, quitted us for good
and all. ‘There were two upon the house-top: one was taken, and the
other was left!’ Though, on our own accounts, we do not think this
‘a consummation devoutly to be wished,’ yet we cannot say we are
sorry on her’s. Hymen has, in this instance, with his flaming torch
and saffron robe, borne a favourite actress from us, and held her
fast, beyond the seas and sounding shores, ‘to our moist vows
denied’: but, whatever complaints or repinings have been heard on
the occasion, we think Miss O’Neill was in the right to do as she
has done. _Fast bind fast find_, is an old proverb, and a good one,
and is no doubt applicable to both sexes, and on both sides of the
water. A husband, like death, cancels all other claims, and we
think, more especially, any imaginary and imperfect obligations,
(with a clipt sixpence, and clap hands and a bargain) to the stage
or to the town. Miss O’Neill, (for so her name may yet linger on our
tongues) made good her retreat in time from the world’s ‘slippery
turns,’ and we are glad that she has done so. It is better to retire
from the stage, when young, with fame and fortune, than to have to
return to it when old (as Mrs. Crawfurd, Mrs. Abington, and so many
others have done) in poverty, neglect, and scorn. There is no
marriage for better and for worse to the public; it is but a ‘Mr.
Limberham, or Kind Keeper,’ at the very best: it does not tie itself
to worship its favourites, or ‘with its worldly goods them endow,’
through good report, or evil report, in sickness or in health, ‘till
death them do part.’ No such thing is even thought of: they must be
always young, always beautiful, and dazzling, and allowed to be so;
or they are instantly discarded, and they pass from their full-blown
pride, and the purple light that irradiates them, into ‘the list of
weeds, and wornout faces.’ If a servant of the theatre dismisses
himself without due warning, it makes a great deal of idle talk:
but, on the other hand, does the theatre never dismiss one of its
servants without formal notice, and is any thing then said about it?
How many old favourites of the town—that many-headed abstraction,
with new opinions, whims, and follies ever sprouting from its
teeming brain; how many decayed veterans of the stage, do we
remember, in the last ten or twenty years, laid aside ‘in monumental
mockery’; thrown from the pinnacle of prosperity and popularity, to
pine in poverty and obscurity, their names forgotten, or staring in
large capitals, asking for a benefit at some minor theatre! How many
of these are to be seen, walking about with shrunk shanks and
tattered hose, avoiding the eye of the stranger whom they suppose to
have known them in better days; straggling through the streets with
faultering steps, and on some hopeless errand,—with sinking hearts,
or heart-broken long ago:—engaged, dismissed again, tampered with,
tantalised, trifled with, pelted, hooted, scorned, unpitied:
performing quarantine at a distance from the centre of all their
hopes and wishes, as if their names were a stain on their former
reputations;—or perhaps received once more,—tolerated, endured out
of charity, in the very places that they once adorned and gladdened
by their presence!—And all this, often without any fault in
themselves, any misconduct, any change, but in the taste and humour
of the audience; or from their own imprudence, in not guarding
(while they had the opportunity) against the ingratitude and
treachery of that very public, that claims them as its property, and
would make them its slaves and puppets for life—or during pleasure!
We might make out a long list of superannuated pensioners on public
patronage, who have had the last grudging pittance of favour
withdrawn from them, but that it could do no sort of good, and that
we would not expose the names themselves to the gaze and wonder of
vulgar curiosity. We are only not sorry that Miss O’Neill has put it
out of the power of the Nobility, the Gentry, and her Friends in
general, to add her name to the splendid, tarnished list; and that
she cannot, like so many of her predecessors, be chopped and
changed, and hacked, and banded about, in tragedy, or in comedy, in
farce or in pantomime, in dance or song, at the Surry, or the
Cobourg, or the Sans Pareil Theatres; or even be sent to mingle her
silvery cadences with Mr. Kean’s hoarse notes at Old Drury!

Before, however, we take leave of her for ever in that capacity in
which she has so often delighted, and so often astonished us, we
must be excused in saying a few parting words of that excellence,
which, for the future, can be known (how very imperfectly!) only by
description, and be remembered only as an enchanting dream. We
believe that ladies, even after the marriage ceremony, sign their
maiden names in the church-register: we hope that Miss O’Neill will
not refuse to subscribe, in the same manner, to our critical
jurisdiction, for the last time that we shall have to exercise it
upon her.

Miss O’Neill was in size of the middle form: her complexion was
fair: and her person not inelegant. She stooped somewhat in the
shoulders, but not so as to destroy grace or dignity:—in moving
across the stage, she dragged a little in her step, with some want
of firmness and elasticity. The action of her hands and arms,
however (one of the least common, and therefore, we suppose, one of
the most difficult accomplishments an actor or actress has to
acquire) was perfectly just, simple and expressive. They either
remained in unconscious repose by her side, or, if employed, it was
to anticipate or confirm the language of the eye and tongue. There
was no affectation, no unmeaning display, or awkward deficiency in
her gesticulation; but her body and mind seemed to be under the
guidance of the same impulse, to move in concert, and to be moulded
into unity of effect by a certain natural grace, earnestness, and
good sense. The contour of her face was nearly oval; and her
features approached to the regularity of the Grecian outline. The
expression of them was confined either to the extremity of pain and
agony, or to habitual softness and placidity, with an occasional
smile of great sweetness. Her voice was deep, clear, and mellow,
capable of the most forcible exertion, but, in ordinary speaking,
‘gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman!’ She, however, owed
comparatively little to physical qualifications: there was nothing
in her face, voice, or person, sufficiently striking to have
obtruded her into notice, or to have been a factitious substitute
for other requisites. Her external advantages were merely the medium
through which her internal powers displayed their refulgence,
without obstruction or refraction (with the exception hereafter to
be stated): they were the passive instruments, which her powerful
and delicate sensibility wielded, with the utmost propriety, ease,
and effect. Her excellence (unrivalled by any actress since Mrs.
Siddons) consisted in truth of nature, and force of passion. Her
correctness did not seem the effect of art or study, but of
instinctive sympathy, of a conformity of mind and disposition to the
character she was playing, as if she had unconsciously become the
very person. There were no catching lights, no pointed hits, no
theatrical tricks, no female arts resorted to, in her best or
general style of acting: there was a singleness, an entireness, and
harmony in it, that gave it a double charm as well as a double
power. It rested on the centre of its own feelings. Her style of
acting was smooth, round, polished, and classical, like a marble
statue; self-supported, and self-involved; owing its resemblance to
life, to the truth of imitation; not to startling movements, and
restless contortion, but returning continually within the softened
line of beauty and nature. Her manner was, in this respect, the
opposite of Mr. Kean’s, of whom no man can say (either in a good or
in a bad sense) that he is like a marble statue, but of whom it may
be said, with some appearance of truth, that he is like a
paste-board figure, the little, uncouth, disproportioned parts of
which, children pull awry, twitch, and jerk about in fifty odd and
unaccountable directions, to laugh at—or like the mock figure of
Harlequin, that is stuck against the wall, and pulled in pieces, and
fastened together again, with twenty idle, pantomimic, eccentric
absurdities! Or he seems to have St. Antony’s fire in his veins, St.
Vitus’s dance in his limbs, and a devil tugging at every part:—one
shrugging his shoulders, another wagging his head, another hobbling
in his legs, another tapping his breast; one straining his voice
till it is ready to crack, another suddenly, and surprisingly,
dropping it down into an inaudible whisper, which is made distinct
and clear by the ‘_bravos_’ in the pit, and the shouts of the
gallery. There was not any of this paltry patch-work, these vulgar
snatches at applause, these stops, and starts, and breaks, in Miss
O’Neill’s performance, which was sober, sedate, and free from
pretence and mummery. We regret her loss the more, and fear we shall
have to regret it more deeply every day. In a word, Mr. Kean’s
acting is like an anarchy of the passions, in which each upstart
humour, or phrensy of the moment, is struggling to get violent
possession of some bit or corner of his fiery soul and pigmy body—to
jostle out, and lord it over, the rest of the rabble of short-lived,
and furious purposes. Miss O’Neill seemed perfect mistress of her
own thoughts, and if she was not indeed the rightful queen of
tragedy, she had at least all the decorum, grace, and
self-possession of one of the Maids of Honour waiting around its
throne.—Miss O’Neill might have played, to the greatest advantage,
in one of the tragedies of Sophocles, which are the perfection of
the stately, elegant, and simple drama of the Greeks; we cannot
conceive of Mr. Kean making a part of any such classical group.
Perhaps, however, we may magnify his defects in this particular, as
we have been accused of over-rating his general merits. We do not
think it an easy matter ‘to praise him, or blame him too much.’ We
have never heard any thing to alter the opinion we always
entertained of him: he can only do it himself—by his own acting.
While we owe it to him to speak largely of his genius and his
powers, we owe it to the public to protest against the
eccentricities of the one, or the abuses of the other.

To return from this digression. With all the purity and simplicity,
Miss O’Neill possessed the utmost force of tragedy. Her soul was
like the sea, calm, beautiful, smiling, smooth, and yielding; but
the storm of adversity lashed it into foam, laid bare its centre, or
heaved its billows against the skies. She could repose on
gentleness, or dissolve in tenderness, and at the same time give
herself up to all the agonies of woe. She could express fond
affection, pity, rage, despair, madness. She felt all these passions
in their simple and undefinable elements only. She felt them as a
woman,—as a mistress, as a wife, a mother, or a friend. She seemed
to have the most exquisite sense of the pressure of those soft ties,
that were woven round her heart, and that bound her to her place in
society; and the rending them asunder appeared to give a
proportionable revulsion to her frame, and disorder to her thoughts.
There was nothing in her acting of a preternatural or _ideal_
cast—that could lift the mind above mortality, or might be fancied
to descend from another sphere. But she gave the full, the true, and
unalloyed expression, to all that is common, obvious, and heart-felt
in the charities of private life, and in the conflict of female
virtue and attachment with the hardest trials and intolerable
griefs. She did not work herself up to the extremity of passion, by
questioning with her own thoughts; or raise herself above
circumstances, by ascending the platform of imagination; or arm
herself against fate, by strengthening her will to meet it: no, she
yielded to calamity, she gave herself up entire, and with entire
devotion, to her unconquerable despair:—it was the tide of anguish
swelling in her own breast, that overflowed to the breasts of the
audience, and filled their eyes with tears as the loud torrent
projects itself from the cliff to the abyss below, and bears
everything before it in its resistless course. The source of her
command over public sympathy, lay, in short, in the intense
conception, and unrestrained expression, of what she, and every
other woman, of natural sensibility would feel in given
circumstances, in which she, and every other woman, was liable to be
placed. Her Belvidera, Isabella, Mrs. Beverley, etc. were all
characters of this strictly feminine class of heroines, and she
played them to the life. They were made of softness and suffering.
We recollect the first time we saw her in Belvidera, when the manner
in which she threw herself into the arms of Jaffier, before they
part, was as if her heart would have leaped out of her bosom, if she
had not done so. It staggered the spectator like a blow. Again, her
first meeting with Biron, in Isabella, was no less admirable and
impressive. She looked at, she saw, she knew him: her surprise, her
joy were painted in her face, and woke every nerve to rapture. She
seemed to have perfected all that her art could do. But the sudden
alteration of her look and manner, the shuddering and recoil within
herself, when she recovers from her surprise, and recollects her
situation, married to another,—at once on the verge of ecstacy and
perdition,—baffled description, and threw all that she had before
done in the shade,—‘like to another morn, risen on mid noon.’ We
could mention many other instances, but they are still too fresh in
the memory of our readers to make it necessary. It must be
confessed, as perhaps the only drawback on Miss O’Neill’s merit, or
on the pleasure derived from seeing her, that she sometimes carried
the expression of grief, or agony of mind, to a degree of physical
horror that could hardly be borne. Her shrieks, in the concluding
scenes of some of her parts, were like those of mandrakes, and you
stopped your ears against them: her looks were of ‘moody madness,
laughing wild, amidst severest woe,’ and you turned your eyes from
them; for they seemed to sear like the lightening. Her eye-balls
rolled in her head: her words rattled in her throat. This was
carrying reality too far. The sufferings of the body are no longer
proper for dramatic exhibition when they become objects of painful
attention in themselves, and are not merely indications of what
passes in the mind—comments and interpreters of the moral sense
within. The effect was the more ungrateful from the very contrast
(as we before hinted) between this lady’s form and delicate
complexion, and the violent conflict into which she was thrown. She
seemed like the little flower, not the knotted oak, contending with
the pitiless storm. There appeared no reason why she should ‘mar
that whiter skin of her’s than snow, or monumental alabaster,’ or
rend and dishevel, with ruthless hand, those graceful locks, fairer
than the opening day. But these were faults arising from pushing
truth and nature to an excess, and we should, at present, be glad to
see ‘the best virtues’ of others make even an approach to them. Her
common style of speaking had a certain mild and equable intonation,
not quite free from _manner_, but in the more impassioned parts, she
became proportionably natural, bold, and varied. In comedy, Miss
O’Neill did not, in our judgment, excel: her _forte_ was the
serious. Had we never seen her play anything but Lady Teazle, we
should not have felt the regret at parting with her, which we now
do, in common with every lover of genius, and of the genuine drama.

But it is high time that we should turn from the actors we have
lost, to those that still remain amongst us.—Among the novelties of
the season are, of course, the two Pantomimes, which, lest we should
forget them at last, we shall mention in the first place. We cannot
say that we exactly relish the taking Don Quixote as the subject of
a Pantomime. The knight was battered and bruised enough in his
life-time, without undergoing a gratuitous penance at this time of
day. With all our good-will to Mr. Grimaldi, we have a greater
affection for Sancho Panza, and do not want to see him metamorphosed
into anything but himself. Indeed we cannot spoil Don Quixote; but
neither need we try to do it.—Jack and the Bean Stalk is the
legitimate growth of the Christmas holidays, and the winter
Theatres. The wonders of the necromancer are equalled by the
surprising arts of the mechanist. The favoured Bean Stalk grows and
ascends the skies, as it did to our infant imaginations, and as if
it would never have done growing; and Ogres and Ogresses become
familiar to our senses, as to our early fears, in the enchanted
palace of Drury-lane Theatre. Seeing is sometimes believing. It is
worth going to a good Pantomime, if it was for no other reason than
to hear the children from school laugh at it, till they are ready to
split their sides. What we can no longer enjoy, or wonder at
ourselves, it is well to take at the rebound, in the reflection of
happy faces, and in the echo of joyous mirth. These little real
folks are even better than the fantastical beings, and poetic
visions, we see upon the stage!

We are sorry we cannot say anything to reverse the judgment passed
upon a new comedy, called _Gallantry_, or _Adventures at Madrid_,
brought out at this Theatre in the beginning of the month. It was _a
comedy of intrigue_; and, in conformity with the idea of this style
of invention, was decorated with a wearisome display of Spanish
costume, and enriched with an unmeaning catalogue of enamoured Dons,
and disdainful or neglected Donnas. The plot was intricate, so as to
become unintelligible, mechanical, and improbable. Every contrivance
‘had its brother, and half the story just reflects the other.’ There
was a strange and insurmountable coincidence of antithetical
blunders and epigrammatic accidents. The author’s invention seemed
to _run on all fours_, to cut out the different compartments of his
fable, like the figures in a country-dance, to answer to one
another: or he made all his characters turn the tables on one
another, without knowing it. Thus, if a lady sends a letter very
innocently to the lover of another, her own lover writes a letter to
the mistress of his imaginary rival; if an old fellow falls in love
with a young lady, this turns out to be his son’s intended bride;
and in this manner the game of cross-purposes is easily kept up, and
the plot is diversified by the rule of contraries throughout. There
was little attempt at wit in this piece (what little there is was
flat and shallow, as well as gross), and there was no attempt at
interest or sentiment, except in the character of Constantia, which
was well played by Mrs. West, but very ill supported by the author.
Mr. Barnard was her lover; and we must say that this gentleman
spoils any intrigue in which he is engaged, if it soars above a
chambermaid. He plays an impudent, self-sufficient valet, with good
emphasis and discretion, or can get through an under-steward very
well; but he cannot act the hero or look the gentleman. There is a
cast of parts, for which Mr. Barnard is really qualified; and we are
unwilling to see him taken out of them, both for his sake and our
own. The play was altogether ill got up: it indeed called out the
strength of the house, but there was either nothing for them to do,
or their parts became them as little as their dresses. Mr. Harley,
for instance, who is always so lively in himself, and who so often
enlivens others, was put to play a villainous grave Spanish Don, who
is full of stratagem and deliberate knavery; and he popped, and
wriggled, and fidgetted on and off the stage, nodding his airy
plumes, and shaking the powdered locks, in which he had been
bedizened out, like the figure of Pug we have seen at Bartlemy-Fair,
or in Hogarth’s picture of the same little chuckling favourite, in
Fashion in High Life. The fault was not in Mr. Harley, who always
does his best to please, but in the cut of his clothes, and the cast
of his part. Russel had no business in the play. He looked like an
Alguazil, not like a Madrid gallant. Instead of meddling with the
Spanish cavalier, and strutting about with a feather in his hat and
a sword by his side, he should be _At Home_ every night of his life,
in Jerry Sneak: he is abroad in almost every other character! Munden
made nothing of an amorous, superannuated, wheedling old lord: and,
making nothing of the part ‘as it was set down for him,’ he tried,
now and then, to thrust in a little caricature of his own, and to
insinuate a bye-joke to the galleries. Munden’s is not ‘the
courtier’s or the lover’s melancholy;’ but a quaint, fantastical,
uncouth, irresistible humour of his own, and he must be strangely
grouped, or disposed of, on the theatrical canvass, to lose all his
effect. Munden is not a sickly, vapid, decayed inamorato, fit to
make his approaches to his mistress’s eyebrows, in good set terms,
or with cringing manners: he is a sturdy grotesque—a wild exotic,
not a faded passion flower. He does not belong to any class,
fashionable or vulgar. He is himself alone: and should only
personate those extraordinary and marked characters, that Gilray
painted, and O’Keeffe drew. Dowton and Knight were pieces of
supererogation in the comedy of Gallantry; and Mrs. Harlowe is only
happy in those parts which are meant to be unequivocally repulsive.
Miss Kelly was neatly tucked up, in a Spanish bodice and petticoat;
and had to carry several messages on or off the stage, in which she
succeeded. The play languished on to the end of the fifth act, and
then died a natural death. The only chance which it had of escaping
was from one or two dramatic situations, borrowed from well-known
plays, but disfigured and deprived of their effect, that they might
pass for new. One of these was, where Mrs. West, as Constantia,
retires from her antiquated lover (Munden) on his knees, in the
middle of a speech, profuse of sentiments and compliments, and
leaves her maid, Mrs. Harlowe, to receive the reversion of his
protestations: the old gallant not discovering his mistake, till he
is interrupted by the entrance of company. Mrs. Edwin delivered an
Epilogue with some spirit, but its appeals to the favour of the
audience only bespoke repeated condemnation. After the curtain
dropped, Mr. Elliston, who had performed a part in the piece, came
forward to announce that it was withdrawn; but, in submitting to the
pleasure of the House, he seemed disposed to dispute the soundness
of their taste. He said, ‘It was a difficult thing to write a good
comedy; perhaps a more difficult thing to judge of one.’ Critics as
we are, we cannot make up our minds to that opinion. Or we might say
in answer, ‘It is an easy thing to write a bad comedy; a more easy
thing to judge of one.’[39] Be that as it may (for we do not wish to
be drawn into a literary or metaphysical controversy with the
present manager of Drury Lane,) we do not see what it was to the
purpose. Does Mr. Elliston mean to infer, that, because it is a
difficult thing to judge of a good comedy, he is a better judge than
anyone else, or than the great majority of the audience, who had
pronounced sentence upon this? Suppose the comedy had succeeded, as
completely as it failed, and that a single individual in the pit had
got up to say, that he differed from everyone present, and that his
uncalled-for opinion was to be put in competition with the voice of
the House, would not Mr. Elliston have thought it a great piece of
impertinence and presumption? Why then should he commit the same
folly himself?

At Covent Garden there have been two new debutants, Mr. Nathan as
Henry Bertram, in Guy Mannering, and Miss Wensley as Rosalind. The
first was a decided failure. We do not know what Mr. Nathan’s powers
of voice or execution in a room may be: but he has evidently not the
capacity of sending out a sufficient volume of articulate sound to
fill a large theatre: neither is his manner of speaking, nor his
action, at all fitted for the stage. Miss Wensley’s Rosalind was
well received, and has been repeated. Her face and figure are
agreeable; her voice has considerable sweetness and flexibility; and
her manner of performing the part itself, was arch, graceful, and
lively; though this young lady (who we understand had not appeared
before on any stage) was withheld from giving herself up entirely to
the character, by a natural and amiable timidity. We heartily wish
she may succeed, and have no fear but she will.[40] Miss Tree has
lately made a valuable addition to the musical strength of Covent
Garden. She sings delightfully in company with Miss Stephens; and in
the Comedy of Errors almost puzzles the town, as she does Antipholis
of Syracuse, which to prefer: _Magis pares quam similes_. She is
quite different, both in quality of voice and style of execution,
from our old favourite; and it is this difference that completes the
charm of their singing. Her tones are as firm, deep, and mellow, as
Miss Stephens’s are clear and sweet. Her ear is as true as it is
possible to be; and the sustained manner in which she dwells upon a
note, is as delightful as the airy fluttering grace with which Miss
Stephens varies, and sportively plays with it. The singing of the
one may be compared perhaps to a continued stream of honeyed sound,
while that of the other is like the tremulous bubbles that float and
rise above its surface. Or Miss Tree’s singing has the consistency,
the lengthened tenuity or breadth of tone, drawn from a well-strung
violin, as Miss Stephens’s resembles the light, liquid, echoing
accompaniments of the harp or lute. Of both together, it may be
said, when they join their efforts in a single composition, that
‘All is grace above, while all is strength below.’ It is a treat to
which of late we have been seldom accustomed.

MR. KEAN’S CORIOLANUS.—Mr. Kean’s acting is not of the patrician
order; he is one of the people, and what might be termed a _radical_
performer. He can do all that may become a man ‘of our infirmity,’
‘to relish all as sharply, passioned as we;’ but he cannot play a
God, or one who fancies himself a God, and who is sublime, not in
the strength of his own feelings, but in his contempt for those of
others, and in his imaginary superiority to them. That is, he cannot
play Coriolanus so well as he plays some other characters, or as we
have seen it played often. Wherever there was a struggle of
feelings, a momentary ebullition of pity, or remorse, or anguish,
wherever nature resumed her wonted rights, Mr. Kean was equal to
himself, and superior to every one else; but the prevailing
characteristics of the part are inordinate self-opinion, and haughty
elevation of soul, that aspire above competition or controul, as the
tall rock lifts its head above the skies, and is not bent or
shattered by the storm, beautiful in its unconquered strength,
terrible in its unaltered repose. Mr. Kean, instead of ‘keeping his
state,’ instead of remaining fixed and immoveable (for the most
part) on his pedestal of pride, seemed impatient of this
mock-dignity, this _still-life_ assumption of superiority; burst too
often from the trammels of precedent, and the _routine_ of
etiquette, which should have confined him; and descended into the
common arena of man, to make good his pretensions by the energy with
which he contended for them, and to prove the hollowness of his
supposed indifference to the opinion of others by the excessive
significance and studied variations of the scorn and disgust he
expressed for it. The intolerable airs and aristocratical
pretensions of which he is the slave, and to which he falls a
victim, did not seem _legitimate_ in him, but upstart, turbulent,
and vulgar. Thus his haughty answer to the mob who banish him—‘I
banish you’—was given with all the virulence of execration, and rage
of impotent despair, as if he had to strain every nerve and faculty
of soul to shake off the contamination of their hated power over
him, instead of being delivered with calm, majestic self-possession,
as if he remained rooted to the spot, and his least motion, word, or
look, must scatter them like chaff or scum from his presence! The
most effective scene was that in which he stands for the Consulship,
and begs for ‘the most sweet voices’ of the people whom he loathes;
and the most ineffective was that in which he is reluctantly
reconciled to, and over-come by the entreaties of, his mother. This
decisive and affecting interview passed off as if nothing had
happened, and was conducted with diplomatic gravity and skill. The
casting of the other parts was a climax in bathos. Mr. Gattie was
Menenius, the friend of Coriolanus, and Mr. Penley Tullus Aufidius,
his mortal foe. Mr. Pope should have played the part. One would
think there were processions and ovations enough in this play, as it
was acted in John Kemble’s time; but besides these, there were
introduced others of the same sort, some of which were lengthened
out as if they would reach all the way to the Circus; and there was
a sham-fight, of melodramatic effect, in the second scene, in which
Mr. Kean had like to have lost his voice. There was throughout a
continual din of—

‘Guns, drums, trumpets, blunderbuss, and thunder.’

or what was very like it. In the middle of an important scene, the
tinkling of the stage-bell was employed to announce a flourish of
trumpets—a thing which even Mr. Glossup would not hear of, whatever
the act of parliament might say to enforce such a puppet-show
accompaniment. There is very bad management in all this; and yet Mr.
Elliston is the manager.

No. III

[_March, 1820._

MINOR THEATRES.—This is a subject on which we shall treat, with
satisfaction to ourselves, and, we hope, to the edification of the
reader. Indeed, we are not a little vain of the article we propose
to write on this occasion; and we feel the pen in our hands flutter
its feathered down with more than its usual specific levity, at the
thought of the idle, careless career before it. No Theatre-Royal
oppresses the imagination, and entombs it in a mausoleum of massy
pride; no manager’s pompous pretensions choak up the lively current
of our blood: no long-announced performance, big with expectation,
comes to nothing, and yet compels us gravely to record its failure,
and compose its epitaph. We have here ‘ample scope and verge
enough;’ we pick and chuse as we will, light where we please, and
stay no longer than we have a mind—saying ‘this I like, that I
loath, as one picks pears:’—hover over the Surry Theatre; or snatch
a grace beyond the reach of art from the Miss Dennett’s at the
Adelphi; or take a peep (like the Devil upon Two Sticks) at Mr.
Booth at the Cobourg—and one peep is sufficient:—Or stretch our legs
and strain our fancies (as a pure voluntary exercise of dramatic
faith and charity) as far as Mr. Rae and the East London, where Mrs.
Gould (late Miss Burrell), makes fine work with Don Giovanni and the
Furies! We are not, in this case, to be ‘constrained by
mastery.’—Escaped from under the more immediate inspection of the
Lord Chamberlain’s eye, fastidious objections, formal method,
regular details, strict moral censure, cannot be expected at our
hands: our ‘speculative and officed instruments’ may be well laid
aside for a time. At sight of the purlieus of taste, and suburbs of
the drama, criticism ‘clappeth his wings, and straitway he is gone!’
In short, we feel it as our bounden duty to strike a truce with
gravity, and give a furlough to fancy; and, in entering on this part
of our subject, to let our thoughts wander over it, sport and trifle
with it at pleasure, like the butter-fly of whom Spenser largely and
loftily sings in his Muiopotmos.—

‘There he arriving, round about doth fly
From bed to bed, from one to other border,
And takes survey, with curious busy eye,
Of every flower and herb there set in order;
Now this, now that he tasteth tenderly,
Yet none of them he rudely doth disorder,
Nor with his feet their silken leaves deface,
But pastures on the pleasures of each place.

What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy Delight with Liberty,
And to be lord of all the works of Nature,
To reign in th’ air from earth to highest sky:
To feed on flowers, and weeds of glorious feature,
To take whatever thing doth please the eye?
Who rests not pleased with such happiness,
Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness!’

If we could but once realise this idea of a butterfly-critic
extracting sweets from flowers and turning gall to honey, we might
well hope to soar above the Grub-street race, and confound, by the
novelty of our appearance, and the gaiety of our flight, the idle
conjectures of ignorant or malicious pretenders in entomology!

Besides, having once got out of the vortex of prejudice and fashion,
that surrounds our large Winter Theatres, what is there to hinder us
(or what shall) from dropping down from the verge of the metropolis
into the haunts of the provincial drama;—from taking coach to Bath
or Brighton, or visiting the Land’s-End, or giving an account of
Botany-bay theatricals, or the establishment of a new theatre at
Venezuela? One reason that makes the Minor Theatres interesting is,
that they are the connecting link, that lets us down, by an easy
transition, from the highest pomp and proudest display of the
Thespian art, to its first rudiments and helpless infancy.—With
conscious happy retrospect, they lead the eye back, along the
_vista_ of the imagination, to the village barn, or travelling
booth, or old-fashioned town-hall, or more genteel assembly-room, in
which Momus first unmasked to us his fairy revels, and introduced
us, for the first time in our lives, to that strange anomaly in
existence, that fanciful reality, that gay waking dream, _a company
of strolling players_! Sit still, draw close together, hold in your
breath—not a word, not a whisper—the laugh is ready to start away,
‘like greyhound on the slip,’ the big tear of wonder and expectation
is ready to steal down ‘the full eyes and fair cheeks of childhood,’
almost before the time. Only another moment, and amidst blazing
tapers, and the dancing sounds of music, and light throbbing hearts,
and eager looks, the curtain rises, and the picture of the world
appears before us in all its glory and in all its freshness. Life
throws its gaudy shadow across the stage; Hope shakes his
many-coloured wings, ‘embalmed with odours;’ Joy claps his hands,
and laughs in a hundred happy faces. Oh childish fancy, what a
mighty empire is thine; what endless creations thou buildest out of
nothing; what ‘a wide O’ indeed, thou chusest to act thy thoughts,
and unrivalled feats upon! Thou art better than the gilt trophy that
decks the funeral pall of kings; thou art brighter than the costly
mace that precedes them on their coronation-day. Thy fearfullest
visions are enviable happiness; thy wildest fictions are the
solidest truths. Thou art the only reality. All other possessions
mock our idle grasp: but thou performest by promising; thy smile is
fruition; thy blandishments are all that we can fairly call our own;
thou art the balm of life, the heaven of childhood, the poet’s idol,
and the player’s pride! The world is but thy painting; and the stage
is thine enchanted mirror.—When it first displays its shining
surface to our view, how glad, how surprised are we! We have no
thought of any deception in the scene, no wish but to realize it
ourselves with inconsiderate haste and fond impatience. We say to
the air-drawn gorgeous phantom, ‘Come, let me clutch thee!’ A new
sense comes upon us, the scales fall off our eyes, and the scenes of
life start out in endless quick succession crowded with men and
women-actors, such as we see before us—comparable to ‘those gay
creatures of the element, that live in the rainbow, and play i’ th’
plighted clouds!’ Happy are we who look on and admire; and happy, we
think, must they be who are so looked at and admired; and sometimes
we begin to feel uneasy till we can ourselves mingle in the gay,
busy, talking, fluttering, powdered, painted, perfumed, peruked,
quaintly-accoutred throng of coxcombs and coquettes,—of tragedy
heroes or heroines,—in good earnest; or turn stage-players and
represent them in jest, with all the impertinent and consequential
airs of the originals!