THE THREE QUARTERS, &c.

Drury Lane.

The new comedy in three acts brought out at this theatre on Tuesday evening is, we apprehend, taken from a French piece, entitledLes Trois Quartiers. The Three Quarters of the town indicate the three sorts or stages of society, as they are to be met with in theRue St. Honoré, theRue Mont Blanc, and theFauxbourg St. Germain, which may be supposed to answer (we speak under correction of the Secretary of the Admiralty, skilled as he is in the transitions from low to highlife) to our Fish-street-hill, Russell and Grosvenor square. It was thought a nice distinction in Miss Burney, forty years ago, to place the residence of the Harrells in Portman square, and to assign Grosvenor square to the Delville family; the one being considered as the resort of the upstart fashionables, the other of the old gentry. To know whether this court-geography holds good in the present year, see the files of theJohn Bull, or theLast Series of Sayings and Doings, where such matters are noted and discussed with a becoming want of elegance and decorum, which is made up for by the innate loftiness of the subject. In the French piece, a rich adventurer from South America is introduced into these different circles by an officious go-between, as a travelled prodigy,un homme qui a vuBolivar; and in each his perplexity and astonishment increases with the progress and refinement of manners in theThree Quartersof the town. There is some sense in that; and the French actors have the skill to make the line of demarcation intelligible. But here we vow that though we shift the scene, no progress is made; or we areat the top of the treein the second stage.Kitty Corderoyis sufficiently forward and vulgar, it is true;Amelia Mammontonis naturally elegant and genteel; but we get no farther; or ratherLady Charlewoodis a falling off, having neither natural nor acquired grace; and theCountess Dowager Delamereis distinguished by nothing but a rude and harsh familiarity of manner. The Banker (Mr. Cooper) has evidently the advantage of the Lord (Mr. Hooper); andJack Pointer(Mr. Jones) a busybody and toad-eater, carries it hollow by dint of sheer impudence and impertinence. Mr. Jones’s Bond street slang—‘She’s a delicious creature’—is echoed every five minutes byLady Delamere’s—‘You’ll excuse my freedom,Lady Charlewood;’ the changes are rung upon a few and slender notes of fashion, while the author has the full range of the Cockney dialect, and sinks deep in the bathos of low life.Mrs. Corderoy, we observe, is played by a Mrs. C. Jones. Is Mr. Jones lately married? If so, we congratulate him: she is an excellent cook. We could wish the accomplished author ofKilling no Murder, he who dips his pen so carelessly in poison or honey, the expertimprovisatoriin fact or fiction, would turn his thoughts to this matter; give us a comedy or criticism to show our actors or play-wrights what they ought to do in these degenerate days; and from his ease of access to palaces or princes, give us a taste of true refinement, the court-air, the drawing-room grace, the after-dinner conversation, the mornings and the evenings of the great, instead of confining his abilities to teaching young gentlemen at Long’s how to eat their fish with a silver fork: the waiters might do that just as well. Or could not Mr. Croker, now that Augustus has given peace to sea and land, and who shakesepics and reviews from his brow ‘like dew-drops from the lion’s mane,’smilea comedy that should point the nice gradations from the city to the court—

‘Fine by degrees, and beautifully less,’

and make it for ever impossible for Cheapside to pass Temple-bar or Russell-square to step into the Regent’s Park? We understand, indeed, that Mr. Colburn has a plan in contemplation to remedy all this, and that we may look forward to the dawn of a new era in literature, through the happy idea which the little bookselling Buonaparte has conceived of establishing an inviolableConcordatbetween the world of genius and fashion. The proposal is to buy up the manuscripts of all authors by profession, to lock them in a drawer, so as to put the whole corps of Garretteers and Grub street writers on the shelf, and leave the door open to none but persons of quality and amateurs, lords, ladies, and hangers-on of the great. The scheme has in a great measure succeeded in the periodical department, and only requires a little management to be extended to the stage. What an air already breathes from the New Parnassus! What a light breaks over Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden! What delicacy, what discrimination, what refinement of sentiment! What halycon days! What peaceable productions! There will be no grossness, no violence, no political allusions or party spite! The best understanding will subsist between Government and men of letters, nor will there be any occasion for a Dramatic Censor, when Ministers of State furnish the plot, and Peeresses in their own right suggest the last corrections to the dialogue. There is no doubt the taste for the drama will be revived by means of such an arrangement—people of fashion will go to see what people of fashion write—the manners of high life will be reflected on the stage as in the mirrors at each end of the dress circle—

‘They best can paint them who have known them most;’

the hireling crew will withdraw to hide themselves in a garret or a jail—the pit will wonder—the galleries be silent or shut up—Lord Porchester’s tragedy will be crowned with bays, Lord Morpeth’s transferred from the closet to the stage—Mr. Moore, by particular desire of several persons of distinction, will try his hand at anotherBlue-Stockingaffair—and theSphynx, theAthenæum, theArgus(a new evening), and theAurora(a new morning paper), which Mr. Buckingham will by that time have set up on the same independent principles of voluntary contribution, will applaud to the skies the change which Mr. Colburn’s spirit and genius will have brought like a perfect paradise upon earth. It is whispered that a certain Dukehas got through the first act of a piece, called ‘The Deaf and Dumb Politician,’ but dreads the vulgar composition of the public taste:—nay, who knows but the coast being cleared of plebeian scribblers and the rabble of competitors, Majesty itself might not take the field, theLady Godivaof the scene, in a night-gown and slippers, with a grand romantic interlude called ‘The Prince and the Pretender, or the Year 1745’—with Mr. O—holding the glass-door in Burlington street for three days together in his hand, and Mr. C—p—b—ll to officiate asPeeping Tom—‘Oh! dearest Ophelia, we are ill at these numbers:’ but neitherUps and DownsnorCarron-Sidesuggested anything better. Mr. Liston in the first played a city fortune-hunter, who pays his addresses to, who jilts, and is jilted by three mistresses in succession, to whom he is introduced byJack Pointer(Jones), his pretensions rising with his fortune, and with whom he is confronted and exposed without much effect in the last act. He at first aspires no higher than toKitty Corderoy, a tradesman’s daughter; but having twenty thousand pounds left him, he contrives to cut with her, to her great joy, she being secretly in love withMr. Christopher Higgins(Russell), her father’s apprentice, a person by no means approved by her motherMrs. Corderoy(Mrs. C. Jones), because he himself is ‘a little sneaking chap,’ and his father a tailor—as if tailors were not in the order of nature or of civil society. Our hero, that is,Mr. Felix Mudberry, next offers himself, with a large bunch of flowers and a suit of clothes picked up on the way at theReadymade Depôt, toMiss Amelia Mammonton(the charming Miss Ellen Tree), a banker’s sister, who is in love withEarl Delamere(Mr. Hooper), love and romantic sentiment, according to the situation or rank in which it is found, aiming at still greater and more airy heights. She laughs at him and his ‘delicate attentions’ (as she well may)—but being led to suppose that his uncle,Mr. Stanley, a Liverpool merchant, or as he used to call him ‘Black Boy Billy,’ is dead, and has left him a fortune of half a million, he begins to blubber out his sorrow for his uncle’s death and his own ‘good, he means, bad fortune,’ stammers his excuses for leaving the company ofMr. Mammontonand his sister, and is wound up to a Countess by his mischievous prompter.Lady Charlewood(Miss I. Paton) is disgusted with the behaviour of her new and absurd admirer; her mother, theCountess Dowager Delamere(Mrs. Davison), admires his fortune, and patronises the match according to the etiquette of rank and high life. His inconstancy and meanness are however exposed in the meantime byMiss Kitty Corderoy, who is intimate with both the young ladies, having been at the same school with them somewhere in the neighbourhood of London, and runs up anddown ‘the Ladder of Life’ as she pleases (in the French play the corresponding character is a milliner, which is a little more in keeping)—andMr. Felix Mudberry, in his own emphatic phrase, is ‘blown’ by all the three at once;—the bubble of his legacy also bursts, andJack Pointerturning short round upon him at this extremity, advises him to go abroad again, make another fortune, and on his return, promises to introduce him to a Princess! Mr. Liston produced a good deal of laughter in the part, but perhaps from not being near enough to see his face, the drollery fell flat upon us. It was (to get within bow-shot of an Hibernicism) like hearing the report of a pistol, before seeing the flash. Weepers and a round hat do not move our risible muscles. We think Mr. Liston shines in the cockney, more than in the cockney and dandy together. ‘He knows his cue best without a prompter.’ His affectation even must be unaffected. We will match his lead against anybody’s, we will not answer for the tinsel. We have a delicate request to make of him, that he would playMadgefor his benefit and our satisfaction—unlessMoll Flagonshould complain of it as compromising her dignity. Is this piece Mr. Kenney’s? It shivers on the brink of nothing, and plunges over head and ears into nonsense. We wish our authors and architects, if they must give us foreign models, would give them entire, and not by bits and samples, altering only to spoil.

Covent-Garden.

Carron-Side, or the Fête Champêtre, a new Opera, the words by Mr. Planche, the music by M. Liverati, was brought out here on Tuesday, and was repeated on Thursday. The dialogue is tolerable; and so are the songs. Miss Stephens was the chief attraction in it; though she does not make much figure by Scottish stream or mountain. Mr. Sapio and Mr. Wood personated, the one a military, the other a naval hero in it, and maintained the superiority of their several professions in song and bold defiance—with equal loudness and skill. Miss Stephens (Blanche Mackay) the supposed daughter of a peasant, is in love withCaptain Allan Lindsay(Sapio), and he with her, though he is about to be married toGrace Campbell(Miss Cawse), who likes another of her cousins,Cornet Hector Lindsay(Mr. Wood) quite as well or better, as far as we could judge by the event. WhenBlanchehas to present abouquetto the intended couple on the morning of their nuptials, and to sing a song of congratulation, her voice falters and she faints away in the midst of it. She then, partly through shame and partly through vexation, escapes to the house of the miller (Little Keely) and his wife (Miss Goward),where she is kindly received, but supposed by her own friends to have rashly drowned herself. The anguish ofCaptain Allan Lindsayis not to be restrained on this occasion, and betrays his passion for the unhappy girl, who is at the same time discovered not to be the real daughter of the old trumpeterDonald Mackay(Bartley), but the daughter ofMrs. Campbell, who had been supposed to be lost when an infant in the Spanish campaign. The mystery being cleared up, the secret of her birth is communicated to poorBlancheamidst her smiles and tears.Miss Grace Campbellunder the circumstances, and from her previous indifference, declares forCornet Lindsay, andBlancheis united to the Captain. Mr. Keely crept on and off the stage as usual; and Miss Cawse danced and flourished round it as she sung, because Madame Vestris does so. We are quite satisfied with Madame Vestris, without wishing to see her imitated.

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