No. VII

[July, 1820.

The Drama is a subject of which we could give a very entertaining account once a month, if there were no plays acted all the year. But, as some artists have said of Nature, ‘the Theatres put us out.’ The only article we have written on this matter that has given us entire satisfaction—(we answer, be it observed, for nobody but ourselves)—is the one we wrote in the winter, when, in consequence of two great public calamities, the theatres were closed for some weeks together. We seized that lucky opportunity, to take a peep into the raree-show of our own fancies,—the moods of our own minds,—and a very pretty little kaleidoscope it made. Our readers, we are sure, remember the description. Our head is stuffed full of recollections on the subject of the Drama, some of older, some of later date, but all treasured up with more or less fondness; we, in short, love it, and what we love, we can talk of for ever. We love it as well as Mr. Weathercock loves maccaroni; as Mr. Croker loves the Quarterly Review, and the Quarterly Review the Edinburgh; as Kings love Queens; and Scotchmen love their country. But, as happens in some of these instances, we love it best at a distance. We like to be a hundred miles off from the Acted Drama in London, and to get a friend (who may be depended on) to give an account of it for us; which we read, at our leisure, under the shade of a clump of lime-trees. What is the use indeed of coming to town, merely todiscover that Mr. Elliston is ‘fat, fair, and forty,’ and becomes silk hose worse than fleecy hosiery?

‘Odious, insatin! ’Twould a saint provoke!’

We had rather stay where we are, and think how young, how genteel, how sprightly Lewis was at seventy! Garrick too was fat and pursy; but who ever perceived it through that airy soul of his, that life of mind, that bore him up ‘like little wanton boys that swim on bladders?’ Or why should we take coach to prevent our friend and coadjutor, of the whimsical name,—that Bucolical Juvenile, the Sir Piercie Shafton of the London Magazine,—from carrying off his Mysie Happer, the bewitching Miss Brunton, from our critical advances, and forestalling our praises of the grey twinkling eyes, the large white teeth, and querulous catechising voice of this accomplished little rustic? We shall leave him in full possession of his prize;—she shall be hisProtection, and he shall be herAudacity: but we cannot consent to give up to his agreeable importunity our right and interest in the Miss Dennetts—the fair, the ‘inexpressive three.’ We will not erase their names from our pages, but twine them in cypher, as they are ‘written in our heart’s tables,’—though they do not dance at the Opera! We have not this gentleman’s exquisitely happy knack in the geography of criticism: nor do we carry a map of London in our pockets to make out an exact scale of merit andvirtu; nor judge of black eyes, a white cheek, and so forth, by the bills of mortality. We do not hate pathos because it is found in the Borough; our taste (such as it is) can cross the water, by any of the four bridges, in search of spirit and nature; we can make up our minds to beauty even at Whitechapel! Our friend and correspondent, Janus, grieves and wonders at this. He asks us why we do not express his sentiments instead of our own? and we answer, ‘It is because we are not you.’ He runs away from vulgar places and people, as from the plague; swoons at the mention of the Royal Cobourg; mimics his barber’s pronunciation ofAshley’s; and is afraid to trust himself at Sadler’s Wells, lest his clothes should be covered with gingerbread, and spoiled with the smell of gin and tobacco. Now we, in our turn, laugh at all this. We are never afraid of being confounded with the vulgar; nor is our time taken up in thinking of what is ungenteel, and persuading ourselves that we are mightily superior to it. The gentlemen in the gallery, in Fielding’s time, thought every thinglow; and our friend, Mr. Weathercock, presents his compliments to us, and tells us we are wrong in condescending to any thing beneath ‘Milanie’s foot of fire.’ We have no notion of condescending in any thing we write about: we seek fortruth and beauty wherever we can find them, and think that with these we are safe from contamination. ‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.’ Our comparative negligence, in this respect, probably arises from the difference that exists between our dress and that of our correspondent. A good judge has said, ‘a man’s mind is parcel of his fortunes,’—and a man’s taste is part of his dress. If we wore ‘diamond rings on our fingers, antique cameos in our breast-pins, cambric pocket-handkerchiefs breathing forth Attargul, and pale lemon-coloured kid gloves,’ our perceptions might be strangely altered. We might then think Mr. Young ‘the perfect gentleman both on and off the stage,’ and consider Mr. Jones’s ‘cut-steel watch chain quite refreshing.’ As it is, we differ from him on most of the above points. Yet, for any thing we see to the contrary, we might safely have staid in the country another month, and deputed the modern Euphuist, as our tire-man of the theatre, to adjust Mr. Kemble’s boots, to tie on Mr. Abbott’s sash to his liking, to dry Miss Stephens’s bonnet, and dye Miss Tree’s stockings any colour but blue:—but we heard from good authority that there was a new tragedy worth seeing, and also that it was written by an old friend of ours.Thatthere was no resisting. So ‘we came, saw, and were satisfied.’—Virginius is a good play:—we repeat it. It is a real tragedy; a sound historical painting. Mr. Knowles has taken the facts as he found them, and expressed the feelings that would naturally arise out of the occasion. Strange to say, in this age of poetical egotism, the author, in writing his play, has been thinking of Virginius and his daughter, more than of himself! This is the true imagination, to put yourself in the place of others, and to feel and speak for them. Our unpretending poet travels along the high road of nature and the human heart; and does not turn aside to pluck pastoral flowers in primrose lanes, or hunt gilded butterflies over enamelled meads, breathless and exhausted;—nor does he, with vain ambition, ‘strike his lofty head against the stars.’ So far indeed, he may thank the Gods for not having made him poetical. Some cold, formal, affected, and interested critics have not known what to make of this. It was not whattheywould have done. One finds fault with the style as poor, because it is not inflated. Another can see nothing in it, because it is not interlarded with modern metaphysical theories, unknown to the ancients. A third declares that it is all borrowed from Shakspear, because it is true to nature. A fourth pronounces it a superior kind of melodrame, because it pleases the public. The two last things to which the dull and envious ever think of attributing the success of any work (and yet the only ones to which genuine success is attributable), are Genius and Nature. The one they hate,and of the other they are ignorant. The same critics who despise and slur the Virginius of Covent Garden, praise the Virginius and the David Rizzio of Drury Lane, because (as it should appear) there is nothing inthemto rouse their dormant spleen, stung equally by merit or success, and to mortify their own ridiculous, inordinate, and hopeless vanity. Their praise is of a piece with their censure; and equally from what they applaud and what they condemn, you perceive the principle of their perverse judgments. They are soothed with flatness and failure, and doat over them with parental fondness; but what is above their strength, and demands their admiration, they shrink from with loathing, and an oppressive sense of their own imbecility: and what they dare not openly condemn, they would willingly secrete from the public ear! We have described this class of critics more than once, but they breed still: all that we can do is to sweep them from our path as often as we meet with them, and to remove their dirt and cobwebs as fast as they proceed from the same noisome source. Besides the merits of Virginius as a literary composition, it is admirably adapted to the stage. It presents a succession of pictures. We might suppose each scene almost to be copied from a beautiful bas-relief, or to have formed a group on some antique vase. ‘’Tis the taste of the ancients, ’tis classical lore.’ But it is a speaking and a living picture we are called upon to witness. These figures so strikingly, so simply, so harmoniously combined, start into life and action, and breathe forth words, the soul of passion—inflamed with anger, or melting with tenderness. Several passages of great beauty were cited in a former article on this subject; but we might mention in addition, the fine imaginative apostrophe of Virginius to his daughter, when the story of her birth is questioned:

‘I never saw you look so like your motherIn all my life’—

‘I never saw you look so like your mother

In all my life’—

the exquisite lines ending,

... ‘The lieIs most unfruitful then, that makes the flower—The very flow’r our bed connubial grewTo prove its barrenness’——

... ‘The lie

Is most unfruitful then, that makes the flower—

The very flow’r our bed connubial grew

To prove its barrenness’——

or the sudden and impatient answer of Virginius to Numitorius, who asks if the slave will swear Virginia is her child—

‘To be sure she will! Is she not his slave?’

or again, the dignified reply to his brother, who reminds him it is time to hasten to the Forum,

‘Let the Forum wait for us!’

This is the true language of nature and passion; and all that we can wish for, or require, in dramatic writing. If such language is not poetical, it is the fault of poets, who do not write as the heart dictates! We have seen plays that produced much more tumultuous applause; none scarcely that excited more sincere sympathy. There were no clap-traps, no sentiments that were the understood signals for making a violent uproar; but we heard every one near us express heartfelt and unqualified approbation; and tears more precious supplied the place of loud huzzas. Each spectator appeared to appeal to, and to judge from the feelings of his own breast, not from vulgar clamour; and we trust the success will be more lasting and secure, as its foundations are laid in the deep and proud humility of nature. Mr. Knowles owes every thing, that an author can owe, to the actors; and they owed every thing to their attention to truth and to real feeling. Mr. Macready’s Virginius is his best and most faultless performance,—at once the least laboured and the most effectual. His fine, manly voice sends forth soothing, impassioned tones, that seem to linger round, or burst with terrific grandeur from the home of his heart. Mr. Kemble’s Icilius was heroic, spirited, fervid, the Roman warrior and lover; and Miss Foote was ‘the freeborn Roman maid,’ with a little bit, a delightful little bit, of the English schoolgirl in her acting. We incline to theidealof our own country-women after all, when they are so young, so innocent, so handsome. We are both pleased and sorry to hear a report which threatens us with the loss of so great a favourite; and one chief source of our regret will be, that she will no longer play Virginia. The scenery allotted to this tragedy encumbered the stage, and the simplicity of the play. Temples and pictured monuments adorned the scene, which were not in existence till five hundred years after the date of the story; and the ruins of the Capitol, of Constantine’s arch, and the temple of Jupiter Stator, frowned at once on the death of Virginia, and the decline and fall of the Roman empire. As to the dresses, we leave them to our deputy of the wardrobe; but, we believe, they were got right at last, with some trouble. In the printed play, we observe a number of passages marked with inverted commas, which are omitted in the representation. This is the case almost uniformly wherever the words ‘Tyranny,’ or ‘Liberty,’ occur. Is this done by authority, or is it prudence in the author, ‘lest the courtiers offended should be?’ Is the name of Liberty to be struck out of the English language, and are we not to hate tyrants even in an old Roman play? ‘Let the galled jade wince: our withers are unwrung.’ We turn to a pleasanter topic, and are glad to find an old and early friend unaltered in sentiment as he is unspoiled by success:—the same boy-poet, after a lapse ofyears, as when we first knew him; unconscious of the wreath he has woven round his brow, laughing and talking of his play just as if it had been written by any body else, and as simple-hearted, downright, and honest as the unblemished work he has produced![45]

We saw Mr. Kean at his benefit at the risk of our limbs, and are sorry for the accident that happened to himself in the course of the evening. We have longed ever since we saw Mr. Kean—that is, any time these six years—to see him jump through a trap-door—hearing he could do it. ‘Why are those things hid? Is this a time to conceal virtues?’ said we to ourselves. What was our disappointment, then, when on the point of this consummation of our wishes—just in the moment of the projection of our hopes—when dancing with Miss Valancy too, he broke the tendon Achilles, and down fell all our promised pleasure, our castles in the air! Good-reader, it was not the jump through the trap-door that we wished literally to see; but the leap from Othello to Harlequin. What a jump! What an interval, what a gulph to pass! What an elasticity of soul and body too—what a diversity of capacity in the same diminutive person! To be Othello, a man should be all passion, abstraction, imagination: to be Harlequin, he should have his wits in his heels, and in his fingers’ ends! To be both, is impossible, or miraculous. Each doubles the wonder of the other; and in judging of the aggregate amount of merit, we must proceed, not by the rules of addition, but multiply Harlequin’s lightness into Othello’s gravity, and the result will give us the sum total of Mr. Kean’s abilities. What a spring, what an expansive force of mind, what an untamed vigour, to rise to such a height from such a lowness; to tower like a Phoenix from its ashes; to ascend like a pyramid of fire! Why, what a complex piece of machinery is here; what an involution of faculties, circle within circle, that enables the same individual to make a summersault, and that swells the veins of his forehead with true artificial passion, and that turns him to a marble statue with thought! It is not being educated in the fourth form of St. Paul’s school, or cast in the antique mould of the high Roman fashion, that can do this; but it is genius alone that can raise a man thus above his first origin, and make him thus various from himself! It is bestriding the microcosm of man like a Colossus, and, by uniting the extremes of the chain of being, seemingly implies all the intermediate links. We do not think much of Mr. Kean’s singing: we could, with a little practice and tuition, sing nearly as well ourselves:as for his dancing, it is butso so, and anybody can dance: his fencing is good, nervous, firm, fibrous, like that of a new pocket Hercules:—but for his jumping through a hole in the wall,—clean through, head over heels, like a shot out of culverin—‘by Heavens, it would have been great!’ This we fully expected at his hands, and ‘in this expectation we were baulked.’ Just as our critical expectations were on tip-toe, Mr. Kean suddenly strained his ancle:—as it were to spite us;—we went out in dudgeon, and were near missing his Imitations, which would not have signified much if we had. They were tolerable, indifferent, pretty good, but not the thing. Mr. Matthews’s or Mr. Yates’s are better. They were softened down, and fastidious. Kemble was not very like. Incledon and Braham were the best, and Munden was very middling. The after-piece of the Admirable Crichton, in which he was to do all this, was neither historical nor dramatic. The character, which might have given excellent opportunities for the display of a variety of extraordinary accomplishments in the real progress of the story, was ill-conceived and ill-managed. He was made either a pedagogue or an antic. In himself, he was dull and grave, instead of being high-spirited, volatile, and self-sufficient; and to show off his abilities, he was put into masquerade. We did not like it at all; though, from the prologue, we had expected more point and daring. Mr. Kean’s Jaffier was fine, and in some parts admirable. This indeed, is only to say that he played it. But it was not one of his finest parts, nor indeed one in which we expected him to shine pre-eminently: but on that we had not depended, for we never know beforehand what he will do best or worst. He is one of those wandering fires, whose orbit is not calculable by any known rules of criticism. Mr. Elliston’s Pierre, was, we are happy to say, a spirited and effectual performance. We must not forget to add that Mrs. M’Gibbon’s Belvidera was excellent, declaimed with impassioned propriety, and acted with dignity and grace.

‘And what of this new opera of David Rizzio, that theNew Timesmakes such a rout about?’—Nothing. ‘Nothing can come of nothing.’ We truly and strictly could not make a word of sense of it. We wonder whose it can be. It is praised too in the Chronicle; but that is no matter. The story promised much; the music, the old Scotch tunes, more. They were both completelytransmogrified,—they melted into thin air. The author set aside the one, and the composers (of whom there are no less than five) the other. This required some ingenuity. The plot turns altogether upon this, that Rizzio (Braham) is supposed and made to be in love with Lady Mary Livingstone (Miss Carew), and by warbling outher Christian name in ballads in the open air, is imagined, by Darnley and the rest, to be in love with Mary, Queen of Scots (Mrs. West), from which strange misinterpretation all the mischief and confusion ensue. We fancy there is no foundation for this in tradition or old records. The author has indeed reversed the method of the writer of the Scotch Novels, for, instead of building as much as possible on facts and history, he has built as little as possible on them—and has produced just the contrary effect of the Great Unknown, that is, has spun a tissue of incidents and sentiments out of his own head, worth nothing, unmeaning, feeble, languid, disjointed, and for the most part, incomprehensible. Most of the scenes in the two first acts, consisted of the Exits and Entrances of single persons, who only appeared to deliver an introductory speech, and sing a song, and then vanished before any one else could come on to entrap them into a dialogue—a delicate evasion of the wily dramatist! Mr. Barnard repeated these Operatic soliloquies so often, as to be almost hissed off the stage, and Miss Povey (his sweetheart) by coming to his relief half a minute after he was gone, did not much mend the matter, either by the charms of her voice or person. This young lady is pretty, and sings agreeably enough, but we do not see what she can have to do with romantic sentiments or situations. Some of those in which she was placed, would require the utmost delicacy of the most accomplished heroine to carry them off without an obtrusive sense of impropriety. For instance, after warbling a ditty to the desert air of Holyrood House, she retires into a summer-house hard by, to keep an assignation with the persuasive Mr. Barnard, and is presently surprised and carried off, instead of the silver-voiced Carew, by a band of ruffians, who—on her making many exclamations, and repeating ‘Oh! dear me!’ and saying she only came to meet a young man—reply very laconically, ‘Aye, you came to meet one young man, and now you have met with four—that’s better!’ In the last scene, the catastrophe is brought about by Rizzio’s being discovered by the conspirators at a magnificent entertainment in the apartment of the Queen, which confirms their former suspicions and infuriates their revenge; and he is hurried from her frantic embraces, which display all the tenderness of a mistress, rather than the attachment of a sovereign, to be despatched in the adjoining chamber. His assassins find their error too late, when, from the passionate declaration of Lady Mary Livingstone that she is his wife, they are convinced of his and the Queen’s innocence. The lesson to be drawn from this fiction, seems to be, that ladies (whether Princesses or not) who defy opinion, must take the consequences of their infatuated self-indulgence, or involve others in ruin: for the presumptionis, that no woman in her senses will risk her character, unless she has a further object in view, namely, to gratify her passions. This was not, however, the inference drawn by the generality of the audience; for several passages, construed in allusion to passing events, were loudly and triumphantly cheered. They, indeed, saved the piece from final and absolute damnation, for it drooped from the beginning, and to the end, and had no other interest than what arose from the occasional parallelism of political situations. Mr. Braham (as David Rizzio) disappointed us much. He sung the airs he had probably himself selected, without any affectation indeed—‘softly sweet in Lydian measures’—but without any effect whatever upon our ears; he fell into simplicity and insipidity, plump together, ten thousand fathoms down. The other singers acquitted themselves very well, but there was nothing to excite an interest in itself, or to answer the previous expectations arising from the title of the piece. We had hoped to have been treated to some old Scotch airs, at least: but the joint-composers seemed to have a strong aversion to any thing connected with the sound of a bagpipe. This we suppose is a symptom of the progress of a more refined taste among us. The causes of our want of sympathy with it have been explained above. The piece has been repeated once or twice since.

Giovanni in London has been transferred to this theatre (Drury Lane) from the Olympic. It was a favourite with the town there; it has become a favourite with the town here. There is something in burlesque that pleases. We like to see the great degraded to a level with the little. The humour is extravagant and coarse, but it is certainly droll; and we never check our inclinations to laugh, when we have an opportunity given us. We have not laughed so heartily a long time, as at seeing the meddlesome lawyer tossed in a blanket in the King’s Bench; and we should imagine there is a natural and inevitable connection between the performance of that gentle salutary mode of discipline, and the titillation of the lungs of the spectators. Madame Vestris played, sung, and looked the incorrigible Don John very prettily and spiritedly; but, we confess, we had rather see her petticoated than in a Spanish doublet and hose, hat and feather. Yet she gave a life to the scene, and Pluto relented as she sung. There is a pulpy softness and ripeness in her lips, a roseate hue, like the leaves of the damask rose, a luscious honeyed sound in her voice, a depth and fulness too, as if it were clogged with its own sweets, a languid archness, an Italian lustre in her eye, an enchanting smile, a mouth—shall we go on? No. But she is more bewitching even than Miss Brunton. Yet we like to see her best in petticoats. It cannot be denied that Mrs. Gould (late Miss Burrell)of the Olympic, who played it first, was the girl to play Giovanni in London. She had a hooked nose, large staring eyes, a manlike voice, a tall person, a strut that became a rake.

‘She forgot to be a woman: changed fear, and niceness,(The hand maids of all women, or more trulyWoman its pretty-self) into a waggish courage;Ready in gibes, quick answered, saucy, andAs quarrellous as the weasel.’

‘She forgot to be a woman: changed fear, and niceness,

(The hand maids of all women, or more truly

Woman its pretty-self) into a waggish courage;

Ready in gibes, quick answered, saucy, and

As quarrellous as the weasel.’

All this Madame Vestris attempts; but in spite of her efforts to the contrary, she shrinks back into feminine softness and delicacy, and her heart evidently fails her, and flutters, ‘like a new ta’en sparrow,’ in the midst of all her pretended swaggering and determination to brazen the matter out. On the night we saw this afterpiece, Mr. Knight played Leporello, instead of Mr. Harley: so that we can praise neither.

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