The Examiner.
The Examiner.
The Examiner.
The Examiner.
February 4, 1816.
The well known collection of French trials, under the title ofCauses Celebres, has served as the ground-work of a new piece, brought out on Thursday at Drury-Lane Theatre, called Accusation, or The Anglade Family. The old historical materials are rather scanty, consisting only of a narrative of a robbery committed on a nobleman by some members of his own household, for which a M. D’Anglade, who with his family occupied part of the same hotel, was condemned on false evidence to the gallies, where grief and mortification put a period to his life before his innocence was discovered. On this foundation an interesting drama has been raised by the French author. M. Valmore is introduced as a lover of Madame D’Anglade, who rejects his unlawful passion. In revenge, he agrees with a worthless valet to rob his aunt, who resides under the same roof with the family of M. D’Anglade, in whose hands part of the stolen property (consisting of bank-notes—a trifling anachronism) is treacherously deposited by an accomplice of Hubert, Valmore’s servant, under pretence of paying for jewels which D’Anglade is compelled to dispose of to satisfy the demands made upon him by a relation who was supposed to have been dead, and whose estate he had inherited. He is seized under strong circumstancesof suspicion by the police, and conveyed to prison; but the agents of Valmore are detected in stealing away with part of the property from the place where it had been secreted: they are stopped separately by the domestics of the injured person—each is made to believe that his accomplice has betrayed him—and on the manifestation of D’Anglade’s innocence and of his own guilt, Valmore, unable to escape the pursuit of the officers of justice, puts an end to his existence with a pistol, in a summer-house in which he has in vain tried to conceal himself.
The interest excited is much of the same kind as in the Maid and the Magpye: and we think the piece will be almost as great a favourite with the public. There is a great deal of ingenuity shewn in the developement of the plot; the scenic effect is often beautiful, and the situations have real pathos.
The acting was upon the whole excellent. Miss Kelly, as the wife of the unfortunate D’Anglade, gave a high degree of interest to the story. She was only less delightful in this character than in that of the Maid of Paliseau, because she has less to do in it. Mr. Rae was the hero of the present drama, and he acquitted himself in it with considerable applause. We never saw Mr. Bartley to so much advantage as in the rough, honest character of the relation of D’Anglade, (we forget the name), who comes to claim restitution of his fortune, to try the integrity of his old friend, but who generously offers him his assistance as soon as he finds him plunged in distress. Mr. Wallack was Valmore, and there was a scene of really fine acting between him and Mrs. Glover, (the Countess of Servan, his aunt), where she tries to probe the guilty conscience of her nephew, and to induce him to release D’Anglade from his dangerous situation, by a confession of the treachery of which he has been made the victim. Mr. S. Penley played the part of the unprincipled valet very unexceptionably, and Mr. Barnard made an admirable accomplice, in the character of a strolling Italian musician. Knight, as the raw country lad by whose means the plot is chiefly discovered, was as natural as he always is in such characters. He perhaps has got too much of a habit of expressing his joy by running up and down the stage with his arms spread out like a pair of wings. Mr. Powell, as the faithful old servant of the Anglade family, was highly respectable. One sentiment in the play, ‘The woman who follows her husband to a prison, to share or to alleviate his misfortunes, is an ornament to her sex, and an honour to human nature,’ was highly applauded—we do not know for what particular reason.[37]
Covent-Garden.
The same drama has been abridged and brought out here as an After-piece. We cannot speak highly of the alteration. The sentimental French romance is cut down into an English farce, in which both the interest of the story and thenaivetéof the characters are lost. The two characters of the Valet and the Italian stroller are confounded in the same person, and played by Mathews, who is death to the pathetic! Charles Kemble played the Count D’Anglade in a very gentlemanly manner. Farley was the most turbulent Valet we have ever seen.