The Examiner.
The Examiner.
The Examiner.
The Examiner.
December 24, 1815.
A new piece in five acts, called Smiles and Tears; or the Widow’s Stratagem, has been produced, with very considerable success, at Covent-Garden Theatre. The Dramatis Personæ are:
The plot is as follows: Lady Emily, a young widow supposed to possess every amiable quality of body and mind, has for her intimate friend Mrs. Belmore, who is also a widow, and engaged in a law-suit with Sir Henry Chomley, by which she is likely to lose her whole fortune. Sir Henry has by chance met Lady Emily at a masquerade, where he has become deeply enamoured of her figure, wit, and vivacity, without having ever seen her face; and having at length obtained information who she is, and where she resides, writes to her, soliciting an interview, and declaring the impression which her personand conversation had made on his heart. Lady Emily being herself sincerely attached to Colonel O’Donolan, determines to convert the passion of Sir Henry to the advantage of her friend Mrs. Belmore; and as they have never seen each other, to introduce Mrs. Belmore to Sir Henry as Lady Emily: but, aware that Mrs. Belmore will not receive Sir Henry’s addresses, whom she regards as her enemy, on account of the law-suit between them, she writes to Sir Henry that she will admit his visits, but that it must, for particular reasons, be under the assumed name of Grenville; and as Mr. Grenville, she prevails on Mrs. Belmore to receive him in the name of Lady Emily, assigning as her reason for this request, her fear of seeing him herself, lest the Colonel’s jealousy should be excited. Several interviews take place between Sir Henry and Mrs. Belmore, who conceive so warm an attachment for each other, under their assumed characters, that when the widow’s stratagem is discovered, they gladly agree to put an end to their law-suit by a matrimonial union. The other, and the most afflicting part of the plot, turns on a stratagem conceived by Lady Emily (who it must be allowed is fruitful in stratagems), to restore Fitzharding to his reason, and his daughter to his affections, both of which had been lost by the dishonourable conduct of Delaval, who had first seduced, and then deserted the lovely and unsuspecting Cicely Fitzharding.
All that is particularly good in this play arises from the mistakes and surprises produced by the double confusion of the names of the principal characters concerned in the Widow’s Stratagem. The scene between Charles Kemble and Jones, when the former acquaints him with his success with the supposed Lady Emily, and in which Jones testifies a resentment against his rival as violent as it is in reality groundless, was in the true spirit of comedy. Jones’s scene with the Widow Belmore (Mrs. Faucit), in which the mystery is cleared up to him, is also conceived and executed with great spirit and effect. The character which Jones represents, an Irish Colonel, is one of the most misplaced and absurd we remember to have seen, and the only excuse for whose blunders, rudeness, officiousness, and want of common sense, is (as far as we could learn), that he is a countryman of Lord Wellington. This is but an indifferent compliment to his Grace, and perhaps no great one to Colonel O’Donolan. There were two direct clap-traps aimed directly at the Duke’s popularity, which did not take. The truth, we suspect, is, that his Lordship is not very popular at present in either of his two great characters, as liberator of FerdinandVII.or as keeper of LouisXVIII.Charles Kemble played the part of Sir Henry Chomley with that gentlemanly ease, gaiety, and good nature, which always gain him the entire favour of theaudience in such characters. He indeed did as much for this play as if it had been his own. Mrs. Faucit played Mrs. Belmore exceedingly well. There was something that reminded us of a jointure and a view to a second match in her whole look and air. We cannot speak a word of praise of Mrs. C. Kemble’s Lady Emily. Neither her person nor her manner at all suited the character, nor the description of it which is several times interlarded in the dialogue. Her walk is not the fine lady; she is nearly the worst actress we ever saw in the artificialmimmine-pimminestyle of Miss Farren. We hope she will discontinue such characters, and return to nature; or she will make us forget her Lucy Lockitt, or what we should hope never to forget, her acting in Julio in Deaf and Dumb.
There is a great deal of affectation of gentility, and a great deal of real indecorum, in the comic dialogue of this play. The tragic part is violent and vulgar in the extreme. Mr. Young is brought forward as a downright common madman, just broke loose from a madhouse at Richmond, and is going with a club to dash out the brains of his daughter, Miss Foote, and her infant. This infant is no other than a large wooden doll: it fell on the floor the other evening without receiving any hurt, at which the audience laughed. This dreadful interlude is taken, we suppose, from Mrs. Opie’s tale of Father and Daughter, of which we thought never to have heard or seen any thing more. As the whole of this part is conceived without the smallest poetical feeling, so Mr. Young did not contrive to throw one ray of genius over it. Miss Foote behaved throughout very prettily, dutifully and penitently; and in the last scene, where, to bring back her father’s senses, she is made to stand in a frame and to represent her own portrait playing on the harp, she looked a perfect picture.