THE DRAMATIC CENSOR.
I have always considered those combinations which are formed in the playhouse as acts of fraud or cruelty: He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public; He that hisses in malice or sport is an oppressor and a robber.
Dr. Johnson’s Idler, No. 25.
The establishment of a regular and permanent work of dramatic criticism, and of censorship upon the public amusements of this city has often been attempted. The uniform failure of these efforts renders it natural to apprehend that the proposition now submitted to the public will incur the charge of presumption, and perhaps experience, for a time, the coldness and discouragement with which the majority of mankind are always inclined to treat even laudable exertions, if they in any degree militate against the dictates of common prudence, and are not recommended by a certainty of public approbation. Taking their auspices of the present undertaking from the fate of those hasty productions on the same subject, which have been brought forth and expired within the compass of their short season, there are too many, who, instead of applauding the hazardous boldness of the measure, and for the sake of its public utility standing forward in its encouragement and support, will endeavour to damp it by premature censure, ascribe the undertaking to vanity, or unworthiness, and if it should fail, be ready to aggravate the disappointment of the projectors with the galling imputation of temerity, impudence, or overweening self-conceit. The sympathy which mankind in general think it handsome to feel for unassuming merit, stumbling in its way through life by incautiously venturing upon ground untrodden before, will be gladly withheld from persons who are supposed wilfully to rush forward into error, with the warning monitions of example before their eyes—who obstinately persist in an unadvised and hopeless enterprise, in defiance of manifold and recent experience, and whom the imprudence and misfortunes of others have been incapable of rendering cautious or discreet.
With encountering these, and many other objections (the offspring of indistinct conception and cold hearts) the projectors of the present work lay their account; yet, since nothing honourable or arduous would ever be accomplished, if hope were to be extinguished by partial defeat, and a generous enterprise were to be abandoned, because it had before been tried without success, the work now proposed is undertaken, with the most firm conviction of its utility and the most unequivocal confidence of success. Let their difficulties be what they may, however, the editors are prepared to meet them, not only without fear, but with satisfaction; since they know that nothing but impossibility will be refused to undismayed perseverance and unremitting industry, and that in the work they are entering upon, they labour for the promotion of a purpose which, whatever the amount of their pecuniary advantage may be, will entitle them to public respect and to the gratitude of the rising generation. Before such proud hopes, all the little obstructions they anticipate—the cavils of the scrupulous, the doubts of the sceptical, the reluctance of the timid, the resistance of the refractory and incorrigible, and the sneers, the censures, and the sarcasms of the curious and the malignant vanish, as the gloomy chills and shades of the night recede before the glorious luminary of the morning.
That the drama is a most powerful moral agent in society has been admitted by men of learning and wisdom in all ages of its existence. Whether its effects be, on the whole, injurious or not, will long be a subject of contest; but be they what they may, it can have very little influence of any kind beyond that of harmless amusement, on the wise, the pious, the learned and the experienced. Were those alone to visit theatres and be exposed to its allurements, the task of the dramatic censor might without injury be dispensed with: but since it is the young, the idle, the thoughtless, and the ignorant, on whom the drama can be supposed to operate as a lesson for conduct, an aid to experience and a guide through life, and since such persons are generally unfurnished with ideas and undefended by principles, prompt to receive first impressions, and easily susceptible of false opinions and pernicious sentiments, it becomes a matter of great importance to the commonwealth that this very powerful engine, (acting as it does upon our youth through the delightful medium of amusement, and by the instrumentality of every circumstance that can lay hold of the fancy, and through the senses fascinate the heart) should be kept under the control of a systematic, a vigilant and a severe, but a just criticism.
To the formation of that rare compound “a finished man” there belong, besides the higher requisites of moral character, an infinite number of minor accomplishments, which are materially affected either for the better or the worse, by a frequent and studious attendance on dramatic representations. Manners, which constitute so important a part of the character of every people, are considerably fashioned by a constant observation of the pictures of human life exhibited in the theatre: on the action, the utterance and the general deportment, the effects of the stage have ever been materially felt and are unequivocally acknowledged. The most eloquent men of antiquity, and the most eloquent men in England, have owned themselves indebted to actors for perfecting them in oratory. Roscius, the actor of Rome, is immortalized by Cicero, and Garrick by lord Chatham and Edmund Burke. If then the stage has been felt to produce such weighty effects in the more arduous part of human improvement, how ponderous in its operation must it not of necessity be, on the other hand, in the promotion of evil, if it exhibit to the growing generation corrupt examples and defective models, not only unrestrained and uncensured, but sanctioned with the applause of an uninstructed and misjudging multitude. Every plaudit which a vitious play, or a bad actor receives is a blow to the public morals, and the public taste. Man is an imitative animal, and insensibly conforms to the models and examples before him. Young men who excessively admire a favourite actor, will insensibly imitate him, without scanning the man’s merits or defects; and without ever reflecting upon the ultimate influence which their partiality, if it should be misplaced, may have upon their lives, fortunes and characters, will adopt his manner, his action, his enunciation, nay, his worst defects, and in short every thing that is imitable about him.
Those who dissent from us on other propositions, will agree with us at least in this, that the highest degree of attention ought to be paid to the morals, the manners, the address and the language of youth; and that nothing which has a tendency to mislead them, in any of those essentials, should be submitted to their eyes or ears; but that on the contrary, every thing should be done, as a great moral philosopher has instructed us, “to secure them from unjust prejudices, from perverse opinions, and from incongruous combinations of images.” Let it be kept in mind that we are not now discussing the question whether the stage be beneficial to society or not. Though it be a fair subject of inquiry, and will hereafter engage a share of our attention, we have no use for it, at present; since be our opinions or those of our readers what they may, the stage exists, and will continue to exist and attract the regards of mankind. The true point of consideration, therefore, is, not how far it is beneficial or how far injurious; but in what way its benefits may be enhanced, and its mischiefs, if any, be abated. He who should demonstrate that it has a pernicious tendency, would but the more strongly enforce our propositions; since he would thereby show the expediency of diminishing that tendency and of mitigating that evil which the public will forbids to be entirely prevented.
It is not merely on account of its effects upon the audience, but on that of the actors themselves, that the theatre calls loudly for a strict critical regimen. An actor resigned to his own opinion, and committed to the unrestrained licentious exercise of his own judgment, if he be not one in a million, sinks into negligence, becomes wilful, and if, as is nine times in ten the case, he should obtain the casual applause of a few stupid and injudicious spectators, becomes headstrong, refractory, and incorrigibly hardened in error. If by means of the oversight of critical judges, or the false adjudication of applause, an actor insensibly slides into popularity, he is erected into a standard of taste, by those who have not seen better; instead of being himself tested by sound principles of criticism and estimated by comparison, with the best models, he becomes gradually absolved from submission to all authority, is held up as a criterion for determining the merit of other actors, and dubbed the Roscius of his little theatre by a number of confident pretenders who know just as much about dramatic character and acting, and on the very same grounds too, as the poor islander of St. Kilda did of architecture, when he sagaciously concluded that the great church of Glasgow was excavated out of a rock, because he had never before seen an edifice made of hewn stone and mortar. Thus not only a false taste is circulated among the youth at large, but the very fountain of taste is itself polluted. This is an evil which nothing but a well-regulated body of competent critical authority can prevent. In the prosecution of the intended work, an occasion will occur of pointing out eras during which, even in the great metropolitan seat of the English drama, the public taste suffered years of vitiation from defective models being at the head of the stage. Till Garrick, led on by Nature herself, introduced her school, the theatre presented a stage on which scarce a vestige of the human character as it really existed, was to be seen. But pompous monotony of speech held the highest praise, and “Declamation roared while Passion slept.”
Hitherto the theatre of Philadelphia has been too much resigned to the licentiousness of bold, and blind opinion. Men of letters, with which the city abounds, and who in every society are the natural guardians of the public taste and morals, seem to have deserted this important trust. Applause which ought to be measured out with scrupulous justice, correctness and precision, has been by admiring ignorance, poured forth in a torrent roar of uncouth and obstreperous glee on the buffoon, “the clown that says more than is set down for him,” and on “the robustious perriwig-pated fellow, who tears a passion all to rags,” while chaste merit and propriety have often gone unrewarded by a smile.
If critical judgment were a matter of physical force or numerical calculation, then indeed the roar of the multitude would be as conclusive in reason, as it too often is in practical effect; but criticism is a matter of intellectual estimate; and many acquirements go to the composition of a well-qualified dramatic critic, to any one of which, but a small number of the auditors of a play can, in the nature of things, have the smallest pretensions. If indeed any man under the assumption of the critic’s name should attempt dogmatically to impose his dictum as a law upon the public, he would deserve to be repelled with indignity and rebuke. All the genuine critic will attempt to do, is to hold out those lights, with which his own study, experience, and observation have supplied him, in order to enable the public to discern more clearly what in the play or the actor is worthy of censure or applause—of rejection or adoption. In the common operations of human life, every man is compelled by the necessity of his nature to take succedaneous aid from others. The mechanic in erecting the poorest building, or forming the most simple machine, is indebted for his means to the practical geometrician, and instrument maker, and the latter again, to the master of the science of mathematics. The practical surveyor or navigator finds it his interest to be governed by rules supplied by those whom study has furnished with the great elementary principles of science, and is contented to stand indebted to them for his means of determining, the area of his land, or the latitude and longitude at sea, without impugning the rights of those studious men who have given him the compendious rules and the tables by which he works. It is so with dramatic criticism. The legitimate source of judgment lies with those who have by deep study made themselves masters of the first principles of the science; and from them the people at large, who are too much otherwise and certainly better employed, to learn those principles, must be content to take the rules and laws by which they judge. The most infatuated self-devotee would be ashamed to contest this point, if he were at all apprised of the various acquirements requisite for forming an accurate judgment of the business of the theatre, interwoven, as the dramatic art is, with some of the highest departments of literature, and the multifarious operations of the human heart. The vainest being who cajoles himself into the notion that a man either unlettered or inexperienced can form a just judgment of a play and actors, must at once be convinced of his error by reflecting that “the drama is an exhibition of the real state of sublunary nature;” and that “to instruct life, and for that purpose to copy what passes in it, is the business of the stage.”[6] To understand this well, demands not only some book-learning, but that experience which, though books improve, they cannot impart, and which never can be attained by seclusion or solitary study, but must be derived from intercourse with men in all their forms of conduct, from converse with society, and from an attentive and accurate examination of that complex miscellany, the living world. To know the drama we must know men; and “if we would know men (says Rousseau) it is necessary that we should see them act.” It is equally necessary too that we should lift the veil which time has thrown over the past, and see how men have thought and acted through the lapse of ages upon the uniform principles of human passion, which ever have been and ever will be the same, and by that means distinguish that which is natural, innate and permanent in man, from that which is adventitious and acquired. He whose knowledge of the world is circumscribed within the narrow limits of one generation or one society can know man only as he appears in the superficial colouring and peculiar modification of personal habit, derived from the fashions, the modes, and the capricious changes of that time, and that society, while the great body of human nature remains buried from his sight. “The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes (says the gigantic critic Johnson) are dissolved by the chance which combined them, but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase nor suffers decay.” And assuredly there was never an age in which man so masked his nature under modish innovations as he does in the present.
The works of the ancients, says a great writer, are the mines from which alone the treasures of true criticism are to be dug up—the pure sources of that penetration which enables us to distinguish legitimate excellence from spurious pretensions to it. He, therefore, who would get at the true principles of dramatic criticism ought to read the poetry and criticism of the two great ancient languages, and to have formed some acquaintance with those authors, whether ancient or modern, who have furnished the world with the great leading principles upon which dramatic poetry is constructed. Doctor Johnson has informed us that before the time of Dryden, the structure of dramatic poetry was not generally understood; and what was the consequence? “AUDIENCES,” continues the doctor, “APPLAUDED BY INSTINCT, AND POETS OFTEN PLEASED BY CHANCE.”[7]
Without calling in the aid of such high authority, no risk of contradiction can be incurred by asserting that he must be radically deficient in the requisites of a dramatic critic, who is not sufficiently versed in philological literature to discriminate between the various qualities of diction—to distinguish the language of the schools from that of the multitude—the polished diction of refinement from the coarse style of household colloquy—the splendid, figurative, and impressive combination of terms adapted to poetry, from those plain and familiar expressions suited to the sobriety of prose; and finally, to form a just estimate of a poet’s pretensions to that delicacy in the selection of words which constitutes what is called beauty in style. Nor is this all, he should be perfectly competent to form a judgment of the fable and its contrivance, to determine according to the canons of criticism laid down by the greatest professors of the art, whether the scheme of a piece be obscured by unnatural complexity or rendered jejune and uninteresting by extreme simplicity, and familiarity of design—whether description be bloated, or overcharged, or imagery misplaced or extravagant; and lastly, whether the performance be on the whole deficient in, or replete with moral institution.
The editors are free to confess that while they enumerate the requisites necessary to a critic, they tremble for their own incompetency. Labour however shall not be spared—-and they cherish the most sanguine hopes of supplying their general deficiency by candour and integrity; being determined while they endeavour with encouragement and applause to foster the rising genius and growing merit of the stage, to rescue it from the encroachment of sturdy incapacity, and while they sit in judgment for the security of the public taste, to be as far as the canons of dramatic criticism will allow, the strenuous advocates of the valuable man and unassuming actor—still keeping in sight that impressive truth contained in the motto: “He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public; he that hisses in malice or in sport is an oppressor and a robber.”
The editors have said thus much merely to explain their motives, and to smooth their way to the discharge of a task, in the performance of which they will necessarily be exposed to many invidious remarks from the misconceptions of presumptuous ignorance. Having done so they fearlessly commit the subject to the public judgment, and proceed to the execution of their duty.
[ DRAMATIC CENSOR.]
The Philadelphia Theatre opened on Monday the 20th of November, with
“A CURE FOR THE HEART-ACH.”
It has been said by a great moral philosopher that fashion supplies the place of reason. On superficial consideration the assertion will appear paradoxical; but there is much truth in it, and much biting satire too, upon the absurdities of the world. Fashion could not supply the place of reason, if reason were not absent; and most irrational and unaccountable indeed are all her ladyship’s ways. Her capriciousness is proverbial, and her agency is generally illustrated by comparison with the most unsteady elements of the physical world. We say “Fashion that fluctuating lady,” alluding to the ebbing and flowing of the tide—and “Fashion that weathercock,” implying that she veers about with every puff of wind. There are some few cases, however, on the other hand, in which she may be compared to a rock, because she stands immovably fixt to her seat; supplying, according to the idea of the philosopher abovementioned, the place of reason, who stands self-exiled forever. It would seem as if fashion never could take repose but in supreme irrationality. There and there alone she is firm. Whoever will take the trouble (or rather the pleasure) to read “Browne’s Vulgar Errors,” will see how much deeper root absurd notions strike in “the brain of this foolish compounded clay man,” than those that belong to sound sense and reason. The insignia of fashion, therefore, may be considered in relation to the human head, as the notification on the door of an empty house, signifying that the family has removed to another tenement. Hence no one of common sense expects any caprice of that lady to be accounted for on rational grounds. There is one of her freaks, however, which we have endeavoured to trace to its source in the wilds of luxuriant absurdity, and have never been able to succeed. Nay, we venture to affirm that if the most sagacious man in America were asked, why it was considered a violation of the laws of fashion for a lady to attend the theatre on the opening night of a season, he would be puzzled for any other reply than that it was permanently fashionable, because it was prodigiously absurd. On the opening of our theatre this season the house was full of MEN. The audience presented one dark tissue of drab and brown, and black and blue woolen drapery, with here and there a solitary exception of cheering female attire. Had there been a heavy fall of snow, the ladies would have been sleighing—had there been a public ball the darkness of the streets would have been broken by multitudes of attractive meteors in muslin, either “hanging on the cheek of night,” or hurried along like gossamer through the air. But fashion has so ordained it: and a good play and after-piece were well represented to a house which, from the little intermixture of the lovely sex, somewhat resembled the auditory of a surgeon’s dissecting theatre.
Mr. Morton’s comedy “A Cure for the Heart Ach,” is by this time so well known that to relate the fable of it here, would be uselessly to encumber the work. Of the quality of this production it would be difficult for criticism to speak candidly, without adverting to the present miserable state of dramatic poetry in England, which from the days of Sam Foote has been gradually descending to its present deplorable condition. The body of dramatic writers of the last thirty years first corrupted the public taste, and now thrive by that corruption. By hasty sketches, not of Nature as she appears in all times and places, but of particular and eccentric manners and characters, the excressences of overloaded society, they have made a short cut to the favour of the public, and inundated the stage with a torrent of ephemeral productions, to the depravation of public taste, and in defiance of classical criticism: their highest praise that they do no moral mischief, and that if they possess not the bold outline and faithful colouring of nature which distinguished the productions of their mighty predecessors, they are no less exempt from the obscenity and immoral effects of those authors. As bad writing is infinitely easier than good, the pens of our living dramatic writers in general teem with an inconceivable fertility—and the purlieus of London are beat over in every direction to hunt up game suitable to the genius of their weak-winged muse; in short, to find out new modifications of character, attractive not by its consonance to man’s general nature, but by its eccentricity and departure from the ordinary tracks of human conduct.
Having thus insulated this class of comedies, and put them apart from the old stock, to which, with the exception of the Honey Moon, there is no modern production comparable, criticism may weigh the merits of each piece as compared with its class, and perhaps find something to praise. We consider some of the comedies of Mr. Morton, however, as raised high above the throng. The Cure for the Heart Ach has much in it to commend. The moral tendency of many parts of it is good, while the incidents are exceedingly laughable. Old Rapid continually betraying his trade by stuffing his conversation with the technical terms of the taylor—his son’s distress at it—the honest rusticity of Frank Oatland—the baseness, vanity and folly of Vortex the nabob—the insolence and amorousness of Miss Vortex his daughter, and the whimsical incidents arising from their various designs, mistakes, detections and disappointments, form altogether a melange of pleasantry highly provocative of laughter, yet by no means so low as to reduce the piece to the rank of farce, which some austere critics in London have assigned it.
Of the performance generally, we repeat that it was good. Young Rapid afforded criticism much satisfaction in the person of Mr. Wood, who in many parts persuaded us that he had seen Mr. Lewis in that character, and seen him with profit. Mr. Wood’s walk is not unlike that of the great original in London—a nasal tone of voice too is common to both. These, if they did not create, certainly increased the resemblance between those two gentlemen, which, however remote, was yet discernible. In Sir Hubert Stanley, as in every other character in which we have seen him, Mr. M‘Kenzie deserved warm applause—he was dignified, pathetic and interesting. Mr. Francis gave a strong colouring to Vortex; and to say that Frank Oatland was all that the author could wish, we need only to state that he fell to the share of Mr. Jefferson. After all, we are doubtful whether old Rapid was not as well off in the hands of Mr. Warren as any other character in the play.
We were greatly interested and indeed delighted by Mrs. Wood in Jesse Oatland. Mrs. Francis was abundantly droll in Mrs. Vortex; and Mrs. Seymour was entitled to the marks of approbation she received.
November 22.
Pizarro and the Review composed the bill of fare for this evening. Although in the attack and defence of Pizarro criticism has worn down the edges of its weapons to very dulness, we cannot forbear taking this opportunity of recording our opinions of that extraordinary production.
No play that has appeared during the last century, possesses the power of agitating the passions, and interesting the feelings in an equal degree to Pizarro. From a child of the brain of Kotzebue, trained and corrected by Sheridan, much might be expected. And the piece before us is worthy of the talents of such men.
In any contest between oppressed and oppressors the heart takes in an instant, a decided and a warm part. If the crime of oppression is aggravated by other guilt in the oppressor, and the object of it is rendered more lovely and respectable by the most exalted virtues, pity for the one rises to respect and affection—indignation against the other becomes exasperated to hatred, to abhorrence, and disgust; without the intervention of the will, but merely from the spontaneous movements of the heart, we sympathise, we silently pray for the one—we recoil from, we execrate the other. We are pressed by our very nature into the service of virtue; our souls are up in arms against vice and improbity, and thus we receive lasting impressions, which, when our hearts are not very corrupt, must forever after have a favourable influence on our moral conduct.
To elucidate and confirm our opinions on this subject, we beg leave to ask, what is that play in which there is such a mass of virtue and simplicity, and such a number of amiable personages, opposed to such a mass of villany, subtlety, fraudful avarice, and sensual vice, as in Pizarro? Not one. The lofty moral sentiments of Rolla, his exquisite feelings and exalted notions as the patriot, the friend, the lover, are unequalled. He exists out of himself, and lives but for others: for his country, his king, his friend, and the dearest object of his love, of whom being bereft by that very friend, he becomes their brother—their protector—devotes his life to death to save the man—escaping that, devotes it again to save their offspring. How much worse, if worse could be, than a satanic soul must that man have, who could be insensible to such a character! Who is there whose heart beats in harmony with heroic virtue and humanity, that would not accept such a death, to have lived such a life? Need we say more then of Pizarro than to contrast him with such a character. The only gleam of light that breaks in upon that black Erebus, his heart, is his conduct to Rolla when the latter throws aside his dagger; and this the poet (Sheridan) has artfully contrived for the purpose of heightening the lustre of such virtue, by showing that even that monster could not be insensible to it.
Let us add that in the true liberal spirit of Christian piety, tolerance and humanity displayed by Las Casas, a popish Spanish priest; in the noble indignation, the inflexible fortitude, and the intrepid patriotism and virtue of Orozimbo; in the valour, the beneficent wisdom, and the, ardent connubial fidelity and affection of the young Alonzo, in the tenderness, the simplicity, the conjugal and maternal virtues of Cora, and in the artless display of vivid patriotism in the old blind man and his boy—there is, exclusive of Rolla’s glorious qualities, a mass of excellence sufficient to make the character of any two plays, and put each out of the reach of competition with any other that we can immediately think of.
Such as we have described are the emotions which are always produced by the play now under consideration, when it happens to be properly represented. Fortunately or unfortunately as it may happen, the play is so constructed that almost every part in it contributes largely, according to its kind, to the interest of the piece. Every person of the oppressed—the Peruvians, even down to the blind man and the little boy, are made by the poet to produce a large share of the general effect. For this reason it is a piece which taxes a manager highly, calling for a variety of excellent talents in the actors. It is not one of those plays which satisfy the mind and from which we come home contented, if two or three characters are well done. The play of Pizarro is a lifeless body when compared with what it ought to be, if all the high Peruvians at least, are not well performed. In the movement of a watch every small wheel and every little rivet is as necessary to the general effect as the mainspring. So Las Casas, Orozimbo, the blind man, and the blind man’s boy, are as necessary not perhaps to the mean progress of the fable (but to that effect, that necromantic influence upon the feelings, that penetrating moral which alone can render a play useful as well as delightful) as is the character of Rolla.
It may appear a singular avowal, yet being truth we will not withhold it, that having witnessed the performance of this play many times in England and America, we have never yet seen it performed to our perfect satisfaction. Kemble was great in Rolla, but the feebleness of his voice was severely felt by the audience in the celebrated speech of the Peruvian to his soldiers. That speech has been the stumbling block of most actors we have seen. Hodgkinson, who in other respects was unexceptionable, rather failed in it. Throughout the whole character, Mr. Wood preserved a very equable tenor of acting. He had neither the rich beauties nor the striking defects of others. He evinced considerable judgment, but at times powers were evidently wanting.
Mr. M‘Kenzie supported Pizarro well, and showed that he possesses abilities to support it better. It appears to us that this gentleman’s physical powers are sometimes subdued by an over-scrupulous chasteness. In his answers to Elvira’s solicitations on behalf of the unhappy Alonzo, he did not, we think, sufficiently mark all the feeling and emotions of the tyrant. Pizarro is stung with jealousy as well as rage; not so much the jealousy of love as of infernal pride; but both rage and jealousy are mastered by triumphant insolence and contempt. The utterance therefore of his laconic decisive sentence, “He dies,” should be marked with a triumphant sneer as well as malice.
Mr. Warren did ample justice to the venerable Las Casas.
Mr. Cone who, though labouring under the disadvantages of a voice radically, and we fear, incurably monotonous, gives promise of being a useful actor, displayed considerable spirit in Alonzo. To the praise of diligence and attention to his business Mr. C. is entitled, and those rarely fail in any department to insure respectability and success. Mr. Cone’s personal appearance is very much in his favour.
The only part in the play on which we can justly bestow unqualified applause was Mr. Jefferson’s Orozimbo. It is seldom that criticism has such a repast, a repast in which there was no fault but that of the poet in making it too short.
Elvira is not one of the characters in which Mrs. Barret appears to advantage.
Had Mrs. Wood the requisite talent of singing, we should have been much pleased with her Cora. Certainly so far as that lady was able to go, we know no person on this stage who could be substituted in her place with advantage to the character. But the omission of Cora’s exquisitely beautiful, wild, and pathetic song, was a great drawback from the effect of the part.
December 21.—Town and Country, by Morton—Village Lawyer. Some of the British critics rank Mr. Morton with the farce-writers of the day, others again pronounce his comedies to be the best which the age has produced, and say that they will be selected by posterity from the perishable trash of the day. We agree with neither, thinking it likely they may remain for a few years among the stock of acting plays. To say that they will be admired by posterity is praise as hyperbolical and unjust, as ranking them in farce is calumnious and untrue.
The comedy before us is a very pleasing production. The plot is well imagined, and the author has contrived to condense into it more bustle and incident than can readily be found in a piece of the same length. Reuben Gleuroy, the hero, is a noble character, possessed of the most exalted virtues, which are continually brought into active exercise for the good of his fellow beings. He preaches little and does a great deal, and displays a generosity and greatness of mind touching, as the world now goes, upon the chivalrous. But that which makes him more conspicuously amiable and interesting is that while he takes the most ardent and active concern in the happiness of mankind, he is himself reduced by the wickedness of others to a state of misery almost of distraction, which awakens the most poignant sympathy for his situation. Deserted, as he imagines, by the object of his dearest affections, Rosalie Summers, who is supposed to have eloped with a villain of high rank of the name of Plastic, he goes to London and finds his brother in the last stage of ruin and despair by gambling, and stops his hand just at the moment he is attempting suicide. In the end he reforms the brother, discovers his Rosalie, and finds that she is innocent and faithful; and by a series of those events, which whether likely or not, modern dramatists without scruple press into their service, is made perfectly happy. The colouring of this admirable portrait is not a little heightened in its effect by a tinge of eccentricity caught from a life of rural retirement in the romantic mountainous country of Wales. On this character and that of old Mr. Cosey, a philanthropic, wealthy, and munificent stock-broker, whose cash, always at the disposal of his friends, enables Reuben to accomplish his purposes, the author seems to have dwelt con amore. The comic dialogue of the piece arises chiefly from the contrasted feelings of Mr. Cosey and Mr. Trot. Cosey admires the city, and is miserable in Wales, while Trot, a wealthy cotton-spinner, rejoices at the loss of a large share of his property because it furnishes him with a pretext for returning to the country and leaving the abominable city to which he was hurried away by the vanity of his wife.
Mr. Wood displayed in Reuben, much ability, sound sense, and fine feeling. No person that we know on the stage discloses in his performances so little of the mere actor. That indefinable something, which though obvious to perception cannot be described, but is understood by the term “plain gentleman,” tinctures all he says and does upon the stage. Whether this be detrimental to him as a general actor, we have not yet seen this gentleman often enough to determine: but this we will say, that while it stands a perpetual security against his being positively disagreeable in any character he may be obliged to act, it throws a charm over all those for which he is best fitted by nature.
The amiable, the inimitable Cosey, never was, nor ever can be more perfectly at home than in the person of Mr. Jefferson. Were the author to see the performance and to observe the correspondence of the actor’s physiognomy as well as action and utterance, with the sentiments of the character, he would from his heart exclaim in the words of Cosey himself, “NOW THIS IS WHAT I CALL COMFORTABLE.”
It would be great injustice not to acknowledge the pleasure we received from Mr. Francis in the character of Trot, which he conceived and executed with great humour and spirit.
A Mr. West from the southward made his appearance in the Yorkshire rustic Hawbuck. His face and person are well adapted to a certain class of low comedy; his voice still more so. If he will but avoid that bane of comedians, the effort to raise laughter by spurious humour and low trick, he will thrive in his department.
In the drawing of the female parts there is nothing sufficiently striking to call forth the powers of an actress. What was to be done was sufficiently well done by Mrs. Wood and Mrs. Wilmot. But, were they well cast? or, should they not change sides?
[ FARCES FOR THE FIRST WEEK.]
November 20. Of age tomorrow.
Every character tolerably well played.
November 22. Wags of Windsor.
Hardinge, an old favourite of the town in Irish characters, appeared the first time for four years in Looney M‘Twoulter. His return to this stage was hailed with thunders of applause; and all his songs were encored.—We have not seen Caleb Quotem better performed in England, nor so well by a great deal in America as this night by Jefferson.—Wilmot is a true child of nature and simplicity in all such characters as John Lump.
November 24. Village Lawyer.
We abhor this farce. Scout, from whom it takes its name, is too detestable a picture of human meanness and depravity to be fit for farce, the proper effects of which, however nonsensical it may be, ought to be to enliven and not create disgust. We cannot bear to see a respectable actor in it. Blisset, a favourite son of Momus, played the Sheepstealer. Mr. West, whom we have mentioned in Hawbuck, played Old Snarl with great humour, which his audience, and indeed himself, seemed heartily to enjoy. In characters of low humour, particularly crabbed old men, Mr. West would be very pleasing, if he would aim less at raising gallery laughter by spurious means. And all that could be done for Mrs. Scout was done by Mrs. Francis.
ELLA ROZENBERG.—WOOD DEMON.
Ella Rozenberg, a melo-drame, by Mr. Kenny, was brought out for the first time at Drury Lane in 1807, and has ever since maintained its ground in the public opinion. It is extremely interesting, and though there is nothing new or singular in the plot or incidents is calculated to lay fast hold on the imagination and feelings. At the opening of the piece, the scene of which is laid near a Prussian camp, the heroine Ella Rosenberg reduced by the disappearance of her husband to a state of poverty, is living under the protection of captain Storm, a crippled old officer of invalids, and the friend of her deceased father. Here she has concealed herself for two years, when she is discovered by colonel Mountfort, who having conceived a criminal passion for her, had in order to gratify that passion, purposely provoked her husband to draw his sword upon him, in consequence of which apprehending the severity of the military law, the latter had set off to the capital to appeal to the electoral prince, but was no more heard of. The colonel, who is a finished master of intrigue, enters Storm’s house in disguise, and attempts with the help of a band of his soldiers to carry off Ella by force. In this he is opposed by the good and gallant old officer, who, sword in hand, beats off the soldiers, tears the colonel’s sash from him, and in a rage tramples it under foot, in consequence of which Storm is made prisoner, and Ella left unprotected, is borne away by the soldiers. The elector, who has just returned victorious from the war, appears considering a petition from old Storm on behalf of Ella, which interests him so much, that he resolves to visit her incognito. Mountfort, who is a favourite of the elector’s and has just arrived to congratulate him, is alarmed, endeavours to dissuade him from going to Ella, and in the meantime to secure himself from detection orders the immediate trial of Storm, who is found guilty and sentenced to die. Ella escapes and reaches Storm, her old protector, just as he is on his way to execution. He does all he can to keep his fate concealed from her; but it being betrayed, she is torn from him in a state of distraction and anguish, and being consigned by her generous protector to the care of a brother officer who commands the guard, is conducted to a solitary inn by a soldier. The elector appears at night passing in disguise to visit the cottage of Storm, and is encountered by Rosenberg, who appears in the most wretched state, flying from his pursuers, and supplicates him for the means to procure shelter. Without disclosing who he is, Rosenberg informs the elector that he (Rosenberg) has been secretly and violently imprisoned. The elector directs him to the house to which Ella is carried by the soldiers, and promises to meet him there in the morning and assist him. Rosenberg reaches the inn whither Ella too is brought in a state of insensibility, and placed in a separate apartment. Mountfort arrives alone, and not knowing Rosenberg engages him to guard Ella, while he goes to seek a conveyance for her. Rosenberg now finds the cause of his imprisonment—an interesting discovery takes place between him and Ella—but he is detected by one of his pursuers, and is again in the hands of his enemies, when the elector enters, and obtaining the most perfect conviction of the villany of Mountfort, disgraces him, restores the young couple to rank and happiness, and the brave and virtuous old Storm to life, liberty and joy.
The plot of this melo-drame is wrought up with uncommon skill: the interest rising by a progressive climax which keeps the heart in a warm glow of feeling from the first scene to the last. Old Storm is worth a whole army of what are called heroes, and the elector is a model of justice and humanity for princes to imitate.
According to the London casting Rosenberg would have fallen to the share of the first player in the house: but we had no reason to complain of Mr. Cone. Mr. Warren discharged the high office of elector with dignity; and Mr. M‘Kenzie was an excellent representative of the old cut-and-thrust-colonel. Such characters as Ella are always interesting when played by Mrs. Wood.
The tasteful amateur must have been roused and delighted by the music, particularly the overture.
Ella Rosenberg was followed by one of the most monstrous productions, the mind of man ever groaned withal. Never did melancholy madman labouring under the horrors of an inflammation of the brain—never did a wretch fevered with gluttony and intemperance, and writhing under the pressure of the night-mare, dream of more horrible circumstances than those which Mr. Lewis has offered in this prodigious melo-drame, for the ENTERTAINMENT of the British nation. Where will the taste of England stop in its descent? Where will the impositions on it by bastard genius end? Yet since this monster has produced a powerful effect, and is managed with such perverted skill as to excite a strong interest, and since whole audiences condescend to club tastes with the scarecrow old women of the heath and the mountain, and to play “look at the bugabow,” with the nurselings of the lap, we should be sorry to be deficient in curtesy, or when so many good and wise people drivel not to drivel a little too; we bend therefore with stiff and painful obedience to our duty, and offer our readers a short summary of the fable.
To clear the way then, be it in the first place known, that Mr. Matthew Lewis has found out a new kind of infernal agent—a demon who delights in human sacrifices, and lives in the woods. Perhaps it is because we are poorly versed in demonology that we do not recollect to have heard of this particular infernal before. Be that as it may, Count Hardyknute of Holstein, having been sent into the world deformed in person and poor in circumstances, and being resolved to sell his soul to damnation for the bettering of his body, makes a contract with the demon, in condition of his being made handsome and powerful, to sacrifice to him a human victim on a particular day in each year; in failure of which he is to become the prey of the demon, who is very handsomely named Sangrida. The count has sacrificed nine victims before the opening of the piece, and is meditating with himself with what fat offering he shall next glut the maw of Sangrida, in anniversary punctuality. Leolyn, a dumb boy, the rightful heir of the estate and title which Hardyknute had usurped, has been secretly bred up by Clotilda as her own, but Hardyknute discovers him by the mark of a bloody arrow on his wrist, and determines to help Sangrida to his little body. Una, a beautiful young lady, to whom the count pays his addresses, is selected by the guardian spirit of Holstein to be the preserver of the intended victim. The time approaches for the fulfilment of the agreement. By a process of the most horrible kind of enchantment Una is enabled to remove the boy so as to elude the count, and gets possession of the key of an enchanted place on which the boy is chained. She gets him down from it—the clock is seen just near the stroke of one—she resolves to push the hand forward—Hardyknute seizes and is about despatching her, when Leolyn with difficulty mounts to the clock, pushes forward the hand and it strikes one—the demon appears, seizes the count in his claws—the earth opens, and the demon carries him down, in the same manner that an alligator or shark carries down a puppy dog, to devour him in comfort.
Such is the piece, and such the depravity of a nation’s taste. It is no wonder that the tasteful, the learned and the judicious, should wage an open war of wit and satire upon such things. On this subject we refer our readers to a piece signed Theobaldus Secundus, which will appear in our next number.
[ SECOND WEEK.]
November 29. Reconciliation, or Fraternal Discord, with False and True.
It would be superfluous to say any thing of a play so well known and so justly admired.
December 1. Abaellino, or the Great Bandit, with the Lady of the Rock.
The Great Bandit is one of those extraordinary productions which distinguish the present dramatic writers of Germany from those of all ages and all countries. There are but few topics connected with the stage which deserve more serious discussion than this of the German drama. A proper investigation of it would require more room than we can at present spare: but we shall not so far desert our duty as to decline it when we can devote to it the deliberation it deserves. A future, and not far distant number will contain such reflections as occur to us on the subject.
December 2. Road to Ruin—Don Juan.
Mr. Wood in Harry Dornton was very successful. It is a line of acting for which he is well calculated. The character of Goldfinch was better performed by Mr. Jefferson than it could be in any other person in this theatre. But we received less pleasure from it than from any other we have seen him play, Scout excepted.
[ FARCES FOR THIS WEEK.]
The Wood Demon, though used as an after-piece, demanded observation of a more serious kind than is due to farce, and has therefore received it in pages 71 and 72.
The farce of “False and True” is a wretched thing. To speak Johnsonically it is a congeries of inexplicable nonsense. An Irishman, who, after having committed the very probable blunder of going to Naples instead of Dublin, mistakes Vesuvius for the hill of Hoath, is the most laughable character of the piece. What could be done for it Hardinge did. A song of his was spoiled by the neglect of the band, whose conduct deserved reprehension from the manager.
The Lady of the Rock is the production of Holcroft. Had he not himself given it to the world as his own, we should have thought it a libel upon his understanding to ascribe it to his pen.
No pantomime has ever made so deep and so universal an impression as Don Juan. The merit of the original belongs to the celebrated Moliere. Averse on principle to pantomime, we have often felt ourselves indebted to it for relief from the drowsiness induced by some modern plays; but that perhaps was more owing to the badness of the play than the value of the pantomime. Of all pantomimes Don Juan is the most blamable. It is good in its kind, but the kind is bad.
[ THIRD WEEK.]
Monday, Dec. 4. SPEED THE PLOUGH—ELLA ROSENBERG.
The comedy of Speed the Plough is deservedly reckoned among the best of the modern stock, and considered as reflecting great credit upon the muse of Mr. Morton. The plot is very skilfully mixed up, notwithstanding the difficulty that always must attend carrying on, in connection with each other, two interests of a totally distinct and opposite nature, connecting two contradictory agencies without either encroaching on the other, and conducting an alternation of serious and comic scenes to one end, without making them clash. This Mr. Morton has, to a considerable degree, successfully accomplished; making that which occasions the difficulty subservient to one of the most desirable but arduous ends in dramatic writing, that of concealing the final unravelling or denouement, as it is called, of the plot.
A striking beauty in this play, and the more striking because seldom met with, is the fidelity with which some of the characters are drawn from life; not as it is found in a solitary individual, but as it appears in a whole numerous class. Such is farmer Ashfield—such is dame Ashfield. Yet the characters in general are not very impressive, and there are some inconsistencies in them as well as in the arrangement of the incidents. A young lady’s suddenly, and at first sight, falling in love with a peasant boy, though it may have happened, is an occurrence too singular to be perfectly natural; and as a dramatic incident, it is a coarseness which cannot well be reconciled to the characteristic delicacy of such a young lady, even by the ex post facto discovery that the object of her love was in reality a person of condition. We do not think that love at first sight, which is in reality nothing more than Forwardness indulging itself in the airs of Romance, and Prurience calling in Fate to sanction its indelicacy, ought to be clothed in such a respectable and captivating dress as our author has bestowed upon it in this play.
Yet with these defects to counterbalance them, Speed the Plough is replete with beauties—the dialogue is neat, spirited, and forcible; and there are many delicate touches of the pathetic, and much excellent moral sentiment to recommend it.
The best character, beyond all comparison, is that of Farmer Ashfield. It is a picture of real life, originals of which are found in multitudes in England—plain, honest, benevolent, and under a rustic garb, possessing a heart alive to the noblest feelings. No man that we know in this country possesses such happy requisites for exhibiting the farmer in the true colours of nature as Mr. Jefferson. In the rustic deportment and dialect—in the artless effusions of benignity and undisguised truth—and in those masterly strokes of pathos and simplicity with which the author has finished this inimitable picture Mr. Jefferson showed uniform excellence: and as in the humorous parts his comic powers produced their customary effect on our risibility, so in the serious overflowings of the farmer’s honest nature the mellow, deep, impressive tone of the actor’s voice vibrated to the heart, and excited the most exquisite sensations.
Mr. Wood performed Bob Handy. He was given out in the bills for sir Philip Blandford; but was, by a casualty, obliged to take the part of Bob: a change which, on more accounts than one, the audience had no cause to regret. Nor in our opinion, had either Bob or sir Philip any cause to lament it. Mr. Wood is at home in light comedy, while Mr. M‘Kenzie, whose merits seem not to be sufficiently appreciated, is well calculated for such characters as Philip Blandford.
The judgment of Mr. Warren enables him to perform any character he undertakes with propriety—but there are some parts in comedy for which he seems admirably qualified by nature and knowledge of stage business. We could enumerate several; but this is not the place for doing so—his representation of sir Abel Handy was uncommonly humorous and appropriate.
Mr. Cone’s Henry was pleasing. This young actor promises well. Though, to adopt the cant of the turf, he will never be first, there is no fear of his being distanced, unless he carries too great weight.
Dame Ashfield in the performance of Mrs. Francis would be admired by Mrs. Grundy herself; and to express our opinion of Mrs. Wood’s Susan would be only to repeat what we have already said of her on more occasions than one.
It gives us infinite regret to be compelled, just as we put our foot upon the threshold of the critic’s office, to animadvert upon some errors and defects in pronunciation, of which we could not have imagined the persons concerned to be capable. Our purpose is to persuade the people to encourage the stage upon principles honourable to it; not as a place of mere barren pastime; but as a school of improvement. But how shall we be able to bring the public mind to that habitual respect for the stage without which it must lose all useful effect, if the actors show themselves unfit for conveying instruction. Were this to be the case, and were mere pastime the object of theatres, Astley’s horse-riders, the tumblers and rope-dancers of Sadlers-Wells, nay, the Punch of a puppet-show, would be as useful and respectable as Garrick, Barry, Cooke, or Kemble, and the circus might successfully batter its head against the walls of that building in Chesnut-street which the sculptor has enriched with the wooden proxies of Melpomene and Thalia. But criticism will not allow this. For the sake of the stage it will exert all its might to support the actors—and for the sake of the stage it will hold them in admonition. If the established principles of literature be violated by the actors, the very ground upon which the critic would support them, is blown up by a mine of their own construction, and not only they must sink, but the critic must, for the maintenance of a just cause, put his hand to their heads and give them a lanch. The theatre is a school for elocution or it is nothing. In Great Britain it has time immemorial been attended to, not as authority for innovations, but as an organ of conveyance of the authorised pronunciation, to which the growing youth of the country were to look for accurate information of what was correct, as settled and considered by their superiors, that is, by high learned men and statesmen. If the actors, therefore, run counter to authority, and thereby endanger the cause which they are presumed to aid, the mischief is too general and extensive in its operation to be neglected or endured. There is nothing belonging to the stage which demands such strict discipline as its orthoepy, because there is none in which it can so immediately and powerfully affect the public. On this point therefore we are determined to sacrifice nothing to ceremony; being convinced that debasing the language is essentially as injurious, though legally not so punishable, as defacing the current coin of a country.
Without pointing to individuals by name, we request the ladies and gentlemen of the green-room to consult all the acknowledged authorities for the pronunciation of the words: true, rude, brute, shrewd, rule, in which the u is by some of them sounded very improperly; true so as to rhyme to few, new, &c. rule as if it were to rhyme to mule, and so on; whereas true ought to be pronounced as if it were spelled troo, and rhymed to do; rule as if spelled rool, and so on; and thus they will find them in the dictionaries of acknowledged authority.
Since we are on the subject we will now advert to some other words which are often most lamentably mispronounced, not only contrary to the pronunciation established by all learned men and orators in Great Britain, but exactly in that way in which skilful actors often pronounce them in Europe when they wish to mimic the most low and ignorant classes of society. Of this description is the pronunciation of the word “sacrifice.” For these words we refer all whom it may concern to the dictionaries of the best orthoepists, by which they will be instructed that it is not pronounced say-crifice but sac-rifize. If the former be really the pronunciation, the old ladies who smoke short pipes in the chimney corners of English and Irish cottages, are right, and Burke, Fox, Pitt, Windham, Curran, Grattan, Sheridan, and in short every man who speaks in a public assembly in England or Ireland, are wrong. We are not sure whether Mr. Kemble, who, as an excellent critic has observed, is always seeking for novelty and always running into error, may not lately have added that patch to his motley garb of new readings; but his authority is disallowed. Even Garrick, whose claims were of a very superior kind, when he attempted to render the English language, already too unstable, more so, by his innovations, was repelled with helpless contempt.
This is a point to which it is the manager’s duty to attend, because it is not a matter of doubt, nor subject to discretionary opinion. What must that part of our youth who attend to these things from a laudable desire for improvement, think, when they hear the same word differently pronounced in the same scene by different actors. Upon one night particularly, Mr. M‘Kenzie several times returned the mispronounced word, pronounced as it should be, with an emphasis which could not be misunderstood: yet the mispronunciation was persisted in.
Before we drop this subject we must observe that the pronunciation of the last syllable of the word sacrifice is sometimes as erroneously pronounced as the first, indeed worse, as the sound given to it approximates to one which conveys an offensive idea. Properly pronounced it rhymes to the verbs advise, rise, and not to mice, spice, &c.
Having brought our critical journal up to the appearance of that phenomenon of the stage of this new world, Master Payne, we find ourselves constrained, by the limits of this number, to postpone our observations upon the plays in which that extraordinary boy, for so many nights, astonished and delighted crowded houses, and far beyond our expectations, made good his title to the partiality of every city in which he has performed.
[ CRITICISM.]
THE FOUNDLING OF THE FOREST—A PLAY.
This production which we have annexed to our first number, not on account of its superior merit, but because it was the most recently published of any that has yet come to our hands, will, on the most superficial reading, be discerned to be of the true German cast. The old trick of grouping the characters at the end of a scene, and dropping the curtain upon them, by way of leaving it to the general conception of the audience to guess the rest, as is done in the Stranger, and all others of that breed, is here twice put in practice. Those who like such drugs mixed up with a quantum sufficit of horror, and all the tenterhook interest, hair-breadth escapes, and incident so forced as to stagger belief, which make up the hotchpotch romances whether narrative or dramatic of the present day, will like this. Mr. Dimond has in this piece certainly shown great skill in working up that kind of materials to the production of stage effect; since to those who can be interested or affected by the marvellous and mysterious, and who love to step for amusement out of the precincts of nature, and the conduct of “the folks of the world” the Foundling of the Forest will be interesting and affecting. Viewing it with a strict critical eye, not only the plot is faulty, but the composition is in many places extremely bad. If the production of original character was the author’s design, he has succeeded to his heart’s content in that of Florian, which we believe has never had a prototype in this world. In this hero who is sometimes as bombastical as ancient Pistol, and sometimes as ridiculous as a buffoon, the author attempts to be droll, and
Aims at wit—but levell’d in the dark,
The random arrow never hits the mark.
A London critic remarking with just severity upon the strange way in which the divinity is addressed in this piece, says, “This blot defaces almost all the modern things called dramas or plays. In the farcical comedies we have low vulgar swearing unworthy even the refuse of society; while in the comedies larmoyantes (weeping comedies) and tragedies, we have eternal imprecations of the deity, indicative only of madness in literature.” To this observation as well as that which follows from the same critic we heartily subscribe. “It is interspersed with songs, to one of which we direct[8] the reader, to remind the author of what Pope says:
Want of decency shows want of sense.
“Among soi-disant jolly fellows revelling in senseless ribaldry and inebriety (continues the reviewer) this song might be deemed very fine; but we shrewdly suspect that if the lines had been spoken at the theatre instead of being sung, the audience would have resented the insult.”
It would be injustice not to add that the concluding speech of count Valmont, and many other parts scattered through the piece, must be admired as specimens of very fine composition.
[MUSIC.]
The lovers of poetry and music have lately been highly gratified by the publication of “A Selection of Irish Melodies, with Symphonies and Accompaniments, by Sir John Stevenson, Doctor of Music, and Characteristic Words, by Thomas Moore, Esq. the first number of which was published in London and Dublin in the month of February of the last year, the reviewers spoke with decided approbation. To the second number, published in April, they are no less favourable. These melodies have been for some time anxiously expected—it being pretty generally understood that that fascinating poet, Moore, was employed in the pursuit of them. He had promised them for sometime. “It is intended, says the editor, to form a collection of the best Irish melodies, with characteristic symphonies and accompaniments, and with words containing as frequently as possible, allusions to the manners and history of the country;” and in a letter of Mr. Moore’s which appears in the publication, he says, “I feel very anxious that a work of this kind should be undertaken. We have too long neglected the only talent for which our English neighbours ever deign to allow us any credit. While the composers of the continent have enriched their operas and sonatas with melodies borrowed from Ireland, very often without even the honesty of acknowledgment, we have left these treasures in a great degree unclaimed and fugitive. Thus our airs, like too many of our countrymen, for want of protection at home, have passed into the service of foreigners. But we are come I hope to a better period both of politics and music: and how much they are connected, in Ireland at least, appears too plainly in the tone of sorrow and depression which characterizes most of our early songs. The task which you propose to me of adapting words to these airs, is by no means easy. The poet who would follow the various sentiments which they express, must feel and understand that rapid fluctuation of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and levity which composes the character of my countrymen, and has deeply tinged their music. Even in their liveliest strains we find some melancholy note inhere, some minor third or flat seventh which throws its shade as it passes, and makes even mirth interesting. If Burns had been an Irishman (and I would willingly give up all our claims upon Ossian for him) his heart would have been proud of such music, and his genius would have made it immortal.”
A London reviewer speaking of the first number, says, “the idea is excellent, and the twelve vocal airs which this first number of the work contains, are tastefully arrayed by sir John Stevenson, and happily provided with language by Mr. Moore.
“We are happy (continues the reviewer) to find that even where Mr. Moore’s subject is amatory, his poetry is very little in the style of those baneful effusions which are undergoing so rigorous an examination. His verse is here fanciful and gentlemanly, full of his subject, and, as far as our English souls can judge, faithfully expressing it. Nothing can be more pathetic than “Oh! breathe not his name;” nothing more brilliant than “Fly not yet, ’tis just the hour;” and nothing more poetical than “As a beam o’er the face of the waters may glow.” We must be indulged in quoting one of those effusions of Mr. Moore’s genius; and we can find none more elegant or natural than the following:
SONG.
Oh! think not my spirits are always as light,
And as free from a pang as they seem to you now,
Nor expect that the heart-beaming smile of tonight,
Will return with tomorrow to brighten my brow.
No, Life is a waste of wearisome flowers,
Which seldom the rose of enjoyment adorns;
And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers,
Is always the first to be touch’d by the thorns.
But send round the bowl, and be happy awhile;
May we never meet worse in our pilgrimage here
Than the tear that Enjoyment can gild with a smile,
And the smile that Compassion can turn to a tear.
The thread of our life would be dark, heaven knows!
If it were not with friendship and love intertwined;
And I care not how soon I may sink to repose,
When these blessings shall cease to be dear to my mind!
But they who have lov’d the fondest, the purest,
Too often have wept o’er the dream they’ve believed;
And the heart that has slumber’d in friendship securest,
Is happy indeed if ’twas never deceiv’d.
But send round the bowl; while a relic of truth
Is in man or in woman, this pray’r shall be mine,
That the sunshine of love may illumine our youth,
And the moonlight of friendship console our decline.
“The airs of the first number are excessively beautiful in themselves—particularly those of the well known “Gramachree,” “Plausty Kelly,” and the “Summer is Coming,” and the duets of “The Maid of the Valley,” and the “Brown Maid,” are very delightful. “The latter (says the London reviewer) is a perfect specimen of the genius of duet, each part taking up the other alternately. The publication of these Irish airs fully discovers the source of Mr. Moore’s musical compositions.”
Speaking of the second number, the reviewer says it is by no means inferior to the first either in music or in poetry. The air “Oh! weep for the hour” (“The Pretty Girl of Derby O!”) is harmonized in a style of great elegance; and that, and “The Red Fox,” “The Black Joke,” and “My Lodging is on the Cold Ground,” have particularly pleased us in their arrangement. The song which Mr. Moore has written to “The Black Joke,” is both poetical and political, and though the affairs of Spain have now rendered it, as to that country, an old newspaper, yet it is still good in the cause of Ireland.”
[ SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.]
The coterie of old ladies in the British parliament, the chairwoman of which was the late sir Richard Hill, have failed in all their attempts to tie up the hands of the people from their old sports. They have declaimed in parliament, and they have declaimed in print, against all the gymnastic exercises which time immemorial have been the pride and the pastime of the hardy natives of the British islands. Never did Robespierre weep such unfeigned tears over “sweet bleeding humanity,” as those good souls have shed over the broken heads, and black eyes, and bloody noses of the Bull family, who, obstinate dogs, will still go on and laugh at their ladyships. Indeed Bonaparte himself, whose interest it really is, could not more anxiously desire the abolition of those gymnastic exercises.
The sports of England are horse-racing; fox, hare, and stag-hunting; coursing with greyhounds; shooting, fishing, bull-baiting, wrestling, single stick, pugilism, pedestrianism, cricket, &c. These are practised by all ranks and on national accounts, are encouraged by all the wise and patriotic men of the country; some few, and those mostly fanaticks, excepted. To those games they add, in Ireland, the noble sport of hurling, in which that vigorous race exhibit such prodigies of strength and activity as induced the celebrated Arthur Young to speak to this effect in his Tour through Ireland: “In their hurlings, which I would call the cricket of savages, they perform feats of agility that would not do discredit to Sadler’s Wells.”
The gymnastic games have been long carried on so systematically that they make as regular a part of the public intelligence as any that finds its way into the public papers, and have, like the theatre, their appropriated periodical publications.[9] On this subject we would say much more, as we mean to present our readers with such things as appear curious or extraordinary in those publications; but by way of a beginning, and to pave the road for the reception of this part of our work by the public, we beg leave to offer, not to their hasty perusal, but their profound consideration, the following defence of pugilism, written, it is said, by that profound statesman, patriot, and scholar, William Windham, whose eloquence and wit caused sir R. Hill’s bull-baiting bill to be laughed out of the House of Commons.
“I lay it down as a principle, that in every state of society, men, particularly those of the lower ranks, will ever require some means of venting their passions and redressing personal affronts, independently of those which the laws of their country might afford them; and that it is of more benefit to the community that these personal contests should be under such regulations as place bounds to resentment, than that they should be left to the unrestrained indulgence of revenge and ferocity. In most countries on the northern continent of Europe, bodily strength exclusively decides the contest; hands, feet, teeth, and nails are all employed, and the strongest gratifies his resentment by biting, kicking, and trampling upon his prostrate adversary.[10] In the south the appeal is usually to the stiletto, and a colpo dicoltello is so common at Naples, that there is hardly a lazarone who has not the marks of it on some parts of his body; not a year passes in which there are not hundreds of assassinations in this city. Now, observe the different effects of a different principle: A sailor, some time since, at Nottingham, lent an aeronaut his assistance in preparing the ascent of his balloon; when receiving a blow from one of the by-standers while he held a knife in his hand—“You scoundrel,” exclaims the tar, “you have taken the advantage by striking me because you knew that, as I held a knife I could not strike you again.” Under similar circumstances, what would have been the conduct of a Genoese or a Neapolitan?
Boxing, as it is conducted in this country, is a remnant of the ancient tilt and tournament, conducted on the principles of honour and equity; a contest of courage, strength, and dexterity, where every thing like an unfair and ungenerous advantage, is proscribed and abhorred. It is a custom peculiarly our own, and to which probably we are not only indebted for the infrequency of murder and assassination, but also for the victories of Maida, and Trafalgar.
Some persons are willing to allow these effects, provided the practice was confined to casual contests, and not extended to public combats and stage fights. These, they say, induce the laborious men to quit their occupations, and serve as a rendezvous for the disorderly and the profligate; but is not the same objection to be made to all amusements in which the lower orders are peculiarly interested, and where else would men of this description practically learn, that the gratification of their personal resentments must be limited by the laws of honour and forbearance? Had Crib struck Gregson after the decision of the contest in his favour, what would have been the indignant feelings of the surrounding multitude, and what would he not have experienced from their resentment? And are these feelings not worth inculcating? will they not characterise a nation, and are they not the genuine sources of generosity and honour? If it be admitted, which I think cannot be denied, that any advantage be derived to society from individuals in these combats being restrained from giving full scope to ferocity and revenge, these advantages must be exclusively ascribed to the custom of public exhibitions. It is from these that all regulations and restrictions originate—it is from these they are propagated, and with these they will be extinguished.
“I am not without apprehension, that from abhorrence of what some call brutal and vulgar pursuits, the noble science of attack and defence should be in future proscribed at the seminaries of Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, and that little master should be enjoined by his mama, in case of an affront, to resort to his master for redress and protection. To the custom, indeed, as it now prevails, the English youth are, in a great measure indebted for their nobleness and manliness of character. Two boys quarrel, they agree to box it out—they begin and they end by shaking hands; the enmity terminates with the contest—And what is this but a lesson of courage, magnanimity, and forgiveness? the principles of which are thus indelibly impressed on the mind of the boy, and must ever after influence the character of the man.
“Away then with this effeminate cant about maintaining order and decorum, by the suppression of the public exhibitions of manly exercises. To them the individual Englishman owes his superiority to the individual of every other country, in courage, strength, and agility: and as a country is composed of individuals, to what other causes can England more reasonably impute her proud preeminence among nations which she now enjoys, and which she will ever maintain till this spirit is tamed into servility, under the pretence of applying salutary restrictions to the licentiousness of the people.”
After the foregoing essay, a parallel drawn between English men and English mastiffs by the celebrated cardinal Ximenes comes not unappropriately in this place.
The cardinal, who was minister to one of the French monarchs, observed that the English, like their native mastiffs, lived in a state of internal hostility. “The cause,” said he, “which creates a canine uproar, every one knows, is a bone; whence among the English, every statistical elevation, as well as other causes of contest, is called A BONE OF CONTENTION. During the time of profound peace, these island dogs are always growling, snapping at, and tearing each other; but the moment the barking of foreign dogs is heard, the contention about bones ceases, the whole species become friends, and with one heart and mind they join their teeth to defend their kennels against foreign enemies.”
The following extraordinary circumstances are selected from the British sporting intelligence of the last year.
“A herdsman lately met a fox in the morning, on a mountain in the neighbourhood of Ballycastle (Ireland). On his approach, the animal did not offer to avoid him, but allowed him to come close up, when he struck it with a stick and killed it. On examination the fox was found to be completely destitute of teeth, and is supposed to have been blind with age.
“A fox lately turned out at Fisherwick-park, the hunting seat of the marquis of Donnegal, being hard pressed, forced his way into the window of a farm house, and took shelter under the bed of the farmer’s wife who had not an hour before lain in. The feelings of all parties may easier be imagined than described. The good woman, however, suffered no material injury by Reynard’s unexpected visit, who was taken and reserved for the sport of another day.
“On Wednesday last, about six o’clock, a covey of partridges were seen to pitch in the middle of the CIRCUS, Bath, supposed to have taken refuge there, after having escaped from the aim of some distant gunner. Under the effects of fright and fatigue six were easily caught by three servants, and strange as it may appear the three servants of three eminent physicians who reside in that elegant pile. Doctor F.’s man secured three; doctor P.’s two, and doctor G.’s the other bird. A consultation afterwards took place respecting the fate of these poor tremblers, when it was humanely determined that they should be taken in a basket to some distance, and liberated, which was accordingly done. A keen sportsman would not approve of this forbearance; but perhaps none of the doctors had taken out a license to kill—GAME.
“A male and female hare were put together by lord Ribblesdale for one year, when the offspring amounted to sixty-eight. A pair of rabbits inclosed for the same time produced above three hundred. The value of rabbits’ wool used annually in the manufacture of hats in England is two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.
“A few days ago a hare was observed lying before a door in Manchester-street, London. The poor animal was immediately pursued, and in less than a minute the street was crowded: she succeeded in making her way down through Duke-street, followed by an immense mob. The novelty of a hunt in such a place caused every person in the surrounding streets to join in the chase. Notwithstanding her numerous pursuers she made her way down Oxford-street and into Stratford-place, where she got into the corner next to the duke of St. Alban’s house, and remained quietly until she was taken alive by the duke’s porter in the presence of an immense concourse of spectators.
“On the twenty-ninth of October last, in the afternoon, a fox was seen crossing the fields of Camptown in Bedfordshire, followed by a shepherd’s dog. The fox first made his way into the grounds of the reverend Mr. Davies’s boarding-school, at Campton, where the boys were at play. Reynard was no sooner in the midst of this juvenile assembly than a tumultuous uproar assailed him, from which he fled with all speed through a border plantation into the road, and crossing to the house of the reverend Mr. Williamson the minister of the parish, he bolted through the glass into the library. Here a female servant was cleaning the room, who by the sudden and unexpected appearance of this new visitor was thrown into fits. The family running into the apartment found the fox skulking in a corner, and the poor girl lying extended on the floor. With some difficulty she was recovered, and master Reynard was bagged for a future chase. Nobody can tell where the chase commenced, but the dog is known to belong to a shepherd at Meppershall, the adjoining parish to Campton.
“The Cranborne chase pack had one of the finest runs ever known in the western part of the kingdom. They unkennelled at Punpernwood, four miles east of Blandford. The fox went off immediately for “the chase,” and having taken a round in the West-walk, broke off over Iwern hills, and entered the vale of Blackmore, leaving the parish of Shooten to the left, making his play towards Duncliffwood near Shaston; but having been headed, he bent his course to the river Stow, which he boldly crossed in defiance of the flood, and after running the vale many miles passed through Piddleswood towards Okeford, Fitzpaine, but the hounds pressing him hard he was obliged to return to the cover, where having taken a turn or two he broke on the opposite side near the town of Shirminster, and crossed the commons to Mr. Brunes’s seat at Plumber, where he entered a summer-house, passed through the chimney flue, and entered a drain, whence being bolted, he was run into and killed at Fifehide Neville, fourteen miles straight from the place where he was found, after a chase of two hours and ten minutes.
[ BACKGAMMON.]
“It appears from the glossary to the Welch Laws that the game of backgammon was invented in Wales, sometime before the reign of Canute the Great, and that it derived its name from Back, which in the welch language meant little, and Cammon, which in the same language signified Bottle.
“A blacksmith of Winchester in Hampshire, undertook, for a wager, to shoe six horses, and make the shoes and nails himself complete in seven hours. He accomplished it in twenty-five minutes less than the time.
“Mr. Brewer of the Crown inn, Nothingham, undertook for a wager of forty guineas to go with a mare belonging to him in a cart, to Newark and back again, being a distance of forty miles, in four hours. He performed it in twelve minutes less than the given time. Considerable bets were laid against the performance. The mare is under fourteen hands high.
DICK THE HUNTER.
“A poor fellow, half an ideot, has by his singularity got himself so noticed by the sporting gentlemen at Newmarket, that his picture has been painted by Mr. Chalon, and engravings from it have been published. He was intended for a blacksmith, but being untractable, was allowed to follow his own inclination. Being always fond of hunting he soon attracted the attention of the gentlemen of the chase, and never failed joining the hounds whenever they made their appearance. Dick is such an amazing swift runner that he keeps in with the hounds for many miles together, to the surprise of all the gentlemen, who confess him to be a very useful man among them, as he instantly discovers the track of a fox, and is very clever at finding a hare sitting, and who therefore support him. He never goes out without carrying a knife, a fork, a spoon and a spur, which are all of his own making, a performance that shows him not to be destitute of ingenuity, as they are not separately made, but contained in one, and with these he is at once equipped either for sporting or eating. The spur he uses for pricking himself, which he fancies enables him to keep up with the hounds. He frequently uses it to the no small amusement of the spectators. His dress is quite as singular as his mode of life, for he always wears a long surtout coat, a hunting-cap, a boot on one leg and a shoe on the foot of the other—and thus equipped he runs with the speed of a hunting-horse, clearing with ease all the ditches and fences the riders do.
“One of the best packs of hounds in England was most completely beat lately by a fox. The latter was turned out before them near Wold Newton, in Yorkshire, and after running rings for sometime, went off for Scarborough, near which place the hounds were so completely knocked up that he beat them in view, for the huntsman could not get them a yard further—a number of riders lost their horses in the cars, and were seen wading up to their necks to catch them again. The fox ran upwards of twenty miles.
“In the discussions which have arisen in and out of parliament in England about the abolition of the Briton’s old favourite sports, it was conceded by all but a few, that from the custom of boxing, singlestick and backsword playing, wrestling, &c. arose the good temper which distinguishes that people—Englishmen being less subject to violent fits of anger than the people of any other nation in the world. In the compass of eighteen pages of a work now before us we have details of no less than two grand matches of singlestick, one Wiltshire against Somersetshire, and the other Somersetshire against all England, for large purses. In both cases the champions of Somerset county beat; and what must astonish those who hear it, the victors (though men in the lowest classes of life in one case) shared the prize with the vanquished. In the former, Somerset gave nine broken heads and received seven—in the latter, gave eight and received six. The Wiltshire men went to Trowbridge in Somersetshire, the appointed place of meeting, attended by some of the leading gentry of Wiltshire, and the gentleman who was appointed by them to preside, bore public testimony to the liberal and kind treatment his countrymen experienced.
“Any person who has seen the farce of Hob in the Well, performed, will remember to have seen a specimen of this kind of prize fighting, for which as well as wrestling, the people of Somersetshire have for ages been renowned. In Scotland they excel at the backsword—the Irish too are admirable hands—but neither have the temper of the English; “Oppression makes a wise man mad;” what should it do then with a poor peasantry? The tempers of the English have not had that to irritate them. We will close this subject with a letter from an intelligent Londoner, who was travelling through Hampshire.
“Passing, sometime since, through Rapley Dean, Hants, my attention being attracted by a crowd of rustics on a little green near the road I turned my horse thither, and arrived in the time when a lame elderly man, who I afterwards found was the knight marshal of the field, from the middle of a ring made by ropes, proclaimed, that “a hat worth one guinea was to be played for at backsword; the breaker of most heads to bear away the hat and honour,” and inviting the youth there to contend for it. A little after, a young fellow threw his hat into the ring and followed, when the lame umpire called out “a challenge,” and proceeded to equip the challenger for the game. His coat and waiscoat were taken off, his left hand tied by a handkerchief to his left thigh, and a stick, with basket hilt, put into his hand; he then walked round the ring till a second hat was thrown in, and the umpire called out, “the challenge is answered.”
“As soon as prepared, the knights met, measured weapons, shook hands, walked once round, turned and began the contest. In about a minute, the umpire called out “About,” when they dropped the points of their weapons and walked round, and this calling I observed, was repeated as often as the umpire judged either distressed. After some twenty minutes play, some blood trickled down the challenger’s head; the umpire called “Blood;” and declared the other to have won a head.
“When both left the ring another hat was thrown in, and the challenge again accepted, and played off in the like manner, till the umpire announced there were four winners of heads, and proceeded to call the ties, that is, he called on the winners of the first two heads to play together, and afterwards on the winners of the third and fourth heads; after which the winners of two heads each played for the hat, and the proud victor (Morgan) thus to earn it, broke three heads. I was much struck with the amazing temper with which the game was played: not a particle of ill-will was shown, two young fellows, who played together forty-five minutes, and in the course of it gave each other many severe blows, one alone of which would have satisfied the most unconscionable taylor or man-milliner breathing, drank frequently together between the bouts, shaking hands as often as the weight of the blows given seemed to require it of their good-nature. Indeed it appeared to be a rule with each pair that played, to drink together after the contest, and a general spirit of harmony seemed to prevail. This game is certainly of great antiquity, and the only relick (with the exception of wrestling) of the ancient tournament. The knight defied with throwing down his hat or gauntlet—the rustic gamester does the same, and is equally courteous with the knight towards his opponent: nor were there in this instance village dames or damsels wanting, to animate the prowess of the youth.
“It has been asserted, that these exhibitions engender a ferocious spirit; but were I to judge from what I saw, and from the inquiries I made into the characters of the players at Ropley Dean, from the farmers on my right and left, I should pronounce quite the contrary; and think that as long as the sword is used by our cavalry and navy, and as long as we wish to entertain in the nation a fearless, generous, martial spirit, we should encourage the like pastimes at our fairs and revels.”
[ MISCELLANY.]
A general sense seems to pervade all the most intelligent men of Great Britain that a reformation is wanting in almost every department of life in that country. The corruption of public taste in dramatic literature and acting, and in most of the fashionable amusements of the high flyers cries aloud, no less than that of the state, for a heavy-handed scourge and receives it. Among other things, the musico-mania is attacked as having reached the highest acmé of absurdity. The Covent Garden proprietors are very roughly handled, but not more roughly than they deserve, for hiring Madam Catalani at the enormous salary of four thousand pounds sterling and a free benefit for the season, with a provision annexed, which is thought insolent, degrading, and unjust; no less than that of her French husband putting what fiddlers he pleases into the orchestra. The public prints are filled with remonstrances to the people, whose attention is directed to the storm which was raised on a similar occasion in 1755 and 1756, and which burst with such tremendous mischief on the head of Garrick. One writer thus vehemently expresses himself: “Shall a judge of the land be required to exercise the faculties of his vigorous mind, which have been cultivated and matured by an expensive education and the most laborious study; shall he be continually employed in discriminating between right and wrong, in the adjustment of individual differences, and in protecting the persons and properties of the honest and peaceable part of his majesty’s subjects from the assaults of violence and the stratagems of fraud; shall his sensibility be wounded, and his heart pierced by the painful necessity to which he is frequently reduced of passing on his fellow-man those awful sentences which the nature of their crimes, and the voice of Justice imperiously demand; shall he, in short, be compelled to discharge the duties of an office which necessarily renders his nights anxious and restless, and subjects him in the day to the most irksome fatigue—and shall he, for all this fatigue of body and unremitting solicitude of mind, receive a salary scarcely exceeding half the sum given to an Italian cantatrice for the display of her vocal powers for a few nights?”
The fact is that the robust and vigorous appetite of the English has been worn down by the intemperate use of German dramas, and is so vitiated and enfeebled that it can swallow nothing but hot spiced trash, or water gruel spoon-meat. Are the French wrong in calling John Bull stupide barbare when they see him pouring thousands into the laps of foreign singers—and for what?—why, to sing such songs as this:
Tom Gobble was a grocer’s son,
Heigho! says Gobble;
He gave a ven’son dinner for fun,
And he had a belly as big as a tun,
With his handy dandy, bacon and gravy,
Ah, hah, says alderman Gobble.
The servants ushered the company in,
Heigho! says Gobble;
The dinner is ready, quoth Tom, with a grin,
So he tucked a napkin under his chin,
With his handy dandy, bacon and gravy,
Ah, hah, says alderman Gobble,
Then Betty the cook-maid she gave a squall,
Heigho! says Gobble;
Poor John the footman has had a fall,
And down stairs tumbled, ven’son and all,
With his handy dandy, bacon and gravy,
Alas! says alderman Gobble.
So down the alderman ran in a fright,
Heigho! says Gobble;
And there sat John in a terrible plight
Astride on the ven’son bolt upright,
With his handy dandy, bacon and gravy,
Dear me! says alderman Gobble.
Was ever man so cruelly put on,
Heigho! says Gobble;
Get off the meat you rascally glutton,
You’ve made my ven’son a saddle of mutton,
With your handy dandy, bacon and gravy,
Good lack, says alderman Gobble.
Lord, sir, says Betty, what a splash,
Heigho! says Gobble;
’Tis a monstrous bad rumbistical crash,
But tomorrow I’ll tickle it up in a hash,
With your handy dandy, bacon and gravy,
Ay, do! says alderman Gobble.
This vile, low, degrading farrago is taken from an opera called the Russian Impostor, or Siege of Sloremskho.
After such trash it will be delightful to turn to some lines, written by lord Byron on this general subject of complaint. They are extracted from an excellent poem entitled “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a Satire,” with notes by the author.
Now to the Drama turn—oh, motley sight!
What precious scenes the wondering eyes invite!
Puns, and a prince within a barrel pent,[11]
And Dibdin’s nonsense yield complete content.
Though now, thank heaven! the Roscio mania’s o’er,
And full-grown actors are endured once more;
Yet, what avails their vain attempts to please,
While British critics suffer scenes like these;
While Reynolds vents his ‘dammes, poohs’ and ‘zounds’[12]
And common place, and common sense confounds?
While Kenny’s World just suffered to proceed,
Proclaims the audience very kind indeed?
And Beaumont’s pilfer’d Caratach affords
A tragedy complete in all but words?[13]
Who but must mourn while these are all the rage,
The degradation of our vaunted stage?
Heavens! is all sense of shame and talent gone?
Have we no living bard of merit?—none?
Awake, George Colman!—Cumberland, awake!
Ring the alarum bell, let Folly quake!
Oh, Sheridan! if aught can move thy pen,
Let Comedy resume her throne again,
Abjure the mummery of German schools,
Leave new Pizarros to translating fools;
Give, as thy last memorial to the age,
One classic drama, and reform the stage.
Gods! o’er those boards shall Folly rear her head,
Where Garrick trod, and Kemble lives to tread?
On those shall Farce display Buffoonery’s mask,
And Hook conceal his heroes in a cask?
Shall sapient managers new scenes produce
From Cherry, Skeffington, and Mother Goose?
While Shakspeare, Otway, Massinger, forgot,
On stalls must moulder, or in closets rot?
Lo! with what pomp the daily prints proclaim,
The rival candidates for attic fame!
In grim array though Lewis’[14] spectres rise,
Still Skeffington and Goose divide the prize.
And sure great Skeffington must claim our praise,
For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays
Renowned alike; whose Genius ne’er confines
Her flight to garnish Greenwood’s gay designs;[15]
Nor sleeps with ‘Sleeping Beauties,’ but anon
In five facetious acts comes thundering on,[16]
While poor John Bull, bewildered with the scene,
Keeps wondering what the devil it can mean;
But as some hands applaud, a venal few!
Rather than sleep, why John applauds it too.
Such are we now, ah! wherefore should we turn
To what our fathers were, unless to mourn?
Degenerate Britons! are ye dead to shame,
Or, kind to dulness, do you fear to blame?
Well may the Nobles of our present race
Watch each distortion of a Naldi’s face;
Well may they smile on Italy’s buffoons,
And worship Catalani’s pantaloons,[17]
Since their own drama yields no fairer trace
Of wit than puns, of humour than grimace.
Then let Ausonia, skill’d in ev’ry art
To soften manners, but corrupt the heart,
Pour her exotic follies o’er the town,
To sanction Vice and hunt Decorum down:
Let wedded strumpets languish o’er Deshayes,
And bless the promise which his form displays;
While Gayton bounds before the enraptured looks
Of hoary marquises and stripling dukes:
Let high-born lechers eye the lively Presle
Twirl her light limbs that spurn the needless veil;
Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow,
Wave the white arm and point the pliant toe;
Collini trill her love-inspiring song,
Strain her fair neck and charm the listening throng!
A London critic adds the following pertinent observations: “Thus far our author concerning the stage, to which we add an observation or two of our own. We certainly think the barrel a curious asylum for a distressed prince; but when we reflect on what kind of princes and heroes the modern stage and modern authors exhibit, (the seige of St. Quintin for instance, by the same author, Mr. Hook) we cannot help exclaiming (no plagiarism, we hope)
We with the sentence are indeed content,
To see such princes in such barrels pent.
And as a barrel is described by our best lexicographers to be “any thing hollow,” what vehicle more appropriate could be found? The ingenious author, was surely a favourite of the barrel, and well acquainted with the virtues of a cask; although according to sir Walter Raleigh, “some are so ill-seasoned and conditioned that a great part of the contents is ever lost and cast away.”
Respecting Mr. Reynolds’s indulgence of himself, in perpetual repetition of his vocables,[18] we should be glad to have it in our power to affirm that the beef and mutton[19] author was the only one who disgraced himself by such contemptible degradation; but, alas! the pages of our work have too often exhibited similar complaints against the majority of our great playwrights—many of these gentlemen being reduced to silence, without their auxiliary dammes!
We differ widely from our author respecting Mr. T. Sheridan’s stripping of Bonduca—for we really think it worthy the son of that poet, who, neglecting his own genius and the duties of a regular practitioner, condescends to turn quack, and bedizen that high German doctor Pizarro, in an English dress!!
Apropos of awaking George Colman!—We beg the noble lord’s pardon; but we are not in such a violent hurry to disturb this gentleman; for if, when awake, he should not acquit himself better than in his last production of the Africans, we think the sounder he sleeps the more solid will be his reputation. Therefore,
Sleep on, George Colman! prithee, don’t awake!
Nor let the alarum bell thy slumbers shake!
Lest jokes like Mugg’s[20] should make our senses quake!
Why our author has coupled John Kemble’s name with that of Garrick we cannot conceive; but that there appears more rhyme than reason in it, we can safely aver. We have somewhere heard that “a live ass is better than a dead lion,” which we quote, not as individually applicable, but as a general adage; for we disclaim personalities, and well know that J. K. is an eminent actor, and one whom we have not niggardly praised. Yet we will not disparage departed excellence for any person existing; and therefore cannot avoid wishing our young author had seen Garrick, and bearing in his “mind’s eye” his natural acting of Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard, &c.—he might then go and witness the performances of Mr. Kemble—and judge!
CORRESPONDENCE.
The conductors of the Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, have already to make acknowledgments to correspondents. Scarcely had their intention been promulgated when they were favoured with a letter, which, in less than a week afterwards was followed by two more, all of them upon the same subject, though evidently written by different persons. It had before been the intention of the conductors to call the public attention very soon to that very point to which these letters are intended to direct them; and conceiving that a fairer occasion for doing so can hardly occur than these letters afford them, they hasten to lay the contents of them before the public.
“To the Conductors of the Dramatic Work to be published by Messrs. Bradford and Inskeep.
November 27.
“Sirs,
“From what I can learn about your intended publication I like the idea, and have no doubt it may be of great use. I have often said that such a thing was much wanting, for I look upon a playhouse to be a very good thing, often keeping young men from worse places, and young women from worse employment. But if our playhouse goes on as it does, it will soon be a worse place to go to than any I allude to. Last evening I brought my family to see the play, and I assure you, I often wished we were all away again, the scandalous talk in the gallery was so bad. The noise was so great that there was no hearing any thing else. The players’ voices were ten or a dozen times interrupted so that they could not be heard, and two or three fellows in the gallery were particularly scandalous. Above all the rest there was one, a finished vagabond, who spoke smut and roared it out loud, directing it to the ladies in the boxes. If any of you was there, gentlemen, you must have noticed it; if not, I can’t write such filthy words as was spoken the whole evening. My wife begged me to come away on our little girl’s account who was with us. It is not the players you ought to criticise, they behave themselves—but it is those vagabonds that think they have a right to disturb the house because they pay their half dollar a piece. I think it your duty to take notice of this, and I beg you will.
A CITIZEN.”
N.B. They in the pit were bad enough, and so was some in the boxes.
To the Editors of the Mirror, &c.
“Gentlemen,
“As your intended publication is to come out monthly, I am doubtful whether I should trouble you on the present occasion; more particularly as you may probably think of the matter yourselves without a hint from me. Besides, I am not sure whether it is not the duty of the editors of the daily papers rather than yours. For my part, I think it is the duty of all people who regard the credit of the city, or tender the peaceableness and comfort of society. Our theatre, gentlemen, has sunk to the worst state imaginable of licentiousness and savage riot. Don’t mistake me—I don’t mean behind the curtain; but before it. While we hold ourselves so proudly to the world, what must those foreigners think of us who visit our theatre. From a place of rational recreation, and improvement, it has become a mere bear-garden. The play is interrupted, and all enjoyment, save that of riot and brawling, killed in various ways. The very boxes themselves are no sanctuary from ruffianish incivility; while the ears are stunned, and the cheek of Decency crimsoned with the profaneness, obscenity, and senseless brawl of barbarians in the gallery, the sight is intercepted, and all comfort destroyed by the unmannerly and unjust conduct of intruders in the boxes and pit, who think they have a right to push in and even stand up before another who has been previously seated, provided they have bodily strength to make good their violence. I say, gentlemen, this ought to be stopped. The spirit of the manager at New-York, backed by the laws, has put an end to it there, so far, that no theatre in Europe precedes it in order and decency. The same power exists here and ought to be exercised. These things disgrace the city as well as annoy our audiences, and I think our daily editors on both sides would evince their regard for the public by giving a few lines every day to the reform of this evil till it shall be abated. The proprietors and manager ought to call a meeting, invoke the aid of the magistrates and the people, and come to some decisive resolutions on the subject.
Forensis.”
COMMUNICATION.
For the Mirror, &c.
“The manager, or the magistrates, or somebody is greatly to blame about the playhouse. I brought my family to the pit to see that great actor, Cooper, play Zanga. We sat in the pit the whole time the blackguards were throwing down various kinds of things upon our heads. Scraps of apples, nutshells in handfulls, and what is worse something I can’t well name—some about me said that brandy or strong grog was thrown down—it might be so once;—but it was not exactly that which fell on me and my family. Since then, I went to see him in Macbeth, and left my wife and daughter at home for fear; and the fellows above were as bad as before—and had not I luckily kept my hat on I should once have got my head broke with a hard heavy hiccory-nut that was thrown with all the force and spitefulness as if the person wanted to hurt somebody very severely.”
We agree with our correspondents that some prompt and effectual remedy ought to be applied to the evils of which they complain: and we are surprised it has not yet been done, because every person with whom any of us converses, makes pretty nearly the same complaint, and expresses the very same wish.
In every country there exist multitudes as well disposed as those now alluded to, to disturb the playhouse, and bring brutal riot within its walls—but they will not be allowed. Any one who reads Colquhoun’s account of London and its rabble, will perceive that there are people enough there ready to do offensive offices for the pure sake of offence and savageness; but not only the magistrates, but the audience themselves will not put up with it. The latter generally abate the nuisance in a summary way—they turn out the offender; and the law warrants, and if necessary aids them. If our audience suffer these encroachments what will be the fair conclusion, but that they concur with the offenders.
It was but a few nights ago, a company (of perhaps ten,) converted the boxes into a grog shop—brought jug and bottle, and glass, and tumbler into the front seats, and there caroused, laughing, talking aloud, and swearing aloud, even during the performance. On the night the Revenge was performed, even while Mr. Cooper was engaged in a most interesting scene, a boy, not in mean clothes either, stood up at the front corner of the gallery, roaring out and speaking as loud as he could to some one on the opposite side. Yet this, were it not for the time it happened, was to the surrounding tumult, as a dying sigh to the roar of a northwester.
It cannot be doubted that in a civilized society like this, some legal means must exist to put an end to these grievances. There are other grievances, however, that cannot be so immediately made the subject of redress by the magistrate, but which, nevertheless, require correction, and would never occur if every one who can afford to wear such a coat as gentlemen wear, could imitate the manners of gentlemen as well as they can ape their dress. By a number of well-coated persons of this kind, the time immemorial privileges of the theatre are violated, and its customary rights denied. Provided they think themselves able to scuffle it out by bodily strength they will indulge themselves at the expense of others—one of those will sit before a lady and refuse to take off his hat—another coming late will force his way contrary to all right and usage, before a person who has an hour before taken his seat—and if spoken to, utter surly defiance. Against every such unmannered intruder, the whole audience ought, for the establishment of the general right and the good old custom, to make common cause, and thrust him out by force. No doubt there are drawcansirs enough to push this offence as far as it will go. Let them know that there have been and still are drawcansirs in England, Ireland and Scotland—that Dublin particularly was once full of them; but that they were soon brought to manners by the just resentment of the audience—the gripe of the constable, and the contempt of every body.
[Footnotes]
[1.] Johnson’s Idler, No. 25.
What we hear
With weaker passion will affect the heart
Than when the faithful eye beholds the part. —Francis.
[3.] Dr. Johnson.
[4.] By Lord Mansfield in the King’s Bench, in the case of Macklin against Sparks, Miles, Reddish, and others.
[5.] The audience, whenever an individual hisses against the sense of the house, always silence the offender by crying, “there’s a goose in the pit (or wherever it is) turn him out,” and if he persists they expel him by force. It is to be hoped our audiences would follow the example. It is frequently necessary.
[6.] Dr. Johnson.
[7.] See Johnson’s Life of Dryden.
[8.] See the [Duett between Rosabelle and L’Eclair], Act. III, scene I, page 16.
[9.] The Sporting Magazine for one.
[10.] He might have added gouging, as practised in the southern States of this Union.
[11.] In the melo-drama of Tekeli, that heroic prince is clapt into a barrel on the stage: a new asylum for distressed heroes!
[12.] All these are favourite expressions of Mr. R. and prominent in his comedies, living and defunct.
[13.] Mr. T. Sheridan, the new manager of Drury Lane Theatre, stripped the tragedy of Bonduca of the Dialogue, and exhibited the scenes as the spectacle of Caractacus. Was this worthy of his sire, or of himself?
Oh, wonder-working Lewis! monk, or bard,
Who fain would make Parnassus a church-yard!
Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow,
Thy Muse a sprite, Apollo’s sexton thou!
Whether on ancient tombs thou tak’st thy stand,
By gibbering spectres hail’d, thy kindred band;
Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page,
To please the females of our modest age.
All hail, M. P.![A] from whose infernal brain
Thin sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;
At whose command, “grim women” throng in crowds,
And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds,
With “small gray men,” “wild yagers,” and what not,
To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott:
Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please,
[B]St. Luke’s alone can vanquish the disease;
Even Satan’s self with thee might dread to dwell,
And in thy skull discern a deeper hell.
[A.] See a poem to Mr. Lewis, in the Statesman, supposed to be written by Mr. Jekyll.
[B.] St. Luke’s is an hospital for lunatics in London. Editor of the Mirror.
[15.] Mr. Greenwood is, we believe, scene-painter to Drury Lane Theatre—as such, Mr. S. is much indebted to him.
[16.] Mr. S. is the illustrious author of the “Sleeping Beauty” and some Comedies, particularly “Maids and Bachelors.” Baculaurii Baculo magis quam lauro digni.
[17.] Naldi and Catalani require little notice—for the visage of the one and the salary of the other, will enable us long to recollect these amusing vagabonds; besides, we are still black and blue from the squeeze on the first night of the lady’s appearance in trowsers.
[18.] Damme, pooh, zounds, &c.
[19.] “Authors have lived and still live who write for what they call fame!—For my part I write for more substantial food—beef and mutton are the objects of my ambition.”—Reynold’s Preface to Begone Dull Care.
[20.] One of Mr. Colman’s witty characters in the Africans.
The printed book contained the six Numbers of Volume I with their appended plays. The Index (unpaginated) originally appeared at the beginning of the volume. Pages 1-108 refer to the present Number; index references are linked to the appropriate page. Other Numbers (in preparation as of September 2007) cover the remaining pages:
Volume I, Number 2: pp. 109-188
I.3: pp. 189-268
I.4: pp. 269-348
I.5: pp. 349-430
I.6: pp. 431-510
The six plays were printed as a group and are not included in this pagination.
[INDEX.]
| A Actors, animadversion on Wood, in Rapid, [62] Rolla, [65] Reuben Glenroy, [67] Harry Dornton, [73] Bob Handy, [76] Alonzo, 229, 337 Jaffier, 337 Copper Captain, 339 Prince of Wales, 339. Cone, Alonzo, [65] Henry, [76]. Warren, Las Casas, [65] Abel Handy, [76] Falstaff, 344 Cacafogo, 344. Jefferson, Frank Oatland, [62] Orozimbo, [65] Cosey, [67] Goldfinch, [73] Farmer Ashfield, [75]. M‘Kenzie, Sir Hubert Stanley, [62] Pizarro, [65] Old Norval, 155. Francis, Vortex, [62] Trot, [68]. Mrs. Wood, Jessy Oatland, [62] Cora, [66]. Mrs. Francis, Mrs. Vortex, [62] Dame Ashfield, [76]. Mrs. Seymour, [62]. Payne, in Douglas, 145 Octavian, 220 Frederick, 221 Zaphna and Selim, 222 Tancred, 222 Romeo, 223. Cooper, Othello, 225 Zanga, 227 Richard, 230 Pierre, 230 Hamlet, 231 Macbeth, 231 Hotspur, 234 Michael Ducas, 234 Alexander, 422 Antony, Jul. Cæs. 420. West, [68], bis. Dwyer, Belcour, 425 Tangent, 427 Ranger, 427 Vapid, 427 Liar, 427 Rapid, 427 Sir Charles Racket, 427. Advice to conductors of magazines, 402 Æschylus, 114, 189 Alleyn, the player, account of, [45] Anecdotes and good things Dick the Hunter, [92] Dr. Young, 181 Othello burlesqued, 181 Voltaire, 184 Louis XIV. 184 Mara and Florio, 185 Macklin, 247, 248, 397, 408, 409 Mozart, the composer, 257 Old Wignell, 343 Macklin and Foote, 397 Impertinent Petit Maitre, 406 Curious Slip Slop, 406 Specific for blindness, 407 Kemble and a stage tyro, 407 Kemble’s bon mot on Sydney playhouse, 407 Irish forgery, 407 Woman and country magistrate, 408 French dramatic, 481 Bacon and cabbage, 485. Apparition, sable or mysterious bell-rope, 325 Aristophanes, 269 Authors’ benefits see Southern, 502 B Barry, the great player, account of, 298 Bedford, duke of, monument, 317 Betterton, the great actor, 133, 213 Biography, [24], 118, 202, 357 Bull, a dramatic one, 505 C Carlisle, countess of, opinion of drama, 398 Catalani, madam, [96] Cibber, Colley, his merit, 506 Coffee and Chocolate, account of, 311 Cone, see actors Cooper, life of, [28] Cooper, see actors Cooper, account of his acting, 223 Correspondence on abuses of the Theatre, [103], [104] ——, from Baltimore on Theatricals, 157 ——, from New-York, ditto, 414 D Dramatic Censor, [49], 141, 220, 337, 414 Drama, Grecian, 109, 189, 269, 350 ——, lady Carlisle’s opinion on, 398 Dwyer, actor, 235 ——, see actors. Dramaticus, 251, 328, 502 Dungannon, famous horse, 500 E Edenhall, luck of, old ballad, 487 Edward and Eleonora, remarks on, 502 English, parallel between English men and English mastiffs, by cardinal Ximenes, [88] Epilogues, humorous ones after tragedies censured, 400 Euripides, 195 F Francis, see actors ——, Mrs., ibid. Fullerton, actor, driven to suicide, 504 G German Theatre, vindication of, by Dramaticus, 251 Gifford, Wm. life of, 357, 447 Greek drama, 109, 189, 269, 350 | H History of the stage, [9], 109, 189, 269, 350, 431 High Life below Stairs, account of, 506 Hodgkinson, biography of, 202, 283, 368, 457 I Irish bulls, specimen of, 455 Jefferson, see actors L Lear, essay on the alterations of it, 391 Le Kain, the French actor, account of, 438 Lewis, his retirement from the stage, 185 Literary World, what is it? 406 Longevity, instance of, 496 Lover general, a rhapsody, 399 M Macklin checked practice of hissing, 504 Man and Wife, a comedy, 188 Menander, 350 Metayer Henry, anecdote of with Theobald, 503 M‘Kenzie, see actors Milton and Shakspeare, comparison between, 248 Miscellany, [96], 173, 241, 307, 384, 467 Music, [81], 257 ——, Oh think not my spirits are always as light, a song by Anacreon Moore, [83] ——, Irish, 161 Musical performance, expectation of a grand one, 428 N New-York reviewers impeached, 505 Nokes, comedian, 381 O O’Kelly’s horse Dungannon, 500 Originality in writing, Voltaire’s idea of, 184 Otway, observations on, 502 P Payne, American young Roscius, criticised on, 141, 220, 241 ——, see actors Pedestrianism, humorous essay on, 262 Players celebrated compared with celebrated painters, 387 Plays, names of, attached to each No. [Foundling of the Forest], No. I Man and Wife, No. II Venoni, No. III New Way to pay Old Debts, No. IV Alfonso, king of Castile, No. V The Free Knights, No. VI. Plays criticised in the Censor Cure for the Heart-ach, [59] Pizarro, [62] Town and Country, [66] Ella Rosenberg, [69] Wood Demon, [71] Abaellino, [73] Road to Ruin, [73] Speed the Plough, [74] Man and Wife, 188 Foundling of the Forest, [80], 345 Africans, 418. Poetry Tom Gobble, [97] English bards and Scotch reviewers, extract from, [98] Occasional prologue on the first appearance of Miss Brunton, afterwards Merry and Warren, at Bath, 121 Latin verses on do. and translation, 124 Prologue on first appearance, of the same lady in London, by A. Murphy, 126 Duck shooting, 172 A true story, 183 Lewis’s address on taking leave of Ireland, 187 On the death of Mrs. Warren, 246 Descent into Elisium, 253 Gracy Nugent, by Carolan, 261 O never let us marry, 324 Epilogue by Sheridan, censuring humourous ones after tragedies, 401 Logical poem on chesnut horse and horse chesnut, 404 Quin, an anecdote in verse, 409 Luck of Edenhall, 487 The parson and the nose, 495 Solitude, advantages of for study, 495 Soldier to his horse, 499. Prospectus, [1] R Reviews of New-York impeached, 505 S Seymour, Mrs. see actors She would and she would not, merit of, 506 Southern, 502 Socrates, death of, 280 Sophocles, 189 Sporting, [85], 164, 262, 410, 499 Spain, divertissements in, 495 Strolling Player, a week’s journal of, 396 Stage, history of, [8], [9], 109, 189, 269, 350 T Taylor, Billy, critique on ballad, 467 Thespis, account of, 113 Theobaldus Secundus, 173, 241, 307, 384 Theatre, misbehaviour there, 267 Theobald, his theft from Metayer, 503 Theatrical contest, Barry and Garrick, in Romeo, 507 Thornton, Col. his removal from York to Wilts, 164 V Voltaire, his idea of originality in writing, 184 W Warren, Mrs. life of, 118 Warren, actor, see actors West, see actors Wit, pedigree of, by Addison, 406 Wife, essay on the choice of, 477 Wood, actor, see actors ——, Mrs., ibid. Y Young, celebrated actor, 236 Z Zengis, so unintelligible audience not understand it, 507 |