DOWTON IN THE HYPOCRITE
Drury Lane Theatre.
Drury Lane Theatre.
Drury Lane Theatre.
Drury Lane Theatre.
The excellent comedy ofThe Hypocritewas acted here last night. Dowton’sDr. Cantwell, is a very admirable and edifying performance. The divine and human affections are ‘very craftily qualified’ in his composition, which is a mixture of the Methodist parson ingrafted on the old French pietist, and accomplished Abbé. The courtly air of Moliere’sTartuffehas been considerably lowered down and vulgarised to fit the character to the grossness of modern times and circumstances: only the general features of the character, and the prominent incidents of the story, have been retained by theEnglish translator, and they seem to require the long speeches, the oratorical sentiments, and laboured casuistry of the original author to render them probable or even credible. It has been remarked, that the wonderful success of this piece on the French stage is a lasting monument of the stress laid by that talking and credulous nation on all verbal professions of virtue and sincerity, and of the little difference they make between words and things. With all the pains that have been taken to bring it within the verge of verisimilitude by the aid of popular allusions and religious prejudices, it with difficultynaturalizeson our own stage, and remains at last an incongruous, though a very striking and instructive caricature. Dowton’s jovial and hearty characters are his best; his demure and hypocritical ones are only his second best. HisDr. Cantwellis not so good as hisMajor Sturgeon, or hisSir Anthony Absolute, but still it is very good. Their excellence consists in giving way to the ebullition of his feelings of social earnestness, or vainglorious ostentation; the excellence ofthisin the systematic concealment of his inmost thoughts and purposes.Cantwellsighs out his soul with the melancholy formality of a piece of clockwork, and exhibits the encroachments of amorous importunity under a mask ofstill life. The locks of his hair are combed with appropriate sleekness and unpretending humility over his forehead and shoulders: his face looks godly and greasy; his person and mind are well fortified in a decent suit of plain broad cloth, and the calves of his legs look stout and saint-like in stockings of dark pepper-and-salt fleecy hosiery. Bitter smiles contend with falling tears; the whining tones of the conventicle with the insolence of success, and the triumph of his unbridled rage in the last act over his phlegmatic hypocrisy is complete. He was admirably supported by Mrs. Sparks, as oldLady Lambert, and by Oxberry asMawworm. This last character is as loose and dangling as the sails of a windmill, and is puffed up and set in motion by one continuous blast of folly and fanaticism. The other characters in the piece were less happily supported.