No. VIII

August, 1820.

It is now the middle of July, when we are by turns drenched with showers and scorched with sun-beams: the winter theatres are closed, and the summer ones have just opened, soon to close again—

‘Like marigolds with the sun’s eye.’

We are not, however, in the number of those who deprecate the shortness of the summer season, as one of the miseries of human life, or who think little theatres better than big. We like a play-house in proportion to the number of happy human faces it contains (and a play-house seldom contains many wretched ones)—and again we like a play best when we do not see the faces of the actors too near. We do not want to be informed, as at the little theatre in the Haymarket, that part of the rich humour of Mr. Liston’s face arises from his having lost a tooth in front, nor to see Mr. Jones’s eyes roll more meteorous than ever. At the larger theatres we only discover that the ladies paint red: at the smaller ones we can distinguish when they paint white. We see defects enough at a distance, and we can always get near enough (in the pit) to see the beauties. Those who go to the boxes do not go to see the play, but to make a figure, and be thought something of themselves (so far they probably succeed, at least in their own opinion): and if the Gods cannot hear, they make themselves heard. We do not likeprivate theatricals. We like every thing to be what it is. Wehave no fancy for seeing the actors look like part of the audience, nor for seeing the pit invade the boxes, nor the boxes shake hands with the galleries. We are for a proper distinction of ranks—at the theatre. While we are laughing at the broad farcical humour of the Agreeable Surprise, or critically examining Mrs. Mardyn’s dress in the Will, we do not care to be disturbed by some idle whisper, or mumbling disapprobation of an old beau, or antiquated dowager in a high head-dress, close at our ear, but in a different part of the house.—Mr. Arnold has taken care of this at the New English Opera-house in the Strand, of which he is proprietor and patentee. The ‘Great Vulgar and the Small’ (as Cowley has it) are there kept at a respectful distance. The boxes are perched up so high above the pit, that it gives you a head-ache to look up at the beauty and fashion that nightly adorn them with their thin and scattered constellations; and then the gallery is ‘raised so high above all height,’ it is nearly impossible for the eye to scale it, while a little miserable shabby upper-gallery is partitioned off with an iron railing, through which the poor one-shilling devils look like half-starved prisoners in the Fleet, and are a constant butt of ridicule to the genteeler rabble beneath them. Then again (so vast is Mr. Arnold’s genius for separating and combining), you have a Saloon, a sweet pastoral retreat, where any love-sick melancholy swain, or romantic nymph, may take a rural walk to Primrose-hill, or Chalk-farm, by the side of painted purling streams, and sickly flowering shrubs, without once going out of the walls of the theatre:—

‘Such tricks hath strong Imagination!’

If the Haymarket has been praised by a contemporary critic (of whom we might say, that he isalter et idem) for being as hot as an oven in the midst of the dog-days; the Lyceum, on the other hand, is as cool as a well; and much might, we think, be said on both sides. As a matter of taste, or fancy, or prejudice, (we shall not pretend to say which) we do not greatly like the new English Opera-house. The house isnew, the pieces arenew, the company arenew, and we do not know what to make of any of them. As to the things that are acted there, they are a sort of pert, patched-up, insipid, flippant attempt at mediocrity. They are like the odd-ends and scraps of all the rejected pieces, which have come into the manager’s possession in virtue of his office for a length of time; and which he has stitched and tacked together in such a way that neither the authors nor the public can know any thing of the matter. They are a condensed essence of all the vapid stuff that has been suppressed at home or acted abroad for a number of years last past. Visions offarces, operas, and interludes, thin, blue, fluttering, gawzy appearances, mock the empty sight, elude the public comprehension, and the critic’s grasp. The worst of these slender, wire-drawn productions is, that there is nothing to praise in them, nor any thing to condemn. They ‘present no mark’ to friend or foe. ‘You may as well take aim at the edge of a pen-knife,’ as try to pick any thing out of them. They are trifling, tedious, frivolous, and vexatious. The best is, they do not last long, and ‘one bubble’ (to borrow an illusion from an eloquent divine, in treating on a graver subject) ‘knocks another on the head, and both rush together into oblivion!’—Miss Kelly is here; she might as well be a hundred miles off. She is not good at child’s play, at themake-believefine-lady, or themake-believewaiting-maid. Hers isbonâ fidedownright acting, and she must have something to do, in order to do it properly. She is too clever and too knowing to act a part totally without meaning, such as that lately given her in the Promissory Note. Such was not her Yarico. Ah! there were tones, and looks, and piercing sighs in her representation of the fond, injured, sun-burnt Indian maid, that make it difficult to think of her in any inferior part, or to speak slightingly of any theatre in which she is concerned: but critics, as it has been said of judges, must not give way to their feelings. There is Wrench here too, as easy as an old glove, the same careless, hair-brained, idle, impudent, good humoured, lackadaisical sort of a gentleman as ever; there is Harley too, who has not been spoiled by the town, since we first saw him here:—then there is Mr. Rowbotham, a grave young man, a new hand, very like the real, the prudent Mr. Thomas Inkle:encore un coup, we have Mr. Bartley, who, if not a new hand, is fresh returned from America, and as much at home on these boards as before he went abroad: in the Governor of Barbadoes, he had quite a Transatlantic look with him: there is also Mr. Westbourn (we think he is at this house) and a Mr. Wilkinson, and a Mr. Richardson (whose names and persons we are apt to confound together), and Mr. Pearman (whom it is not possible to mistake for any one else) and Miss Stevenson (a very provoking young thing), and Miss Love, and Mrs. Grove, and a wholeSylva Criticaof actors and actresses, of whom the very nomenclature terrifies us. We give it up in despair: and so humbly take our leave of the New English Opera house for the season!—‘We had rather be taxed for silence, than checked for speech.’

At the other house, to which we ‘do more favourably incline,’ both from old associations and immediate liking, though there are some raw recruits (picked up we don’t know where), there is a large and powerful detachment from the veteran corps of CoventGarden; Terry, Jones, Mrs. Gibbs, Liston, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kemble, J. Russel, Farley, and Mrs. Mardyn and Madame Vestris from Drury-Lane, and last, Miss R. Corri, from the Opera House.—In fact, it is our opinion that there is theatrical strength enough in this town only to set up one good summer or one good winter theatre. Competition may be necessary to prevent negligence and abuse, but the result of this distribution of thecorps dramatiqueinto different companies, is, that we never, or very rarely indeed, see a play well acted in all its parts. At Drury-Lane there is only one tragic actor, Mr. Kean: all the rest are supernumeraries. No one, we apprehend, would ever cross the threshold to see Mr. Pope’s Iago, or Mr. Elliston’s Richmond, or Mr. Rae’s Bassanio, or Mr. Hamblin, or Mr. Penley, or Mr. Fisher, or Mr. Philips, who plays the King in Hamlet: though, ‘in the catalogue they go for actors.’ In comedy, Drury-Lane is better off: yet, they cannot get up a real sterling comedy, for want of actors and actresses to fill the parts ofgentlemenandladies. Miss Kelly is the best comic actress on either stage, but she is only an appendage to the real fine lady, Millamant’s Mrs. Mincing, ‘to curl her hair so crisp and pure’: in cases of necessity, they have no one but Mr. Penley, jun. to top the part of Lord Foppington: Mr. Munden is their Sir Peter Teazle, and Mr. Elliston is his own Lord Townley. But they really hit off a modern comedy, such as Wild Oats, which is a mixture of farce and romantic sentiment, to an exact perfection. At Covent-Garden they lately had one great tragic actress, Miss O’Neill; and two or three actors who were highly respectable, at least in second-rate tragic characters. At present, the female throne in tragedy is vacant; and of the men ‘who rant and fret their hour upon the stage,’ Mr. Macready is the only one who draws houses, or who finds admirers. He shines most, however, in the pathos of domestic life; and we still want to see tragedy, ‘turretted, crowned, and crested, with its front gilt, and blood-stained,’ stooping from the skies (not raised from the earth) as it did in the person of John Kemble. He is now quaffing health and burgundy in the south of France. He perhaps finds the air that blows from the ‘vine-covered hills’ wholesomer than that of a crowded house; and the lengthened murmurs of the Mediterranean shores more soothing to the soul, than the deep thunders of the pit. Or does he sometimes recline his lofty, laurelled head upon the sea-beat beach, and unlocking the cells of memory, listen to the rolling Pæans, the loud never-to-be-forgotten plaudits of enraptured multitudes, that mingle with the music of the waves,

‘And murmur as the Ocean murmurs near?’

Or does he still ‘sigh his soul towards England’ and the busy hum of Covent-Garden? If we thought so, (but that we dread all returns from Elba) we would say to him, ‘Come back, and once more bid Britannia rival old Greece and Rome!’—Or where is Mr. Young now? There is an opening forhispretensions too.—If the Drury-Lane company are deficient in genteel comedy, we fear that Covent-Garden cannot help them out in this respect. Mr. W. Farren is the only exception to the sweeping clause we were going to insert against them. He plays the old gentleman, the antiquated beau of the last age, very much after the fashion that we remember to have seen in our younger days, and that is quite a singular excellence in this. Is it that Mr. Farren has caught glimpses of this character in real life, hovering in the horizon of the sister kingdom, which has been long banished from this? They have their Castle Rack-rents, their moats and ditches, still extant in remote parts of the interior: and perhaps in famed Dublin city, thecheveux-de-frisof dress, the trellis-work of lace and ruffles, the masked battery of compliment, the port-cullises of formal speech, the whole artillery of sighs and ogling, with all the appendages and proper costume of the ancient regime, and paraphernalia of thepreux chevalier, may have been kept up in a state of lively decrepitude and smiling dilapidation, in a few straggling instances from the last century, which Mr. Farren had seen. The present age produces nothing of the sort; and so, according to our theory, Mr. Farren does not play the young gentleman or modern man of fashion, though he is himself a young man. For the rest, comedy is in a rich, thriving state at Covent-Garden, as far as the lower kind of comic humour is concerned; but it is like an ill-baked pudding, where all the plums sink to the bottom. Emery and Liston, the two best, are of this description: Jones is a caricaturist; and Terry, in his graver parts, is not a comedian, but a moralist.—Even a junction of the two companies into one would hardly furnish out one set of players competent to do justice to any of the standard productions of the English stage in tragedy or comedy: what a hopeful project it must be then to start a few more play-houses in the heart of the metropolis as nurseries of histrionic talent, still more to divide and dissipate what little concentration of genius we have, and still more to weaken and distract public patronage? As to the argument in favour of two or more theatres from the necessity of competition, we shall not dispute it; but the actual benefits are not so visible to our dim eyes as to some others. There is a competition in what is bad as well as in what is good: the race of popularity is as often gained by tripping up the heels of your antagonist, as by pressing forward yourself: there is a competitionin running an indifferent piece, or a piece indifferently acted, to prevent the success of the same piece at the other house; and there is a competition in puffing, as Mr. Elliston can witness.—No, there we confess, he leaves all competition behind!

The two pleasantest pieces we have seen this season at the Haymarket are the Green Man, and Pigeons and Crows. They were both to us an Agreeable Surprise; for we had not seen them when they were brought out last year, or the year before. The first is moral and pointed; the latter more lively and quaint. The Green Man abounds in laconic good sense: in Pigeons and Crows there is as edifying a vein of nonsense. We do not know the author of this last piece (to whom we confess ourselves obliged for two mirthful, thoughtless evenings), but we understand that the Green Man is adapted by Mr. Jones from a Frenchpetite pièce, which was itself taken from a German novel, we believe one of Kotzebue’s. The sentiments indeed are evidently of that romantic, levelling cast, which formerly abounded in the writings of theci-devantphilanthropic enthusiast. The principal character in it is that of the Green Man himself, who is a benevolent, blunt-spoken, friendly cynic. The only joke of the character consists in his being dressed all in green—he has a green coat, a green waistcoat and breeches, green stockings, a green hat, a green pocket handkerchief, and a green watch. This gives rise to many pleasant allusions; and indeed, from the manner in which the peculiarity of his personal appearance affects our notion of his personal identity, he looks like a talking suit of clothes, a sermonizing and sententious vegetable. Mr. Terry performs the part admirably, and seems himself transformed into ‘a brother of the groves.’ He does not aggravate the author’s meaning too much, but gives just as much point as was intended, and passes on to what comes next, as naturally, and with that sort of manner and unconscious interest which a man really takes in his own, or other people’s affairs. Mr. Terry’s acting always shows vigour and good sense. His only fault is, that he is too jealous of himself, and strives to do better than well. In the Green Man he was quite at home, and quite at his ease; and made every one else feel equally so. Mr. Jones is an overstarched French fop in this play, full of foreign grimace and affectation, of which, however, he is cured by his passion for the fair ward of the Green Man (Miss Leigh, a very pleasing new actress), who does not at all tolerate such impertinence, and he afterwards turns out (dandyismapart) a very good sort of a humane character. Perhaps, enough has never been made on the stage of the frequent contradiction in this respect between outside appearances and sterling qualities within. We carry our prejudices both for and against dresstoo far. It is no rule either way. A fop is not necessarily a fool, nor without feeling. A man may even wear stays, and not be effeminate; or a pink coat, without making his friends blush for him. The celebrated beau, Hervey, threw the scavenger that ridiculed him into his own mud-cart; and a person in our own time, who has carried extravagance of dress and appearance to a very great pitch indeed, is, in reality, a very good-natured, sensible, modest man. The fault, in such cases, is neither in the head nor heart, but in the cut of a coat-collar, or the size of a pair of whiskers.—Farley and J. Russell were Major Dumpling and Captain Bibber in the same piece: and a scene of high farce they made of it. The one is an officer in the army, thelocal militia; the other is an officer in the navy. The one excels in eating, the other in drinking. The one is most at home in the kitchen, the other in the cellar. The one is fat, huge, and unwieldy; the other, dapper, tight, and bustling. Farley is an actor with whose merit, in such parts, the public are well acquainted: Russel is one who will be liked more, the more he is known. Both in Captain Bibber, Blondeau, the French showman in Pigeons and Crows, and in Silvester Daggerwood, he has acquitted himself with great applause, and entered into the humour, eccentricity, and peculiar distinctions of his characters, with spirit and fidelity. His mimicry is also good, and he sings a French rondeau, or a sailor’s ditty,con amore. The part of Major Dumpling was originally played by Mr. Tokely. It was one of three parts (Crockery and Peter Pastoral were the other two) for which he seemed born, and having rolled himself up in them, like the silk-worm, he died. Poor Tokely! He relished his parts; with Crockery doated over an old sign-post, or wept with honest Peter over a green leaf.

‘His tears were tears of oil and gladness.’

But he also relished his morning’s draught, and sipped the sweets till he was drowned in a butt of whiskey. The said fair-looking, round-faced, pot-bellied, uncouth, awkward, out-of-the-way, unmeaning, inimitable Crockery, or Peter Pastoral, or Major Dumpling, was the very little child that, in the year 1796, Kemble used to carry off triumphantly on his arm in the original performance of Pizarro! Thinking of these things, may we not say,sic transit gloria mundi? So flies the stage away, and life flies after it as fast!—Mrs. Gibbs, ‘that horse-whipping woman,’ in Teazing made Easy, does not, however, wear the willow on his account, but looks as smiling, as good-humoured, as buxom, as in the natural and professional life-time of Mr. Tokely, and drinks her bowl of cream as Cowslip, andexpresses her liking of a roast-duck with the same resignation of flesh and spirit as ever.

Mr. Liston in Pigeons and Crows plays the part of Sir Peter Pigwiggin, knight, alderman, and pin-maker. What a name, what a person, and what a representative! We never saw Mr. Liston’s countenance in better preservation; that is, it seems tumbling all in pieces with indescribable emotions, and a thousand odd twitches, and unaccountable absurdities, oozing out at every pore. His jaws seem to ache with laughter: his eyes look out of his head with wonder: his face is unctuous all over and bathed with jests; the tip of his nose is tickled with conceit of himself, and his teeth chatter in his head in the eager insinuation of a plot: his forehead speaks, and his wig (not every particular hair, but the whole bewildered bushy mass) ‘stands on end as life were in it.’ In the scene with his dulcinea (Miss Leigh) his approaches are the height of self-complacent,cockneycourtship; his rhymes on his own projected marriage,

‘What a thing!Bless the King!’

‘What a thing!

Bless the King!’

would make any man (who is not so already) loyal, and his laughing in the glass when he is told by mistake that Miss’s mamma is eighteen, and his convulsive distortions as he recovers from his first surprise, and the choking effects of it, out-Hogarth Hogarth!

‘Let those laugh now who never laugh’d before,And those who still have laugh’d, now laugh the more.’

‘Let those laugh now who never laugh’d before,

And those who still have laugh’d, now laugh the more.’

The scene where he is told he is poisoned, and his interview with the drunken apothecary (Mr. Williams), though excellent in themselves, were not so good: for Liston does not play so well to any one else, as he does to himself. The rest of the characters were well supported. Jones, as the younger Pigwiggin, alias Captain Neville, the lover of Liston’s fair inamorata, ‘does a little bit of fidgets’ very well. He is sprightly, voluble, knowing, and pleasant; and is the life of a small theatre, only that he is now and then a little too obstreperous; but he keeps up the interest of his part, and that is every thing. The audience delight to hear his ‘View Halloa’ before he comes on the stage (which is a sure sign of their opinion), and expect to be amused for the next ten minutes. If an actor can excite hope, and not disappoint it, what can he do more? Mr. Russell, as the little French showman, Mr. Farley as Mr. Wadd, and Mr. Connor as a blundering Irish servant, all sustained their parts with great eclat: and so did the ladies. The scene where Jones deceives two of his creditors, Russell and Farley, by appointing each to paythe other, had a very laughable effect; but the stratagem is borrowed from Congreve, who indeed was not the very worst source to borrow from.

The house was crowded to excess to see the new appearances in the Beggar’s Opera; Madame Vestris’s Captain Macheath, Miss R. Corri’s Polly, and Mrs. Charles Kemble’s Lucy, which last, indeed, is an old friend with a new face. Mrs. Kemble was the best Lucy we ever saw (not excepting Miss Kelly, who is also much at home in this part), and she retains all the spirit of her original performances. Miss Kelly plays Lucy as naturally, perhaps more so; but Mrs. Kemble does it more characteristically. She has no ‘compunctious visitings’ of delicacy, but her mind seems hardened against the walls that enclose it. She is Lockitt’s daughter, the child of a prison; the true virago, that is to be the foil to the gentle spirit of Polly. The air with which she throws the rat to the cat in the song has agustoworthy of one of Michael Angelo’s Sybils; a box on the ear from her right hand is no jesting matter. Her rage and sullenness are of the true unmitigated stamp, and her affected civilities to her fair rival are a parody (as the author intended) on the friendships of courts.—Madame Vestris, as the Captain, almost shrunk before her, like Viola before her enraged enemies. Indeed, she played the part very prettily, with great vivacity and an agreeable swagger, cocking her hat, throwing back her shoulders, and making a free use of a rattan-cane, like Little Pickle, but she did not look like the hero, or the highwayman, if this was desirable in her case. If, however, she turned Macheath into apetit-maitre, she did not play it like Mr. Incledon or Mr. Cooke, or Mr. Braham, or Mr. Young, or any one else we have seen in it, which is no small commendation. Miss Corri sangCease your funning, and one or two other songs, with sweetness and effect; but, in general, she was more like a modern made-up boarding-school girl, than the artless and elegant Polly. She lisps and looks pretty. The other parts were very respectably filled, but some of the best scenes (we are sorry to say it) were left out.

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