Chapter XXIII: Preface (14)

THE HEBREW, IVANHOE, ETC.—We have been led to make these general
remarks, partly in consequence of the two new dramas, taken from the
romance of Ivanhoe, the one called Ivanhoe at Coventgarden, and the
other under the title of the Hebrew at Drury-lane. It argues little
for the force or redundance of our original talents for tragic
composition, when our authors of that description are periodical
pensioners on the bounty of the Scottish press; and when with all
the craving which the public and the Managers feel for novelty in
this respect, they can only procure it at second-hand by vamping up
with new scenery, decorations, and dresses, what has been already
rendered at once sacred and familiar to us in the closet. Mr. Walter
Scott no sooner conjures up the Muse of old romance, and brings us
acquainted with her in ancient hall, cavern, or mossy dell, than
Messrs. Harris and Elliston, with all their tribe, instantly set
their tailors to work to take the pattern of the dresses, their
artists to paint the wild-wood scenery or some proud dungeon-keep,
their musicians to compose the fragments of bewildered ditties, and
their penmen to connect the author’s scattered narrative and broken
dialogue into a sort of theatrical join-hand. The thing is not ill
got up in general; it fills the coffers of the theatre for a time;
gratifies public curiosity till another new novel appears; and
probably flatters the illustrious prose-writer, who must be
fastidious indeed, if, at the end of each representation, he
exclaims with Hamlet, ‘I had as lief the town-crier had spoken my
lines!’—It has been observed by an excellent judge, that it was next
to impossible to spoil a picture of Titian’s by copying it. Even the
most indifferent wood-cut, a few scratches in an etching, gave
something of a superior look of refinement, an air of grace and
grandeur; the outline was so true, the disposition of light and
shade so masterly in the original, that it could not be quite done
away. So it is with these theatrical adaptations: the spirit of the
real author shines through them in spite of many obstacles; and
about a twentieth part of his genius appears in them, which is
enough. His canvas is cut down, to be sure; his characters thinned
out, the limbs and extremities of his plot are lopped away (cruel
necessity!), and it is like showing a brick for a house. But then
what is left is so fine! The author’s Muse is ‘instinct with fire,’
in every part, and the _disjecta membra poetæ_, like the polypus
when hacked and hewed asunder, piece together again, or sprout out
into new life. The other plays that we have seen taken from this
stock are merely selections and transpositions of the borrowed
materials: the Hebrew (we mean the principal character itself) is
the only excrescence from it; and though fantastic and somewhat
feeble, compared with the solid trunk from which it grew, it is
still no unworthy ornament to it, like the withered and variegated
moss upon the knotted oak.—Of Ivanhoe itself, we wish to say a
single word, before we proceed to either drama. It is the first
attempt of Mr. Scott (we wish the writer would either declare
himself, or give himself a _nom de guerre_, that we might speak of
him without either a periphrasis or impertinence) it is, we say, Mr.
Scott’s first attempt on English ground, and it is, we think, only a
comparative, but comparatively with himself, a decided failure.
There are some few scenes in it, and one or two extraneous
characters, equal to what he has before written; but we think they
are, _in comparison_, few; and by being so distinctly detached as
they are, from the general groundwork (so that no two persons taking
the work to dramatise would not pitch upon the same incidents and
individuals to bring forward on the stage) show that the other parts
of the story are without proportionable prominence and interest. In
the other novels it was not so. The variety, the continued interest,
the crowded groups, the ever-changing features distracted attention,
and perplexed the choice: the difficulty was not what to select, but
what to reject. All was new, and all was equally, or nearly equally,
good—teeming with life and throbbing with interest. But here, no
one, if called upon for a preference, can miss pointing out Friar
Tuck in his cell, and the Jew and his daughter Rebecca. These
remain, and stand out after the perusal, as above water mark; when
the rest are washed away and forgotten. For want of the same pulse,
the same veins of nature circling throughout, the body of the work
is cold and colourless. The author does not feel himself at home;
and tries to make up for cordial sympathy and bold action, by the
minute details of his subject—by finishing his Saxon draperies, or
furbishing up the armour of his Normans, with equal care and
indifference—so that we seem turning over a book of antiquarian
prints, instead of the pages of an admired novel-writer. In fact, we
conceive, as a point of speculative criticism, that the genius of
the author of Waverley, however lofty, and however extensive, still
has certain discernible limits; that it is strictly national; that
it is traditional; that it relies on actual manners and external
badges of character; that it insists on costume and dialect; and is
one of individual character and situation, rather than of general
nature. This was some time doubtful: but the present work ‘gives
evidence of it.’ Compare his Rob Roy with Robin Hood. What rich
Highland blood flows through the veins of the one; colours his hair,
freckles his skin, bounds in his step, swells in his heart, kindles
in his eye: what poor waterish puddle creeps through the soul of
Locksley; and what a lazy, listless figure he makes in his coat of
Lincoln-green, like a figure to let, in the novel of Ivanhoe! Mr. T.
Cooke, of the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane, does not make him much more
insipid. Mr. Scott slights and slurs our archer good. His
imagination mounts with Rob Roy, among his native wilds and cliffs,
like an eagle to its lordly nest: but it cannot take shelter with
Robin Hood and _his_ crew of outlaws in the Forest of Merry
Sherwood: ‘his affections do not that way tend.’ Like a good patriot
and an honest man, he feels not the same interest in old English
history, as in Scottish tradition; the one is not bound up with his
early impressions, with his local knowledge, with his personal
attachments, like the other; and we may be allowed to say, that our
author’s genius soars to its enviable and exclusive height from the
depth of his prejudices. He has described Scottish manners, scenery,
and history so well, and made them so interesting to others, from
his complete knowledge and intense love of his country. Why should
we expect him to describe English manners and events as well? On his
native soil, within that hallowed circle of his warm affections and
his keen observation, no one will pretend to cope with him. He has
there a wide and noble range, over which his pen ‘holds sovereign
sway and masterdom;’ to wit, over the Highlands and the Lowlands,
and the Tolbooth and the good town of Edinburgh, with ‘a far cry to
Lochiel,’ over gleaming lake and valley, and the bare mountain-path,
over all ranks and classes of his countrymen, high and low, and over
all that has happened to them for the last five hundred years,
recorded in history, tradition, or old song. These he may challenge
for himself; and if he throws down his gauntlet, no one but a madman
will dare to take it up. But on this side the Tweed we have others
as good as he. The genius of that magic stream may say to him,
‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.’ We have novels and
romances of our own as good as Ivanhoe; and we will venture to
predict, that the more this admirable and all but universal genius
extends his rapid and unresisted career on this side the border, the
more he will lose in reputation, and in real strength—

‘Like kings who lose the conquests gain’d before,
By vain ambition still to make them more.’

How feeble, how slight, how unsatisfactory and disjointed, did the
adaptations from Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, and the Antiquary appear,
contrasted with the story we had read! The play of Ivanhoe at Covent
Garden, on the contrary, seems to give all (or nearly so), that we
remember distinctly in the novel; and the Hebrew, which constantly
wanders from it, without any apparent object or meaning, yet does so
without exciting much indignation or regret. We have in both the
scene, the indispensable scene, at the hermitage of Copmanhurst,
between the Black Knight, and Robin Hood’s jolly Friar (which,
however, has not half the effect on the stage that it has in
reading, though Mr. Emery plays the Friar, and sings a jolly stave
for him admirably well at Covent Garden)—we have the trial of
Rebecca, and the threat to put her father to the torture, almost
carried into execution at the castle of Torquilstone; we have the
siege and demolition of the castle itself; we have the fair Rowena
at one house, in her own proper shape; and at the other,
metamorphosed into the fairer and more lovely Israelite; and at both
we have Cedric the Saxon, Gurth the swineherd, and Wamba the jester,
and Brian de Bois-Guilbert; and what more would any one require in
reason? The details, however, of all these personages and
transactions are much more accurately given, and more skilfully
connected in Ivanhoe than in the Hebrew, and the former play is
better got up than the latter, in all the characters, with the
exception of one, which it is needless to mention. Yet, why should
we not, envy apart? Mr. Farren played Isaac of York, well; Mr. Kean
played the Hebrew still better. As for the rest, Charles Kemble
played the same character at one house that Mr. Penley, Jun. did at
the other: Mr. Emery was Friar Tuck at Covent Garden, Mr. Oxberry at
Drury Lane: Mr. Macready was Sir Reginald Front de Bœuf, a character
exactly fitted for his impetuous action, and his smothered tremulous
tones, which we cannot say of his other representative, Mr. Hamblin,
though we have nothing to say against him: Miss Foote looked the
beautiful Rebecca (all but the raven locks and dark eye-lashes)
which Mrs. West played but insipidly, with Miss Carew to help her:
and Mrs. Fawcett was the wretched, but terrific daughter of the race
of Torquilstone, a character omitted at the other house. As a
literary composition, we have nothing to offer on Ivanhoe; but the
Hebrew (which is published, and which is from the pen of Mr. Soane,
the author of some former pieces which have been well received),
requires a word or two of remark. As a play, it is ill-constructed,
without proportion or connection. As a poem, it has its beauties,
and those we think neither mean nor few. It is disjointed, without
dramatic decorum, and sometimes even to a ludicrous degree: as where
a principal hero, on hearing the sound of a horn or trumpet, jumps
on a table to look out of a window, and receives an arrow in his
breast from one of the besiegers, on which he is carried out
apparently lifeless; and yet he is presently after introduced again,
as well as if no such accident had happened. But notwithstanding
this, and many other errors of the same kind, and a weakness and
languor in the general progress of the story, there are individual
touches of nature and passion, which we can account for in no other
way so satisfactorily as by imagining the author to be a man of
genius. The flowers of poetry interspersed were often sad, but
beautiful—

‘Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe’—

the turns and starts of passion in feeble and wronged old age, were
often delicate and striking. Among these we might mention the Jew’s
comparison of his own feelings on receiving an unexpected kindness,
to the cold and icy current of the river frozen by the winter, but
melting in the genial warmth of the sun: his refusal, in the
wanderings of his intellect, to go to witness his daughter’s death
in company with any one else; ‘No: thou art not my child, I’ll go
alone:’ and the fine conception of his hearing, in the deep and
silent abstraction of his despair (before any one else), the sound
of the trampling of the champion’s steed, who comes to rescue her
from destruction, which is, however, nearly ruined and rendered
ridiculous by Mr. Penley’s running in with armour on from the
farthest end of the stage, as fast as his legs can carry him. Upon
the whole, this character, compared to the rough draught in the
novel, is like a curiously finished miniature, done after a bold and
noble design. For the dark, massy beard, and coarse weather-beaten
figure, which we attribute to Isaac of York, we have a few sprinkled
grey hairs, and the shrivelled, tottering frame of the Hebrew; and
Mr. Kean’s acting in it, in several places, was such as to terrify
us when we find from the play-bills that he is soon to act Lear. Of
the two plays, we would then recommend it to our readers to go to
see Ivanhoe at Covent Garden: but for ourselves, we would rather see
the Hebrew a second time at Drury Lane, though every time we go
there it costs us three and sixpence more than at the other house—a
serious sum! Notwithstanding this repeated and heavy defalcation
from our revenue, which really hurts our vanity not less than our
interest, we must do the Manager the justice to say, that we never
laughed more heartily than we did at his Sir Charles and Lady Racket
the other night. ‘Unkindness may do much,’ but it is not a little
matter that will hinder us from laughing as long and as loud as any
body, ‘to the very top of our lungs,’ at so rich a treat as Three
Weeks after Marriage. Mr. Elliston never shines to more advantage
than in light, genteel farce, after Mr. Kean’s tragedy. ‘Do you
think I’ll sleep with a woman that doesn’t know what’s trumps?’ It
was irresistible. It might have been _encored_ with few dissentient
voices, and with no greater violation of established custom than the
distributing three different performers, Mr. Connor, Mr. Yates, and
Mrs. Davenport, in the pit and boxes, to hold a dialogue with a
person on the stage, in the introductory interlude of The Manager in
Distress at Covent Garden. We, however, do not object to this
novelty, if nobody else does, and if it is not repeated; and it
certainly did not put us in an ill humour for seeing Mr. Jones’s
‘Too Late for Dinner.’ Mr. Jones is much such an author as he is an
actor—wild, but agreeable, going all lengths without making much
progress, determined to please, and succeeding by dint of noise,
bustle, whim, and nonsense. There is neither much plot, nor much
point in the new farce; but it tells, and keeps the house laughing
by a sort of absurd extravagance and good humour. Besides, Mr. Jones
plays in it himself, and exerts himself with his wonted alacrity; so
do Mr. Liston, Mr. Emery, Mrs. Davenport, and Miss Foote. The author
has, indeed, cut out a cockney character for Liston (who is the
_Magnus Apollo_ of farce writers), as good as our old friend Lubin
Log; and the scene in which he comes in stuffing buns, and talking
at the same time, till he nearly chokes himself in the double
operation, is one that would do for Hogarth to paint, if he were
alive; or, as he is not, for Mr. Wilkie. Emery is a country bumpkin,
who is learning French, to fit himself for travel into foreign
parts; and his Yorkshire dialect and foreign jargon, jumbled
together, have a very odd effect. But Mr. Emery’s acting, we are
sorry to say, is not a subject for criticism: it is always just what
it ought to be; and it is impossible to praise it sufficiently,
because there is never any opportunity for finding fault with it. To
criticise him, would be like criticising the countryman, who carried
the pig under his cloak. He is always the very character he
undertakes to represent; we mean, in his favourite and general cast
of acting.

No. V

[_May, 1820._

We don’t know where to begin this article—whether with Mr. Matthews
and his Country Cousins; or with Harlequin _versus_ Shakespear; or
Cinderella and the Little Glass Slipper; or the story of Goody
Two-Shoes and the Fate of Calas, at the Summer Theatre of Sadler’s
Wells; or with Mr. Booth’s Lear, which we have seen with great
pleasure; or with Mr. Kean’s, which is a greater pleasure to come,
(so we anticipate) and which we see is put off to the last moment,
lest, we suppose, as the play-bills announce, ‘the immortal
Shakespear should meet with opponents.’ And why should the immortal
Shakespear meet with opponents in this case? Nobody can tell. But to
prevent so terrible and unlooked-for a catastrophe, and to protect
the property of the theatre at so alarming a crisis from cries of
‘fire’ the Manager has thought it his duty ‘to suspend the Free List
during the representation, the public press excepted.’ As we have
not the mortification of the exclusion, nor the benefit of the
exception, we care little about the matter, but as a curiosity in
theatrical diplomacy. The anxiety of the Manager about the double
trust committed to him, the property of a great theatre, and the
fame of a great poet, is exemplary; and the precautions he uses for
their preservation, no less admirable and efficacious:—so that, if
the tragedy of King Lear should pass muster for a night or two,
without suffering the greatest indignities, it will be owing to the
_suspension of the Free List_: if Mr. Kean should ride triumphant in
a sea of passion, the king of sorrows, and drown his audience in a
flood of tears, it will be owing to the _suspension of the Free
List_: if the heart-rending tragedy of the immortal bard, as it was
originally written, does not meet with the same untoward fate as the
speaking pantomime of the late Mr. Garrick deceased, ‘altered by a
professional gentleman of great abilities,’ it will be owing to the
_suspension of the Free List_. In a word, if the glory of the ‘great
heir of fame’ does not totter to its base at the representation of
his noblest work, nor the property of the theatre tumble about our
ears the very first night, we shall have to thank Mr. Elliston’s
timely care in the _suspension of the Free List_! ‘Strange that an
old poet’s memory should be as mortal as a new manager’s wits!’ This
bold anticipation and defiance of opposition, where none can be
expected, is not very politic, though it may be very valiant. It is
bringing into litigation an unencumbered estate (we mean that part
of it relating to the character of Shakspear) of which we are in
full and quiet possession. It is not only waking the sleeping lion,
but kicking him. Mr. Elliston’s shutting his doors in the face of
the Free List is like Don Quixote’s throwing open the cages of the
wild beasts in the caravan, and insisting that they should come out
and fight him. If the Free List were that formidable and
ill-disposed body of sworn foes to Shakspear, that ‘tasteless
monster that the world ne’er saw,’ and into which the manager’s
officious zeal for the interests of the theatre would convert them,
it were best to let them alone, and not court their hostility by
invidious and impracticable disqualifications. If they are
determined to _damn_ Shakspear, there is no help for it: if they
hold no such antipathy to him, ‘if that they love the gentle bard,’
why should their ‘unhoused, free condition, be put in
circumscription and confine,’ during the Manager’s pleasure? We are
in no great pain for the deathless renown of Shakspear: but we
really entertain apprehensions that these Berlin and Milan decrees
(in imitation of a great man) which our arbitrary theatrical
dictator is in the habit of issuing at the bottom of his play-bills,
may be of no service to the life-renters of Drury-lane. We hear a
report (which we do not believe, and shall be happy to contradict)
that the Drury-Lane Management have put in a claim to the exclusive
representation of Lear, and have proposed to suspend the performance
at the other house. This we think too much, even for the gratuitous
and imposing pretensions of Mr. Elliston. We shall, at this rate,
soon see stuck up about the town,—‘Shakspear performed at this
theatre, for a few nights only, by permission of the Manager of
Drury-Lane!’ Why, this would be a sweeping clause indeed, a
master-stroke at the liberty of the stage. It cannot be. It is ‘as
if he would confine the interminable.’ He may seat himself in the
manager’s chair, like the lady in the lobster, but the tide of
Shakspear’s genius must be allowed to take its full scope, and
overflow, like the Nile, the banks on either side of Russell Street.
Our poet is national, not private property. The _quondam_ proprietor
of the Circus cannot catch this mighty Proteus to make a Harlequin
of him: it is not in the bond, that he should not now let any one
else but Mr. Kean play Shakspear, as he once objected to let it play
at all! We suspect this idle report must have arisen, not from any
hint of an injunction, on the part of Mr. Elliston, against ‘a beard
so old and white’ as Mr. Booth’s; but as a critical reproof to the
Covent-Garden Managers, for reviving Nahum Tate’s Lear, instead of
the original text; and as a friendly suggestion to them instantly to
deprive Cordelia of her lover—and to exclude the Free List ‘_lest
the immortal Shakspear should meet with opponents!_’ But we have
said enough on this ridiculous subject.

We proceed to another; Mr. Matthews’s Country Cousins. This is the
third season that this gentleman has entertained the town
successfully, and we trust profitably to himself, by a _melange_ of
imitations, songs, narrative, and ventriloquism, entirely of his own
getting up. For one man to be able to amuse the public, or, as the
phrase is, to _draw houses_, night after night, by a display of his
own resources and feats of comic dexterity alone, shews great
variety and piquancy of talent. The Country Cousins is popular, like
the rest: the audiences are, at this present speaking, somewhat
thinner, but they do not laugh the less. We do not regret that Mr.
Matthews has been transferred from the common stage to a stage of
his own. He himself complained, at first, (as the cause of this
removal) that he had not regular opportunities afforded him at
Covent Garden for appearing in legitimate comedy, which was the
chief object of his study and his ambition. If it were not the most
ridiculous of all things to expect self-knowledge from any man, this
ground of complaint would be sufficiently curious. Mr. Matthews was
seldom or never put into any characters but those of mimicry and
burlesque by the managers of Covent Garden: into what characters has
he put himself since he has been upon his own hands? why, seldom or
never into any but those of mimicry and burlesque. We remember on
some former occasion throwing out a friendly discouragement of Mr.
Matthews’s undertaking the part of Rover in Wild Oats, (as not
exactly fitted to his peculiar cast of acting) which we had reason
to think was not received in good part: yet how did he himself
propose to make it palatable, and how did he really contrive to make
it tolerable, to the audience?—By the introduction of Imitations of
all the actors on the London boards. It is not easy to give a
character of a man (without making a fool of him) with which he
shall be satisfied: but actors are in general so infatuated with
applause, or sore from disappointment, that they are, of all men,
the least accessible to reason. We critics are a sort of people whom
they very strangely look upon as in a state of natural hostility
with them. A person who undertakes to give an account of the acted
drama in London, may be supposed to be led to this by some fondness
for, and some knowledge of, the stage: here then ‘there’s sympathy’
between the actor and the critic. He praises the good, he holds out
a warning to the bad. The last may have cause to complain, but the
first do not thank you a bit the more. You cheer them in the path of
glory, shew them where to pluck fresh laurels, or teach them to shun
the precipice, on which their hopes may be dashed to pieces: you
devote your time and attention to them; are romantic, gay, witty,
profound in adorning their art with every embellishment you have in
store to make it interesting to others; you occupy the eyes and ears
of the town with their names and affairs; weigh their merits and
defects in daily, weekly, monthly scales, with as much preparation
and formality as if the fate of the world depended on their failure
or success; and yet they seem to suppose that your whole business
and only object are to degrade and vilify them in public estimation.
What you say in praise of any individual, is set down to the score
of his merit: what you say of others, in common justice to yourself,
is considered as a mere effusion of spleen, stupidity, and spite—as
if you took a particular pleasure in torturing their feelings. Yet,
upon second thoughts, there may be some ground for all this. We do
not like to have a physician feel our pulse, shake his head, and
prescribe a regimen: many persons have objection to sit for their
pictures, and there is, perhaps, something in the very fact of being
criticised, to which human nature is not easily reconciled. To have
every word you speak scanned, every look scrutinised,—never to be
sure whether you are right or wrong; to have it said that this was
too high, that too low; to be abused by one person for the very same
thing that another ‘applauds you to the very echo, that does applaud
again;’ to have it hinted that one’s very best effort only just
wanted something to make it perfect; and that certain other parts
which we thought tolerable, were not to be endured; to be taken in
pieces in this manner, turned inside out, to be had up at a
self-elected tribunal of impertinence,—tried, condemned, and
acquitted every night,—to hear the solemn defence, the ridiculous
accusation,—to be subjected to a living anatomy,—to be made the text
of a perpetual running commentary,—to be set up in an antithesis, to
be played upon in an alliteration,—to have one’s faults separated
from one’s virtues, like the sheep from the goats by the good
shepherd,—to be shorn bare and have a mark set upon one,—to be
bewitched and bedevilled by the critics,—to lie at the mercy of
every puny whipster, and not be suffered to know whether one stands
on one’s head or one’s heels till he tells one how—has, to be sure,
something very perplexing and very provoking in it; and it is not so
much to be wondered at that the subjects of this kind of critical
handling undergo the operation with so little patience as they do.
They particularly hate those writers who pretend to patronize them,
for this takes away even the privilege of resentment.

An actor, again, is seldom satisfied with being extolled for what he
is, unless you admire him for being what he is not. A great tragic
actress thinks herself particularly happy in comedy, and it is a
sort of misprision of treason not to say so. Your pen may grow
wanton in praise of the broad farcical humour of a low comedian; but
if you do not cry him up for the fine gentleman, he threatens to
leave the stage. Most of our best comic performers came out in
tragedy as their favourite line; and Mr. Matthews does not think it
enough to enliven a whole theatre with his powers of drollery, and
whim, and personal transformation, unless by way of preface and
apology he first delivers an epitaph on those talents for the
legitimate drama which were so prematurely buried at Covent Garden
Theatre!—If we were to speak our minds, we should say, that Mr.
Matthews shines particularly, neither as an actor, nor a mimic of
actors, but that his forte is a certain general tact, and
versatility of comic power. You would say, he is a clever performer:
you would guess he is a cleverer man. His talents are not pure, but
mixed. He is best when he is his own prompter, manager, and
performer, orchestra, and scene-shifter; and, perhaps, to make the
thing complete, the audience should be of his own providing too.—If
we had never known any thing more of Mr. Matthews than the account
we have heard of his imitating the interior of a German family, the
wife lying a-bed grumbling at her husband’s staying out, the
husband’s return home drunk, and the little child’s _padding_ across
the room to get to its own bed as soon as it hears him, we should
set him down for a man of genius. These felicitous strokes are,
however, casual and intermittent in him:—they proceed from him
rather by chance than design, and are followed up by others equally
gross and superficial. Mr. Matthews wants taste, or has been spoiled
by the taste of the town, whom ‘he must live to please, and please
to live.’ His talent, though limited, is of a lively and vigorous
fibre; capable of a succession of shifts and disguises; he is _up
to_ a number of good things—single hits here and there; but by the
suddenness and abruptness of his turns, he surprises and shocks
oftener than he satisfies. His wit does not move the muscles of the
mind, but, like some practical joker, gives one a good rap on the
knuckles, or a lively box on the ear. He serves up a _pic-nic_
entertainment of scraps and odd ends (some of them, we must say, old
ones). He is like a host, who will not let us swallow a mouthful,
but offers us something else, and directly after brings us the same
dish again. He is in a continual hurry and disquietude to please,
and destroys half the effect by trying to increase it. He is afraid
to trust for a moment to the language of nature and character, and
wants to translate it into pantomime and grimace, like a
writing-master, who for the letter _I_ has the hieroglyphic of an
eye staring you in the face. Mr. Matthews may be said to have taken
tythe of half the talents of the stage and of the town; yet his
variety is not always charming. There is something dry and meagre in
his jokes: they do not lard the lean earth as he walks; but seem as
if they might be written upon parchment. His humour, in short, is
not like digging into a fine Stilton cheese, but is more like the
scrapings of Shapsugar.—As an actor, we think he cannot rise higher
than a waiter, (certainly not a dumb one,) or than Mr. Wiggins. In
this last character, in particular, by a certain panic-struck
expression of countenance at the persecution of which the hen-pecked
husband is the victim, and by the huge unwieldy helplessness of his
person, unable to escape from it and from the rabble of boys at his
heels, he excites shouts of laughter, and hits off the humour of the
thing to an exact perfection. In general, his performance is of that
kind which implies manual dexterity, or an assumption of bodily
defect, rather than mental capacity: take from Mr. Matthews’s
drollest parts an odd shuffle in the gait, a restless volubility of
speech and motion, a sudden suppression of features, or the
continual repetition of some cant phrase with unabated vigour, and
you reduce him to almost total insignificance, and a state of still
life. He is not therefore like—

‘A clock that wants both hands,
As useless when it goes as when it stands:’

for only keep him going, and he bustles about the stage to some
purpose. As a mimic of other actors, Mr. Matthews fails as often as
he succeeds (we call it a failure, when it is with difficulty we can
distinguish the person intended,) and when he succeeds, it is more
by seizing upon some peculiarity, or exaggerating some defect, than
by hitting upon the true character or prominent features. He gabbles
like Incledon, or croaks like Suett, or lisps like Young; but when
he attempts the expressive silver-tongued cadences of John Kemble,
it is the shadow of a shade. If we did not know the contrary, we
should suppose he had never heard the original, but was imitating
some one who had. His best imitations are taken from something
characteristic or absurd that has struck his fancy, or occurred to
his observation in real life—such as a chattering footman, a drunken
coachman, a surly traveller, or a garrulous old Scotchwoman. This
last we would fix upon as Mr. Matthews’s _chef-d’œuvre_. It was a
portrait of common nature, equal to Wilkie or Teniers—as faithful,
as simple, as delicately humorous, and with a slight dash of pathos;
but without one particle of caricature, of vulgarity, or ill-nature.
We see no reason why the ingenious artist should not show his
Country Cousins a gallery of such portraits, and of no others, once
a year. ‘He might exhibit it every night for a month, and we should
go to see it every night!’[44] What has impressed itself on our
memory as the next best thing to this exquisite piece of genuine
painting, was the broad joke of the abrupt proposal of a mutton-chop
to the man who is sea-sick, and the convulsive marks of abhorrence
with which it is received. The representation also of the
tavern-beau in the Country Cousins, who is about to swallow a
lighted-candle for a glass of brandy and water, as he is going drunk
to bed, is well feigned and admirably humoured; with many more, too
long to mention. It is more to our performer’s credit to suppose
that the songs which he sings with such rapidity and vivacity of
effect are not of his own composing; and, as to his ventriloquism,
it is yet in its infancy. The fault of these exhibitions—that which
appears ‘first, midst, and last’ in them, is that they turn too much
upon caricaturing the most common-place and worn-out topics of
ridicule—the blunders of Frenchmen in speaking English,—the
mispronunciations of the cockney dialect, the ignorance of Country
Cousins, and the impertinence and foppery of relations in town. It
would seem too likely from the uniform texture of these pieces, that
Mr. Matthews had passed his whole time in climbing to the top of the
Monument, or had never been out of a tavern, or a stage-coach, a
Margate-hoy or a Dover packet-boat. We do not deny the merit of some
of the cross-readings out of the two languages; but certainly we
think the quantity of French and English jargon put into the mouths
of French and English travellers all through these imitations, must
lessen their popularity instead of increasing it, as two-thirds of
Mr. Matthews’s auditors, we should imagine, cannot know the point on
which the jest turns. We grant that John Bull is always very willing
to laugh at Mounseer, if he knew why or how—perhaps, even without
knowing how or why! But we thought many of the jokes of this kind,
however well contrived or intended, miscarried in their passage
through the pit, and long before they reached the two shilling
gallery.

A new pantomime, called _Shakspear versus Harlequin_, has been
produced at Drury-lane Theatre. It is called ‘a speaking pantomime:’
we had rather it had said nothing. It is better to act folly than to
talk it. The heels and wand and motley coat of Harlequin are sacred
to nonsense; but the words, the cap and wings of Mercury (who was
here also made the representative of Shakspear) are worthy of a
better use. The essence of pantomime is practical absurdity, keeping
the wits in constant chase, coming upon one by surprise, and
starting off again before you can arrest the fleeting phantom: the
essence of this piece was prosing stupidity remaining like a mawkish
fixture on the stage, and overcoming your impatience by the force of
_ennui_. A speaking pantomime (such as this one) is not unlike a
flying waggon: but we do not want a pantomime to move in
minuet-time, nor to have Harlequin’s light wand changed into a
leaden mace. If we must have a series of shocks and surprises, of
violations of probability, common sense, and nature, to keep the
brain and senses in a whirl, let us, at least, have them hot and
hot, let them ‘charge on heaps, that we may lose distinction in
_absurdity_,’ and not have time to doze and yawn over them, in the
intervals of the battle. The bringing Harlequin to the test of
reason resembles the old story of hedging in the cuckoo, and
surpasses the united genius of the late Mr. Garrick (to whom this
dull farce is ascribed) and of the professional gentleman who has
fitted the above productions of ‘the olden times’ (_viz._ those of
the late Mr. Garrick) to modern taste! After all, though Harlequin
is tried by three grave judges, who are very unnecessarily
metamorphosed into three old women, no competition, no collision
takes place between him and the genius of Shakspear, unless Mr. T.
Cooke’s playing very cleverly on a variety of musical instruments,
so as to ravish the heart of Miss Dolly Snip (Madam Vestris) can be
construed into so many proofs of the superiority of Shakspear’s
Muse! Again, Mr. Harley, as Harlequin, and Mr. Oxberry (as a country
clown) get up into a tree to see the sport, from which it was as
difficult to dislodge them as owls from an ivy-bush; and the sport
is to see Joey Snip, the tailor, have his head cut off, and walk
with it about the stage, and, unlike the sign of the good woman,
talk without his tongue. The slicing off a blackamoor’s head or two
with the stroke of a scymitar, provided the thing is done quickly,
and instantly got out of sight, we do not much object to; but we do
not like to have a ghastly spectre of this sort placed before us for
a whole evening, as the heads of the rebel Scotch lords were stuck
on Temple-bar for half a century. It may be well said indeed, _Quod
sic mihi ostendis incredulus odi_. Perhaps this exhibition of
posthumous horror and impertinence might be meant as a sly hit at
the ghost of Hamlet.

‘See o’er the stage the ghost of _Munden_ stalks.’

If so, we cry the Manager mercy. We must add, that the strength of
the theatre was put in requisition for this piece, and if it could
have been saved, it would. Miss Tree, to enliven so many dreary
objects, danced a _pas seul_. We would rather see this young lady
dance round a may-pole at a country wake or fair.

‘But thou, oh Hope, with eyes so fair,
What was thy enchanting measure?
Still it whisper’d promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail:’—

We could not help repeating these lines as we saw the youngest of
the Miss Dennetts, the tallest of the three, resume the part of
Cinderella at Covent Garden,—restored, like Psyche, to her late-lost
home, and transformed by the little hump-backed fairy, from a poor
house-maid to a bright princess, drinking pleasure and treading air.
This is a consummation more devoutly to be wished than the changing
of a pipkin into a sign-post, or a wheel-barrow into a china-shop. A
Fairy Tale is the true history of the human heart—it is a dream of
youth realized! How many country-girls have fancied themselves
princesses, nay, what country-girl ever was there that, some time or
other, did not? A Fairy Tale is what the world would be, if every
one had their wishes or their desserts, if our power and our
passions were equal. We cannot be at a loss for a thousand bad
translations of the story of Cinderella, if we look around us in the
boxes. But the real imitation is on the stage. If we could always
see the flowers open in the spring, or hear soft music, or see
Cinderella dance, or dream we did, life itself would be a Fairy
Tale. If the three Miss Dennetts are a little less like one another
than they were, on the other hand, we must say that Miss Eliza
Dennett (what a pretty name) is much improved, combines a little
cluster of graces in her own person, and ‘in herself sums all
delight.’ She has learned to add precision to ease, and firmness of
movement to the utmost harmony of form. In the scene where
Cinderella is introduced at court and is led out to dance by the
enamoured prince, she bows as if she had a diadem on her head, moves
as if she had just burst from fetters of roses, folds her arms as
the vine curls its tendrils, and hurries from the scene, after the
loss of her faithless slipper, as if she had to run a race with the
winds. We had only one thing to desire, that she and her lover,
instead of the new ballet, had danced the Minuet de la Cour with the
Gavot, as they do in the Dansomanie; that we might have called the
Minuet de la Cour divine, and the Gavot heavenly, and exclaimed once
more, with more than artificial rapture—‘Such were the joys of our
dancing days!’ We do not despair of seeing this alteration adopted,
as our recommendations are sometimes attended to: and in that case
we shall feel.—But the mechanical anticipation of an involuntary
burst of sentiment in supposed circumstances is in vile taste, and
we leave it to lords and pettifoggers. We hate to copy them: but we
like to steal from Spenser. Here is a passage descriptive of
dancing, and of the delights of love, of youth, and beauty which
sometimes surround it, and of the eternal echo which they leave in
the ear of fancy. The Managers of Covent-Garden may perhaps apply it
to their own enchanted palace: we have nothing to do with the
passage but to quote it.

‘They say that Venus, when she did dispose
Herself to pleasure, used to resort
Unto this place, and therein to repose
And rest herself as in a gladsome port,
Or with the Graces there to play and sport:
That even her own Cytheron, though in it
She used most to keep her royal court,
And in her sovereign majesty to sit,
She in regard hereof refus’d and thought unfit.

Unto this place, when as the Elfin knight
Approach’d, him seemed that the merry sound
Of a shrill pipe he playing heard on hight,
And many feet fast thumping th’ hollow ground,
That through the woods their echo did rebound.
He nigher drew to weet what it mote be:
There he a troop of ladies dancing found
Full merrily, and making gladful glee,
And in the midst a shepherd piping he did see.

All they without were ranged in a ring,
And danced round; but in the midst of them
Three other ladies did both dance and sing,
The whilst the rest them round about did hem,
And like a girlond did encompass them,
And in the midst of those same three was placed
Another damsel, as a precious gem,
Amidst a ring most richly well enchaced,
That with her goodly presence all the rest much graced.

Look how the crown which Ariadne wore
Upon her ivory forehead, that same day
That Theseus her unto her bridal bore
(When the bold Centaurs made that bloody fray
With the fierce Lapiths that did him dismay)
Being now placed in the firmament,
Through the bright heaven doth her beams display,
And is unto the stars an ornament;
Which round her move in order excellent.

Such was the beauty of this goodly band,
Whose sundry shape were here too long to tell:
But she that in the midst of them did stand,
Seem’d all the rest in beauty to excel,
Crown’d with a rosy girlond, that right well
Did her beseem. And ever as the crew
About her danc’d, sweet flow’rs that far did smell,
And fragrant odours, they upon her threw,
But most of all, those three did her with gifts endue.

Those were the Graces, daughters of delight,
Handmaids of Venus, which are wont to haunt
Upon this hill, and dance there day and night:
Those three to men all gifts of grace do grant;
And all that Venus in herself doth vaunt,
Is borrowed of them. But that fair one,
That in the midst was placed paravant,
Was she to whom that shepherd piped alone,
That made him pipe so merrily, as never none.’

_Faery Queen_, Book VI. Canto 10.

On the subject of the pantomime and the miscellaneous Drama, we have
two words to add, _viz._ that we have been to see the Heart of
Midlothian at the Surrey Theatre, of which we spoke by hearsay in
our last but one, and which answered our warmest expectations; and
that we took a pleasant stroll up to the Aquatic Theatre of Sadler’s
Wells, and after dining at the Sir Hugh Middleton’s Head, saw a very
pretty play-house, Goody Two Shoes, the Monastery, and the Fate of
Calas. Goody Two Shoes was played first, on the evening we were
there, because Mr. Grimaldi and Mr. Barnes were in it, and they were
obliged afterwards to perform in the pantomime at Covent Garden. Did
Miss Vallancy go with them? Otherwise, we should like to have seen
her again in the course of the evening. All that we could see to
praise in the Monastery was its faithfulness to the original, and
the acting of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. We hope that under the
management of a gentleman (Mr. Howard Paine,) so well acquainted
with both departments of his undertaking, the literary and dramatic,
this theatre will soon flourish in all the pride of summer. We had
nearly omitted to notice a new Hamlet, that came out at Drury-lane a
few weeks ago, who, it appeared to us, would have made the prettiest
Hamlet we have seen, if he had been only equal to the part. Indeed
he looked it to perfection; he had an elegant figure with a
thoughtful face; and on the ordinary conduct and conception of the
character, was at once the gentleman and scholar. In the more
declamatory and impassioned scenes, however, his voice totally broke
down under him, and he did not repeat the part as was given out; for
he was the next morning pierced through with the feathered arrows of
criticism, as if his breast had been a target. The gentlemen-critics
of the daily press have not, in general, their cue on the first
night of a performer’s appearance. If he fails, they fall upon him
without mercy; if he succeeds, they are almost afraid to say so,
lest others should say that they were wrong. They pretend (some of
them) to lead public opinion and yet have no opinion of their own.
They dare not boldly and distinctly declare their opinion of a new
dramatic experiment, and the reason is, their convictions are not
clear enough to warrant their placing any confidence in them, till
they are confirmed by being put to the vote. The first quality of a
good critic is courage; but mental courage, like bodily, is the
result of conscious strength. Some of the Vampyre crew, indeed,
retreat from the dimness and inanity of their perceptions, into the
solid darkness of their prejudices, and the crude consistence of
their everrankling spite; and, in that strong-hold of dirt and
cob-webs, are impervious to every ray of sense or reason. We might
leave them, if they had themselves been contented to remain, in
their narrow, gloomy cells, the proper hiding-place of ignorance and
bigotry; but when they come out into the blaze of noon,

‘Shut their blue-fringed lids, and hold them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven,
Cry out, where is it?’—

it is time to stop their ominous flight, and send them back to that
life of sloth and pride, where the poison of dull-eyed envy preys
only upon itself.