Chapter XXII: Introduction: To an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses (9)

The account of the death of the late Mr. Conway, the actor, came this week—a week of dole. It was melancholy enough, and must have occasioned regret to some who had at any time commented freely on his acting. Yet the original cause of it was not his fault, nor that of the critics—but rather of those who pushed him forward to run the gauntlet of public opinion, and attract a little momentary wonder and curiosity, without his being prepared to stand the trial, or meet the consequences. Popular favourites are too much like the innocent victims of superstition, led out, garlanded with flowers, to slaughter and to sacrifice. This was, we think, the case with Mr. Conway. He was a man of fine personal appearance, of modesty, and merit; but his more than usual height, and the disproportion between the shewiness of his figure and his genius for the drama (though he was by no means devoid of passion or talent) which at first made crowds of idle people run to look at and applaud him, afterwards subjected him to unavoidable, though in one sense (and such he felt it) unjust satire. It cannot be denied that he played _Jaffier_, for instance, with considerable force and feeling; and had he been of the ordinary stature (which is as necessary on the stage as in a group of statuary) he would have been highly respectable in that and other parts requiring a certain mixture of tenderness and vehemence. As it was, those who had at first extolled him to the skies, now swelled the cry against him; and the honey of adulation was naturally turned into gall and bitterness. Young, enthusiastic, and sincere, he attributed to malice and rooted enmity what was owing to accident, and the caprice and levity of the world, who keep up the sense of self-importance and excitement, by loading their thoughtless favourite with caresses one moment, and treating him with every mark of obloquy the next. Poor Conway was not prepared for this; he thought their admiration of him lasting and invaluable, their desertion wounded him to the quick. He did not know that the town was a hardened jilt, whose fondness or aversion are equally suspicious. He retired from the conflict, but bore with him the sense of ill-treatment which he had not knowingly merited, of disappointed hopes, which only the waters of oblivion could wash out, and which should deter others from encountering the same risk, who are not sure of the victory, or are not armed with fortitude equally proof against the homage or insults of mankind. Mr. Conway in his manners was mild and unaffected, spirited in his conduct, and if not a scholar, was distinguished by a love for reading and study.

CHARLES KEAN

_The Examiner._] [_April 13, 1828._

We went on Monday to see young Mr. Kean in _Lovers’ Vows_, with the intention of expressing an opinion; but we have nothing to add in the way of criticism to what we have already said. We will however in so delicate a matter venture on two general remarks for our own satisfaction, and we should hope for that of others. The first is, it appears to us clear that Mr. Kean, _jun._, will never make so great an actor as his father; and if not, he had better rest contented with his father’s fame. The Marquis of Douro does not, we daresay, think of fighting the battle of Waterloo over again: why then should the son of Mr. Kean wish to lay up any hard-earned and doubtful theatrical laurels of his own? The crammed pit of Covent-Garden is his Mount St. Jean: the third act of _Othello_ should be his escutcheon and his hereditary coat-of-arms. A pettifogging, cringing lawyer, a leader of a gang of ruffians, is made a lord, and ennobles a race of ciphers: if this is right, then why should not a man of genius reflect some of his glory on those next to him, and leave the dower of his great name to his immediate posterity? Because the gratitude of the public is insincere, and nobility a mere state-trick. It is not sentiment, but servility, that inclines us to pay respect to a long line of nobles or of princes. Take from the Marquis of Douro his estate of Strathfieldsay, and in a few years he might be in the King’s Bench, and the _Times_ newspaper would not subscribe five pounds to help him out. If Mr. Kean had left a hundred thousand pounds behind him, his son might have sat for a close borough, or have made a ‘vulgar’ Minister of State. We _do_ think there should be some distinctive mark, some ribbon of a Legion of Honour, with the smallest possible reversion of independence, some Tyburn ticket of merit, reserved for the sons of the Muses and the bastards of fortune, to exempt them alike from starving and the office of serving the public (which is much the same thing) for three generations. People talk of birth as necessary to honour and to power: did not the popes, the sons of peasants or of nobody, set their feet upon the necks of monarchs? People talk of the upstart pretensions of authors and men of intellect in modern times: did not the priest (the learned men of their day) come in as the first estate between heaven and the nobles? Why then taunt the flame of genius with being earth-born? It is the dotage of a prejudice to do so. We repeat, the sons of celebrated men are hardly off: the example of their parents (together with necessity) urges them to do something: that very example, from being too near, and almost seeming to save them the trouble of exertion, precludes the possibility of success. Even where the genius might be the same, the imitation and also the habitual idea of doing something extraordinary without knowing what, is prejudicial, if not fatal; and if they wish to turn out anything, they should strike into a path the opposite of what is always before them. Young Kean perhaps would shine as a University-wrangler, or a conveyancer under the bar; and the son of a philosopher should go to court! Again, Mr. Kean is said by his friends to be a promising young actor. We have nothing to say to that; but we will tell him one thing, there is no such person as a promising actor. It is here, as in all similar pursuits, performance or nothing. We do not say no great actor improves, but no actor becomes great by improvement. The sun is seen as soon as it appears above the horizon: there is the same glory round its rising and its setting: so may it always be with the sun of genius, which is the lamp of the world! Garrick fell as it were from the clouds: Mr. Kean’s father rose at once from obscurity. The late Mr. Kemble was the only actor that we remember to have attained to the first rank by gradual advances; and he was sustained in his progress by great stateliness of manner and advantages of person. In general, those who are always improving on themselves, are surpassed by others, and complain that, as they are about to seize the wreath of fame, it is snatched from them by some bolder and more fortunate hand. We do not presume to sit on Mr. Kean’s _quantum meruit_—we will not—but if he is not likely to become a first-rate actor, his name forbids him to be aught less. If he knows our tone in speaking when we are serious or merely splenetic, he will know that these remarks are dictated by anything but a feeling hostile to him.

A new melo-dramatic entertainment succeeded, called _The Dumb Savoyard and his Monkey_. The story is in few words, as follows: The _Count Maldecini_ having been condemned to die (we know not why—for these inventions plunge us at once _in medias res_) his wife accompanied by their little child appears suddenly on the stage with a pardon for him. The ferryman at Ober Wesel, however, refuses to carry her up the river, as the hour is too late; and she is in despair, when the Savoyard, with the assistance of his monkey, undertakes to convey her to the place of destination. They arrive safely at the Falls of the Grenfells, near the salt-mine, in which her husband is confined, when they are attacked by a band of robbers who take a number of valuable ornaments from her, and among the rest the morocco-case, containing her husband’s pardon; but this, at her passionate and distracted entreaty, the chief restores in a fit of generosity, and with an appropriate speech for a German robber. Meantime, the monkey contrives to pick the pardon out of the case, and hide it in a crevice of the rock, on the top of which he sits grinning, the demon of mischief and meddlesomeness. When the _Countess_ arrives at the prison, she accordingly misses what she had built all her hopes upon, but she deceives the jailor and escapes with her husband, also by the aid of the Savoyard and the dextrous _Marmozette_. They are pursued and overtaken just at the very spot where the precious document had been lost; and as the Count is about to be shot, in conformity to his sentence, which he reads and very sentimentally and loyally approves, the monkey betrays the hiding-place of the pardon, which the frantic _Countess_ eagerly rescues from his grasp, and the whole ends happily. Mrs. W. West played the heroine, and looked forlorn and interesting. Mrs. Barrymore was _Pipino_, the Dumb Savoyard, and made a very pretty boy. As to the nimble _Marmozette_ (Master Wieland), if it depended on us, we would make him skip. Our old acquaintance _Jocko_ has left a numerous progeny behind him, and we are afraid we shall never see the end of the breed. Why, in the midst of the beautiful and enchanting scenery on the banks of the Rhine (so admirably represented in this piece) must we have an artificial monster staring us in the face like an ugly looking-glass the whole time. We have no patience on this point. We never could bear to see that branch of the species on or off the stage, and would shoot them like the man in Candide, even at a risk of similar consequences. We have no need of a menagerie in a play-house; the money taken at the door on such occasions should be a deodand to the proprietors of Exeter-’Change. We wish the _Times_, in its gravity, would take up the subject, and with its leaden mace drive these _lusus naturæ_ and nauseous _double-entendres_ from the scene.—We did not recover our equanimity till Miss Foote, as _Meggy Macgilpin_, and her pretty Highland dress, put us into good humour; and O’Keefe’s song of _Twang twang darillo_, between Gatty and Russell, scattered every particle of bile in a roar of laughter.

COVENT-GARDEN.

The holiday attraction of the week has been a melodrama called _Tuckitomba_, said to be founded on a fact which happened in Jamaica fifty years ago. The interest turns on a black sorceress who steals her master’s child out of revenge, on an old pirate (_Tuckitomba_) who runs away with a mulatto-girl for love, and on the blowing up of the vessel in which they set sail for Africa, by the carelessness of a tailor on board (Blanchard) who sets fire to the powder-magazine with the contents of his tobacco-pipe. There was a great deal of bustle, and a want of interest in this piece. The prominent trait was the acting of Keeley, who is called ‘for shortness’ Goliah. This gentleman really answers to _Falstaff’s_ description of ‘a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.’ He is a shred of comedy; a pocket-Liston. He is great in little parts, and makes an amusing approach to a nonentity.—The Minor Theatres have each had their novelties during the week, and been tolerably successful. The critics are divided on the temper and behaviour of John Bull at this season. Some say he was lumpish and leaden at Drury-Lane on Monday, others, that he was in all his glory at Covent-Garden on the same evening. It is from seeing the confusion and uncertainty that prevail in the most authentic reports that we propose shortly to publish two _Examiners_ a week, to set the town right in these and such-like particulars, and to save them the trouble of consulting the daily papers altogether. As to John’s behaviour, pleased or sulky, drunk or sober, we never could see any difference in it. Where we were, a man stood up on a bench in the pit, and another insisting on his getting down, and on his refusal threatening to call him out the next day, the first made answer—‘Aye, if your master will let you!’—‘Master! what do you mean by that? I have no master: I come and go where I please!’ The women now interfered, and one of them clapped her handkerchief to her husband’s mouth to prevent further disagreeables. All an Englishman’s ideas are modifications of his will; and it is strange that with all his boasted independence and equality, he thinks he has a right to insult every one who is not a better man than himself. The reason is, he has no respect for himself, nor consequently for others, except for some external advantage of wealth or situation; and his ill-humour can only be bribed to keep the peace by his self-interest. ‘Vice to be hated needs but to be seen:‘—we are sure that this at least may be said of ill-manners.

Turn we from them to the French play, where the object is to enjoy the scene, to be pleased with yourself, and not to insult your neighbours, or inquire which is master and which is man. There have been several _debûts_, all very creditable and successful, Monsieur Berteche, Madame Beaufre, and Mademoiselle Irma. We saw the former (who is of the Mademoiselle Mars school, and whose tongue runs faster than a race-horse) in the _Ecole des Veillards_ with Monsieur Perlet, who plays the jealous husband with great point and spirit: but shall we add, that in the passionate parts, he does not _let out_ enough, there is an interdicted and internal manner, a fidgetty and confined air, which is probably owing to the subordinate parts in which he usually acts. In this comedy, a gentleman pulls off his coat on the stage, which is with us an indecorum, except in farce. We mention this to show the difference of feeling in such matters. We missed Perlet in the _Cheats of Scapin_: he always contrives to _cheat_ us of our favourite Moliere. But we had a full taste of him in the _Anglaises pour rire_. And these are our fair country-women—so they sit, speak, walk, sing, and dance, in the eyes of foreigners! No, it is Monsieur Pelissie and Monsieur Perlet—but very like!

SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.

_The Examiner._] [_April 27, 1828._

The last week or two has been rich in theatricals; Miss Stephens in _Love in a Village_, where the scene opens with those two young beauties sitting in a bower of roses like a flower stuck in the stomacher of beauty, and where that unconscious siren ‘warbles her native wood-notes wild’ with such simplicity and sweetness; Charles Kemble in the _Inconstant_, who in one glorious scene plays tragedy and comedy to the life, and in one short moment tastes the ‘fierce extremes’ of pleasure and agony, of life and death; and _Othello_, with bumpers and three times three; to say nothing of Madame Vestris in the _Invincibles_, and Mr. John Reeve in the immortal _Major Sturgeon_. Why then did we take no notice of them? Notice we have taken, but it has been with ‘our mind’s eye,’ in ‘our heart’s core.’ Ill will it fare with us, when we do not cast a sidelong glance at those pregnant abridgments, the play-bills, and when their flaunting contents, that unfold to us the map of our life, no longer excite a smile or a sigh. Any one who pleases may then write our epitaph, though it will not be worth writing. At such a season, for instance, we saw Mrs. Siddons in such a part for the first time; in such another, Kemble walked with regal air across the stage, and his stately brow needed no diadem to set it off; in such a character Bannister was in all his glory; in that, Suett vented his resistless folly; here, Munden went the whole length of his face; here, Lewis was all life and air; here, Jack Palmer was great indeed; here, King was bitter in _Touchstone_, and Miss Pope romantic in _Audrey_; then, Mrs. Goodall played the part of _Rosalind_, and tripped in becoming page’s attire through the forest of Ardennes (days and years long past!); here, Dignum warbled as _Amiens_ (before we had heard of the peace of Amiens); and here, Mrs. Jordan’s laugh comes over the heart, and if it has grown dry and seared, fills it with the remembrance of joy and gladness once more. Dodd and Parsons hover in the extreme verge of the horizon, but gay shadows, airy shapes. Then such a one took leave of the stage, drawing a narrower circle within the natural circle of his being; then Liston appeared in the _Finger-Post_, looking like a finger-post, with his nose only pointing to fun; Elliston in _Wild Oats_ (will he never sow ’em?); Matthews in the _Bee-Hive_, as busy as a bee; Miss Kelly in chambermaids; Miss O’Neill in heroines; last, not least, Mr. Kean, the ‘bony prizer’ of the stage, who has knocked all other reputations and his own on the head. What a host of names and recollections is here! How many more are omitted, names that have embodied famous poets’ verse and been the ‘fancy’s midwife,’ that have gladdened a nation and made life worth living for, that have made the world pass in review as a gaudy pageant, and set before us in a waking dream the bodily shapes and circumstances of all that is most precious in joy or in sorrow! And is it come to this, that the drama is accounted vulgar by the vulgar, and that we are to cut our old acquaintances the players, those who have thrown a light upon the morning, noon, and evening of our day, ‘gay creatures of the element, that live ‘i th’ rainbow and play in the plighted clouds,’ and who have taken us so many hundred times to sit and laugh with them, or shed ‘tears such as angels weep,’ at a height where we could look down at the sordid of the earth—and at a universe of Operas, with their naked _figurantes_, and sense and soul muffled up in sound to suit the callous taste or ranker gust of ears polite! We may have said all this before; and here lies the misfortune of our office. A theatrical audience is supposed to vary every night: the _reading public_ is assumed to be always the same body. We could praise Mr. Charles Kemble’s acting in _Young Mirabel_ every time he does it, and are always glad to think he is going to play what does such credit to his art and gives such pleasure to others; but we can say nothing about it, having once expressed our opinion to that effect. An actor repeats a favourite part till farther notice; a singer may be _encored_ in an air as often as his friends please; thank God, we have stockpieces that never wear out: but who ever ventured upon reviving a defunct criticism? It might pass with the million, but some good-natured friend would betray us. The writer’s secret would be found out, and he would be had up as an imposter. Nevertheless, having meditated a new criticism (or eulogy, for it is the same thing) on Mr. Kean’s _Othello_, and the overflowing house having excluded us from the Free-List, we venture upon borrowing an old one; and if we were to try, we do not know that we could _mend our draught_.

‘Mr. Kean’s _Othello_ is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting in the world. It is impossible either to describe or praise it adequately. We have never seen any actor so wrought upon—so “perplexed in the extreme.” The energy of passion, as it expresses itself in action, is not the most terrific part: it is the agony of his soul, shewing itself in looks and tones of voice. In one part, where he listens in dumb despair to the fiend-like insinuations of _Iago_, he presented the very face, the marble aspect of Dante’s _Count Ugolino_. On his fixed eyelids “horror sat plumed.” In another part, where a gleam of hope or of tenderness returns to subdue the tumult of his passions, his voice broke in faultering accents from his overcharged breast. His lips might be said less to utter words than to distil drops of blood gushing from his heart. An instance of this was in his pronunciation of the line—

“Of one that loved not wisely, but too well.”

The whole of this last speech was indeed given with exquisite force and beauty. We only object to the virulence with which he delivers the last line, and with which he stabs himself—a virulence which _Othello_ would neither feel against himself at the moment, nor against the “turbaned Turk” (whom he had slain) at such a distance of time. His exclamation on seeing his wife, “I cannot think but _Desdemona’s_ honest,” was the “glorious triumph of exceeding love,” a thought flashing conviction on his mind, and irradiating his countenance with joy, like sudden sunshine. In fact almost every scene or sentence in this extraordinary exhibition is a master-piece of natural passion. The convulsed motion of the hands, and the involuntary swelling of the veins in the forehead, in some of the most painful situations, should not only suggest topics of critical panegyric, but might furnish studies to the painter or sculptor.’

After _Othello_ on Wednesday, _The Mayor of Garratt_ followed ‘with kindliest change.’ Mr. Reeve played _Major Sturgeon_, and Mr. Keeley, _Jerry Sneak_. Comparisons are odious: _therefore_ they are made. Mr. Keeley’s _Jerry_ was not so good as Russell’s formerly; nor Mr. Reeve’s _Major Sturgeon_ equal to Dowton’s. This is saying nothing, for both those performances were of the very first water. Mr. Keeley’s person is diminutive, and he seems the natural butt of a virago: Russell was a goodly man of his inches; it was his spirit only that was hen-pecked, and that submitted to buffets and blows. Dowton again was the model of a train-band Captain in his own esteem, and never doubted of the ineffable superiority of his own pretensions: Reeve, in the midst of his insolence and vapouring, has a look of _quizzing_ himself, and sees through the ridicule of his own character. He however throws much humour and fantastic absurdity into the part, _à-la-Liston_; but his drollery is conscious and knowing, not vacant and absolutely spontaneous, like that of his unrivalled prototype. At the end of the farce, there was some division of opinion whether the piece was not low, as if that which had mainly driven such manners and characters almost from the knowledge of the present generation was not a master-stroke of genius, and in fact an historical drama.

THE COMPANY AT THE OPERA.

_The Examiner._] [_May 4, 1828._

COVENT-GARDEN.

There has been a new farce here (called, disagreeably enough, _The Little Offsprings_). If Mr. Peake is one of the most amusing of our farce writers, it is because he pretends to be nothing better. He professes to write a _farce_, not a _genteel_ comedy; and he generally succeeds accordingly. Our complaint against his present novelty is, that unlike most of his previous ones, it is not quite _broad_ enough. He himself will smile at this objection, because assuredly it is quite broad enough where it _is_ broad. But it is not ‘as _broad_ as it is _long_,’ which is what all farces ought to be. Young ladies as well bred as they are well dressed, and young gentlemen ‘to match,’ are interlopers in the region of farce. Let Mr. Peake eschew all such amiable insipidities, and he will do well. In short, let him cultivate the _gentilities_ of life not a step farther than they fall in with the case (anything but genteel) of Mr. Wrench; and then he cannot go very far wrong. Above all, let him have nothing to say to young ladies who are a whit more like _Lady Teazle_ than Miss Kelly is. They are ticklish handling in all cases; and in his there is no answering for the mischief they may do.

‘Crabbed age and youth
Cannot live together’;—

and no more can the ultra-ridiculous and the flat common-place—Mr. Keeley as a Savoyard organ-boy, and Miss Goward as a sensitive school-girl. The contrast (so to speak) does not harmonize. _Au reste_, the name of the new farce is the worst thing belonging to it. It includes a fox-hunting Admiral, played, or rather worked, with great effect by Bartley;—a bluff and blundering boatswain, which Fawcett acted to the life, that is to say, somewhat disagreeably;—a person wearing a white hat and pea-green pantaloons, things always enough to make the sight of Mr. Wrench pleasant; a suppositious spinster (Mrs. Davenport), who turns out to be the parent of one of the ‘little offsprings,’ her brother the Admiral being similarly situated as to the other;—and finally, the ‘offsprings’ themselves, played (as aforesaid) by Miss Goward and Mr. Keeley, and about whom there is a good deal of ingenious equivoque which touches upon the extreme edge where such matters are, now-a-days, so apt to fall over. They pretty nearly did so on the above occasion, which has, no doubt, induced Mr. Peake to make the proper sacrifices to the suspicious delicacy of ‘some people’s ears.’

KING’S THEATRE.

_Don Giovanni_ was played at this theatre on Thursday for the benefit of Madame Caradori, in which Mademoiselle Sontag sustained the part of _Donna Anna_ with great truth and effect.

We said something lately on the company at the holiday theatres: we have something to say on the company at the Opera. We have little hesitation in stating (we speak of the pit) that in its way it is quite as bad: from boisterous rudeness and familiarity it rises into distance and superciliousness. If for instance at the Surrey or the Coburg you see two fellows quarrelling which is the master and which is the man, at the King’s Theatre you hear an elegant discourse on ‘the higher and the lower orders.’ A critic at Covent-Garden or Drury-Lane thinks Sadler’s Wells or the East London _low_: a critic of the self-same stamp, but one of softer phrase, pronounces the condemnation of the drama in good set terms as altogether exploded in the fashionable circles, and as flourishing most in our manufacturing towns and the semi-barbarous states of North America. You hear another take up the lamentable theme of an interval in the succession of regular Opera-singers, as if it were a pause in nature; and when notwithstanding he has heard Braham sing very well in ‘_this house_,’ repeating the words as if the atmosphere at the Haymarket wafted other sounds than common air, and music were a geographical distinction. Thus it is that an Englishman is always pinning his faith on places and persons; and that he cannot arrive (for the soul of him, let him be taught and trammelled how he will) at the contemplation of an abstract idea: and yet the booby talks of refinement. He has no conception of anything but from the situation where he finds it; or the figure it makes in the eyes of some one as wise as himself; or from its being a foil to some defect in others. You hear none of this gabble at the _Thêatre Français_, or the Italian Opera in Paris, about those exploded authors Racine and Molière, or the low buffoonery of the _Theatre des Varietés_, because they understand or relish both: we, unfortunately, who understand and relish neither, are obliged to create an artificial admiration of what is exotic out of our contempt for what is native, and pamper our pretensions to refinement by constantly dwelling on the vulgarity of the lower orders. Delightful it is to hear the Frenchwomen speaking of ‘the vulgar Englishwomen’ in a lump, as these same Englishwomen speak of all the rest of their country-women! In France, to laugh and weep (at least with the comic or the tragic Muse) is not held vulgar. All wit is not confined to a shake of the toe, nor all sense to the squall of an Opera-singer, though they dance and give concerts as well as we. But in England our object is not the pursuit of pleasure, but to run away from the pleasures of others; and when a taste for the drama or anything else becomes a little common, we grow sulky and insensible by way of being spiritual and refined. We see no other refinement in the case, unless the getting rid of thought and feeling is a proof of refinement; and the _figurantes_ at the Opera are an intermediate link, a soft imperceptible gradation, between the grossness of human passion and the absence of all human sympathy. Do the upper classes speak in recitative? Do they, in answer to a common question, vault into the air? Perhaps a Noble Duke might make one of his speeches intelligible by singing it, or solve the difficulties of the Corn question by calling out the Lord Chancellor to dance a minuet with him! We import Opera-singers, dancers, kings! Liberal land! That knows its own deficiencies in what is refined and elevated! Happy, that it finds others so ready to oblige it! All that they get from us, is hard blows or hard cash: all that we get from them, is politeness and luxury! In a word the question comes to this—_Are the English an essentially vulgar people or not?_ If all that they have of their own is vulgar and unworthy of the notice of the upper classes, then the unavoidable inference is that the upper classes themselves are unworthy to see anything better, and are the most vulgar, fashionable audience in Europe. If we have the least possible capacity for the fine arts, namely, dancing, music, painting, then we must be, in spite of letters-patent of nobility, or a box at the opera, or a _chapeau-bras_, or an opera-glass, the worst possible judges of them; and if we would be anything at all, must set up for something else. Indeed, the effects are plain enough. There is that little Brocard; she was at one time a model of voluptuous, languishing grace; but it was thrown away upon the higher orders, and she now does nothing but walk on the tips of her toes. The little trifler, she that we have praised so often! We are after all in such matters a Bartlemy-fair audience—or for a tumbler’s show! Is Madame Pasta a favourite with the great vulgar? Not in the least. They hear her fame, but not her. What piteous, vacant aspects in the fine gentleman in the pit the first night of Mademoiselle Sontag’s appearance! And what would they not have given (before committing themselves beyond an applause which might be construed into a good-natured encouragement) to know what the newspapers would say the next day! What then is the amount of this exclusive preference and fastidious superiority of fashionable taste? Mere arrogance and affectation. Look at the men in the pit. Are they in raptures with the ballet or the music? They are solely occupied in thinking how they themselves look, whether their coat is of the right cut, their cravat properly tied, and whether their next neighbour is good enough for them to speak to. Each opera-beau ought to have a glass-case over him to keep him within a certain precise sphere of _dandy_ repulsiveness and self-importance. In an O. P. row you are in danger of being knocked down: in the _still-life_ of the Opera-house, every one seems in fear of touching his neighbour’s elbow. The disagreeable either in thought or action is inseparable from our fogs and sea-coal fires. Look at the women in the boxes. Are they at their ease? Or do they not keep one fixed attitude, or else loll, and laugh, and stare without meaning? The great thing is not to seem to take an interest; and this is not difficult, where none is felt. If to paint, to dress, to intrigue, and be insensible, is the height of refinement, then the women in the lobbies are even more refined than they. Do we then subscribe to this total disqualification of the English character? No: we have hearts and heads for other things besides the mechanism of the senses. We have books, which we send through the heart of all Europe; but our people of fashion and our parade of gentility are the laughing-stock of the world. One service which the work on _Lord Byron and his Contemporaries_ has done the public, one offence it has given to the insolent few, is that it shews that even the strongest minds are not exempt from the shallowness and pedantry of this kind of jargon. The Noble Poet somewhere says that he and Tom Moore wrote well, because he himself from birth, and Mr. Moore from circumstances (circumstances indeed!) moved in the fashionable world. If this were all, we should have some thousands of fine geniuses come out every year, ‘the mob of gentlemen who write with ease!’ Why, instead of opening the casket to examine the contents, are we to be always looking at the outside? Or why, having found a jewel in it, persist that the wrapper was coarse brown paper? When we hear all the inhabitants of this great country whose names are not inscribed in the Red Book, or who are not crammed into the stifling, glittering atmosphere of the King’s Theatre, stigmatised with the sweeping epithet of ‘the lower orders,’ our patience is a little out at elbows, and the answer, we fear, will not come from the pen alone! What is it that my Lord-Duke brings with him from the Continent—that he shews to his fellow-travellers as a precious curiosity—that he folds up and unfolds with such care? Is it a cameo, a drawing by Raphael, a bit of Claude? It is a copy of the Great Tun of Heidelberg! When did the polite world think it allowable for the last time to throng to the English theatre in crowds and with their expectations excited to the utmost? To see young Mr. Kean, a boy just come from Eton (classical reminiscence!) in the part of _Norval_! Or to see the bottle-conjuror, or a thing born with a crown on its head, or any other rare and striking novelty! Spare us, man of fashion, in the name of refinement!

THE BEGGARS’ OPERA

_The Examiner._] [_May 11, 1828._

COVENT-GARDEN.

On Tuesday, the _Beggars’ Opera_ was acted here; or rather, half the _Beggars’ Opera_ to half a house. This is as it should be: if the Managers start and shrug up their shoulders at one half of a play, the public will shrink from the other. It is always wrong to cry _stale fish_. We suspect some clerical critic, some _Jeremy Collier_ of the _Times_, has had a hand in this: what have these reverend divines to do with profane stage-plays, any more than poets and novelists with writing _lay-sermons_? Everything in our day is turned topsy-turvy: nothing prevails but ‘vanity, chaotic vanity.’ The consequence of this sort of slur and neglect thrown upon the piece is, that it is indifferently acted. There is not, in the expressive green-room phrase, ‘a hand in the house’: and without that, the performer has no heart to proceed. A player can no more act with spirit unless he sees the reflection of his excellences in the looks and satisfaction of the audience, than a fine lady can dress without a looking-glass. He makes a hit and it fails of effect; he is therefore thrown out, and the next time he does wrong or he does nothing. _Filch_ (Meadows) picks a pocket as if he was afraid of being detected by the pit: Miss Kelly is shocked at the part of _Lucy_, and flounces and elbows through it as if she wished to get out of it, putting a negative on an _encore_ that is likely to detain her five minutes longer in Newgate: Miss Stephens (the charming _Polly_) is frightened at the interest she _might_ inspire, and is loth to ‘waste her sweetness on a _blackguard_ air’: the _Captain_ (Mr. Wood) is the only person who stands fire on the trying occasion. This gentleman is the best _Macheath_ we have seen for a long time (for in criticism as in law we must have our statute of limitations)—more of a gentleman than Incledon, a better singer than Davies, less affected than Young, less finical than Sinclair, as ‘pretty a fellow’ as Madame Vestris—good-looking, gallant, debonair, and vocal. Bartley is too ‘splenetic and rash’ for _Lockitt_, who should be sullen and hardened as his prison-walls; Blanchard is not round and set enough for _Peachum_, his figure dangling and his voice crackling like a lawyer’s parchment; Mrs. Davenport alone remained in her original muslin apron, silk gown, and pinners (a Sybil, yet how unlike a prophetess!) to overlook and wonder at the desolation of the classic scene. We are more and more convinced that there is a time for everything, and that good plays must give place to bad ones. It is not possible (with a mixed audience) to keep alive the ridicule of manners after the manners themselves have ceased, nor to preserve them in the spirit of wit, or exhibit them even in mock-heroics. The stage is but the counterpart of existing follies—

‘And when the date of Nock was out,
Off fell the sympathetic snout.’

However, the _Beggars’ Opera_ has run a century. That’s pretty well. Oh George Colman the Younger, Messrs. Reynolds and Morton, how will you rejoice, could you lift up your heads a hundred years hence, and see a five-act play of yours cut down to a one-act farce! It is not that there are not plenty of rogues and pick pockets at present; but the Muse is averse to look that way; the imagination has taken a higher flight; wit and humour do not flow in that dirty channel, picking the grains of gold out of it. Instead of descending, we aspire; and the age has a sublime front given to it to contemplate the heaven of drawing-rooms and the milky-way of fashion. You are asked if you like Fielding, as if it were a statuteable offence; and it was justly observed the other day in a comparison between _De Vere_ and _Count Fathom_, that in a refined period like ours, a rogue aims at nothing short of being Prime-Minister! In a word, the French Revolution has spoiled all, like a great stone thrown into a well ‘with hollow and rueful rumble,’ and left no two ideas in the public mind but those of high and low. The jealousy of gentility, the horror of being thought vulgar, has put an end to the harmless _double-entendre_ of wit and humour; and the glancing lights and shades of life (nothing without each other) are sunk into the dull night of insipidity and affectation. So be it, and so it will be! Yet ‘we have heard the chimes at midnight’ for all this, and passed over Hounslow and Bagshot, not without a _twinge_ of the recollection of other times, as well as responsive to the names of Pope, of Gay, and Queensberry’s Duchess! Nor is it so long since we have seen good company and full houses grace the representation of Tyburn tree: we remember old Sir John Sylvester among others (with we believe his two daughters) who had a keen relish for an execution, and stedfastly contemplated under black bushy eyebrows that irrefragable order of ideas (as Mr. Hobbes calls it) ‘the thief, the judge, and the gallows;’ and Mr. Vansittart, who smiled with conscious simplicity at the satirical allusions to Ministers of State, might be supposed to be comparing the terseness and point of Gay’s style with his own ‘wolds and sholds,’ and seemed to think that nothing but an _evangelical_ housebreaker was wanting to the perfection of the plot!—We could not stay out _A Race for Dinner_, though invited by Mr. Wrench,—who has become as hungry as a hunter of late,—but made the best of our way to the other house (old Drury) in search of a criticism. We could almost fancy Covent Garden had got there before us, for there we found nearly the whole former strength of the rival house drawn up in battle-array before us—‘and Birnamwood was come to Dunsinane’—through what bickerings, what strifes, what heart-burnings, what jealousies between actors, what quarrels with managers, what want of pay, and demands for more, is easy (though not pleasant) to guess. They had also brought the _Poor Gentleman_ with them; and both together brought a full house. Nothing could be better acted. Looking at them with ‘eyes of youth’ (which we always take with us to the theatre) we seemed as it were to witness something like a _turn-out_ of Chelsea pensioners on the boards; and the sentiments of the play were of a piece with this patriotic and charitable impression. About thirty years ago, when John Bull took a particular fit of hatred against the French, he also fell in love with himself; and the dramatic writers of that day undertook to shew John his own face, his virtues or vices ‘to advantage dressed’ in a succession of plays which were properly _Dedications to the English nation_. We have the _Whole Duty of Man_ bound up in a coarse, unattractive exterior; the Virtues in the front of the stage, though the Graces stand a little in the back-ground; and all the charities of private life clustering together on the stage, as they do round the domestic hearth. We have nothing but generous uncles, dry in their manner, but their heart and their purse overflowing with liberality—dutiful nephews, thoughtless but well-meaning, and falling into scrapes and love at every turn—reclaimed seducers—exemplary young ladies—old servants surly, but honest (the English character)—a chattering apothecary, the butt of the village and a foil to our self-love—an old soldier, a favourite in the family, and with us, for he has been wounded in our defence—a poor gentleman, in want of money which he refuses by mistake from some munificent patron, in consequence of not being so shrewd as the audience, and who is in hourly danger of a prison, from which _we_ hope to escape. All this hits our delicate and improved moral tastes much better than sneering at our vices or laughing at our follies. Live sentiment, perish satire! Then there is so much distress, which it is so delightful to sympathize with—so much money circulating to relieve it (which it is so delightful to hear and to see; it is almost like attending a charity-sermon, or seeing Mr. Irving himself pawn his watch out of an excess of missionary zeal)—then there are so many tears starting into the eye, so many squeezes of the hand, so many friends and relations falling into one another’s arms, as cannot but move the most obdurate—so many bailiffs in the wind, so many duels broken off by the entrance of some antiquated spinster who is always prying into mischief, or of some charming young creature who is the cause of it. We hope the other actors and actresses who acquitted themselves so admirably in their several parts,—Mr. Dowton in _Sir R. Bramble_, Mr. Mathews in _Ollapod_, Mr. Liston in _Corporal Foss_, Mr. Cooper in _Lieutenant Worthington_, Mr. Jones in _Frederic_, Mrs. Davison in _Miss Mactab_,—will excuse us if we pass them over on this occasion to pay our compliments to Miss Ellen Tree, who played _Emily Worthington_, and who certainly comes under the description of persons last-mentioned. Without any appearance of art, she played so well that she seemed the character itself, with the ease and simplicity of an innocent school-girl. Her figure is very pleasing—her voice is like her sister’s—and she has the handsomest mouth in the world. We will not attempt to describe it for two reasons: first, because we cannot; secondly, because we _dare_ not. In Mr. Jones’s _School for Gallantry_ she might have been called the _bon bouche_. Amidst the chopping and changing of the theatres, we had forgotten Mr. Jones was at Drury Lane; and inquired after the success of his new piece at Covent Garden. We naturally enough received an answer almost as cold as the moon which shines through the bars of his hero’s prison-chamber. We were glad however to find that the wit and pleasantry diffused over it, if faint, had much of the agreeable lustre of that mild planet. We should suppose the plot borrowed from the country where the scene is laid. Cupid seems always on garrison-duty in the Prussian monarchy, and the spirit of adventure and gallantry somewhat languishes and grows trifling when it is kept (as everything there is) under lock and key. After what we have said of Miss E. Tree, we will not forfeit our reputation for gallantry by saying anything less obliging of Miss Love, who plays a young hussar officer in this piece, than that we like her best when she is drest most like herself.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW AND L’AVARE

_The Examiner._] [_May 18, 1828._

DRURY LANE.

The _Taming of the Shrew_ was revived here on Wednesday, with the original words and additional songs. We however missed _Christopher Sly_, that supreme dramatic critic, who should have sat in lordly judgment on the piece, and given a drunken relief to it. This representing of a play within a play (of which Shakspeare was fond) produces an agreeable theatrical perspective—it is like painting a picture in a picture—and intimates pointedly enough that all are but shadows, the pageants of a dream. We also missed Mr. Liston in this part; for we understand he has some good quips and crotchets about it. Unless we saw him, we cannot pretend to say how he would do it; for we consider Mr. Liston in the light of an author rather than of an actor, and he makes his best parts out of his own head or face, in a sort of _brown study_, with very little reference to the text. He has nevertheless more comic humour oozing out of his features and person than any other actor in our remembrance, or than we have any positive evidence of since the time of Hogarth. No one is _stultified_, no one is _mystified_ like him—no one is so deep in absurdity, no one so full of vacancy; no one puzzles so over a doubt, or goes the whole length of an extravagance like him—no one chuckles so over his own conceit, or is so dismayed at finding his mistake:—the genius of folly spreads its shining gloss over his face, tickles his nose, laughs in his eyes, makes his teeth chatter in his head, or draws up every muscle into a look of indescribable dulness, or freezes his whole person into a lump of ice (as in _Lubin Log_) or relaxes it into the very thaw and dissolution of all common sense (as in his _Lord Grizzle_). Munden’s acting (which many prefer, and in this number may be included Mr. Liston himself) was external, overdone, and aimed at the galleries—it was a sort of prodigious and inspired _face-making_—Liston’s humour bubbles up of itself, and runs over from the mere fulness of the conception. If he does not go out of himself, he looks into himself, and ruminates on the idea of the idle, the quaint, and the absurd, till it does his heart good within him, and makes ‘the lungs of others crow like chanticleer.’ Munden’s expressions, if they could have been taken off on the spot, would have made a capital set of grotesque masks: Liston’s would make a succession of original comic sketches, as rich as they are true:—Mr. Wilkie failed in attempting one of them—his pencil was not oily and unctuous enough. We have seen many better comedians, that is, better imitators of existing or supposed characters and manners—such as Emery, Little Simmons, Dowton, and others—we know no other actor who has such a fund of drollery in himself, or that makes one laugh in the same hearty unrestrained manner, free from all care or controul, that we do with _Sancho Panza_ or _Parson Adams_. We have heard a story of Mr. Liston being prevented by some accident from attending his professional duties, and wrapping himself up in a flannel gown and heart’s-content over a winter fire, to read our good old English novelists for a fortnight together. What fine marginal notes his face would make! Which would he enjoy most, the blanket falling and discovering philosopher _Square_ behind it, or the drawing up of the curtain and the broad laugh of the pit? We will answer that question for him. The meanest apprentice that sees a play for the first time from the gallery, has more pleasure than the most admired actor that ever trod the stage: there is more satisfaction in reading one page of a sterling author with good faith and good will, than the writer had in the composition or even the success of all his works put together. The admiration we bestow on others comes from the heart; but never returns back to it. Vanity closes up the avenues, or envy poisons it. This digression is too long: without sometimes going out of our way, we should hardly get to the end of our task.—The revival, on the whole, went off pleasantly, though the acting was not remarkably good, nor the music by any means enlivening. Jaques’s recommendation to Amiens—‘Warble, warble,’—seems to be the device of most modern composers, who think that, if they string a set of unmeaning notes together, it must be heavenly harmony. ’Tis pitiful. We are sick to death of this interpolated _sing-song_; nor do we think it much mended by proceeding from the mouth of Mr. Braham, who is in such cases a piece of operatic fleecy hosiery. He is a walking woolsack:—‘And when the bag was opened, the voice began to sing,’ &c. We may be wrong in this matter, and speak under correction of better judges; but we confess that the everlasting monotonous alternation of the thunder of the spheres and the softness of nightingales, of the notes of the trumpet and the lute, the forked lightning and gentle moon-beams, Mr. Braham’s thick-set person, infantine gestures and dying cadences, all together throw us into a fit of despondency. Miss Fanny Ayton’s shrill voice and acute features did not serve to dispel our chagrin. The rest of the piece was tolerably cast. Wallack was the hero of it, who does not want for spirit or confidence; and a man’s good opinion of himself is always half-way towards deserving it, and obtaining that of others. Cooper did not play his pretended master well: he is too grave and straight forward an actor for these sort of sudden shifts and doubtful subterfuges. The best-done scene was the quarrel between Russell as the tailor, and Harley as _Petruchio’s_ man, about the gown and cap. The quaint antique humour was happily hit off, and studiously dallied with, so as not to slur it over, but to bring it out. Some fastidious critics may object to the puerile conceit and tenuity of meaning that pleased our ancestors in such idle squabbles—we think we could cite graver polemics to match it in shabby excuses and verbal trifling in the present day. The old-fashioned dresses recalled the image of former times; and the scenery that of places, which can never grow old. The last scene, in which the brides are sent for and brought in, had an excellent effect; and the second representation was announced with every sign of satisfaction. It may not be improper to add here, that the _Taming of the Shrew_ is one of the pieces that have been transplanted (not without a good deal of pruning) to the French stage, and that Mademoiselle Mars plays the part of _Katharine_ with equal spirit and success.

(_French Play._)