THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.
| WATTS PHILLIPS has written a comprehensive drama, entitled NOT GUILTY, and the managers of NIBLO'S GARDEN have produced it. Comprehensive is the best word with which to describe it, since it comprehends an epitome of English history at home and in the colonies during, a period of ten years, together with observations on prison discipline, and the recruiting system, interspersed with comic songs and jokes translated from the Sanscrit. It is a complete guide in morals and manners for the young soldier, the intelligent convict, and the aspiring thief. It is well, it is as follows: ACT I. Curtain rises upon a RECRUITING SERGEANT singing an unintelligible song to an admiring group of recruits, consisting of six girls with commendable ankles, and several supes of average awkwardness. The song ended the recruits retire, and the SERGEANT sits down to drink with ROBERT ARNOLD, a virtuous locksmith. Enter SILAS GARRETT. SILAS. "I will pretend to be drunk. There is no reason why I should, but still it's a good bit of business." Staggers and falls on ARNOLD. |
ARNOLD. "Wretched being! He deserves nothing, and I will therefore give him my last half-crown. Now, SERGEANT, I will enlist. Let us go and sing more unintelligible songs." They go. Enter MRS. ARMITAGE.
MRS. ARMITAGE. "I am starving. My child has eaten nothing for years. Oh, sir, give me something!"
SILAS. "Not I. Go and work. Don't touch me; you look as if you had been riding in a street car." Rushes away as though pursued by the wicked flea.
MRS. ARMITAGE. "There is no hope. I will die." Dies.
Enter ARNOLD. "Hallo. Do I see a woman? What is the matter, my exhausted friend? Please come to life again!" (She comes to life.)
MRS. ARMITAGE. "Neither my child nor I have tasted food for vast and incalculable periods. Help me."
ARNOLD. "I will." (Helps her home, and rushes out to beg. He successfully strikes a casual supe for five pounds, and remarks)—"Now she is saved. I will buy a doll for the child. They can make porridge of the internal bran." He goes for the doll, and SILAS re-enters.
SILAS. "Here are ARNOLD'S skeleton keys. I will steal them, and rob the man in the opposite house." Robs him and is pursued by the police.
Scene 2d. MRS. ARMITAGE'S garret. Enter that interesting and hungry lady.
MRS. ARMITAGE. "My child is dead; I will die too." (Dies.)
Enter ARNOLD. "Here is a doll and other delicacies. Come to life again and eat them." They come to life and retire to the hall for feasting and revelry. Enter SILAS.
SILAS. "The police are after me. There is not a moment to lose. I will therefore stop for an hour and arrange things so as to ensure ARNOLD'S arrest, and will then escape through the scuttle." (He arranges things and then scuttles away. Enter police, after ten minutes of preliminary howling on the staircase, and discovering ARNOLD'S skeleton keys, arrest him.) Curtain.
Everybody in the audience. "I don't begin to see into the plot yet, but we shall in time."
ACT II. Scene, the Quarries, with convicts at work. They make elaborate motions with picks at white rocks, and thus dig out considerable black slate. SILAS has become a Warden, no one knows how. The convicts sing and enjoy themselves, with the exception of ARNOLD, who evidently finds prison life too gay and frivolous. Mrs. ARMITAGE, who has become a fashionable lady—no one knows how-enters with a procession of nice girls to watch the joyous prisoners. A COMIC CONVICT, with a fine sense of the fun of the thing, proposes a mutiny. Convicts all mutiny, and ARNOLD and his comic friend escape. They take refuge in a busy highway, and the COMIC CONVICT sings comic songs in order to prevent the police from approaching them. The police—having some little musical taste, wisely keep at a distance. The two convicts rob a drunken soldier of his uniform, and, disguised as officers, go to India. The drunken soldier is arrested as an escaped convict and dragged to prison. The entire population of Great Britain embark for India in a neat pasteboard steamer. Exasperating drums beat until the audience becomes too much confused to notice the astounding evolutions of the military. After a few hours of this sort of thing some intelligent carpenter mutinies and drops the curtain.
Everybody in the audience. "I don't begin to see into this plot yet, but we shall in time."
ACT III.—Scene, a garden in India. The heroine who has been locked up during the previous acts, by her aunt, escapes from a window by means of a ladder. She displays much agility, but not a glimpse of ankle. Consequent disappointment in the audience. Enter ARNOLD—now a captain—who makes love to her. Enter COLONEL WILLOUGHBY, and at her earnest request promises not to marry her. The rebellious Sepoys—who are quite white—attack the GARIBALDI Guard of British Italians, who are quite dark. Sudden arrival of SILAS, much out of breath through having run all the way from England. WILLOUGHBY is killed, and SILAS, who looks precisely like him, (as indeed he ought to, inasmuch as CHARLES WALCOT plays both characters,) puts on his clothes—trousers excepted—and takes command of the troops. A pitched battle with fire-crackers—which are pitched promiscuously on the stage—takes place, with a pleasing slaughter of the white-faced Sepoys. The drummers become obviously frantic, and beat their drums as though they were beating the managers out of a year's salary in advance. The single men of the audience, deafened by the noise, and choked by the smoke, rush out of the theatre for air. They return to find the curtain down, and the act ended.
Everybody in the audience. "I don't begin to see into the plot yet, but we shall in time."
ACT IV.—Scene, COLONEL WILLOUGHBY'S house in England. Enter COMIC CONVICT and two old pals.
COMIC CONVICT. "I have found the Warden who used to cane us at the Quarries. We will have him soon." They hide behind a cabbage. Enter WILLOUGHBY and ARNOLD.
ARNOLD. "You promised in India to let me marry the heroine."
WILLOUGHBY. "You lie, you villain, you lie."
ARNOLD, "My friend, you are sadly changed. Wait a moment, till everybody comes in and forms a neat group, and I will explain myself." (Everybody comes in and forms group.)
WILLOUGHBY, "You are a self-proclaimed liar. Proceed!"
ARNOLD. "You are not WILLOUGHBY. You are—"
COMIC CONVICT. "SILAS GARRETT, the man who stole the money which ARNOLD was thought to have stolen. Police, do your duty." (The police—not being the real thing, but only supes in police uniform—do their duty and arrest WILLOUGHBY.) Somebody remarks that ARNOLD is NOT GUILTY. COMIC CONVICT receives a full pardon, and a matrimonial mania seizes upon everybody. About this time it occurs to the stage manager that the play might as well end. Accordingly it ends.
Everybody in the Audience. "I don't begin to see into the plot yet, but if some one would explain why Mrs. ARMITAGE became a fashionable lady with a fondness for looking at convicts; why SILAS became a Warden and afterwards went to India; why ARNOLD passed himself off upon his regiment as an officer, merely because he had stolen a private's clothes; why everybody, whether free or in prison, dead or alive, went to the Quarries, to India, and back again to WILLOUGHBY'S country-seat with unfailing unanimity; why, in short, things were as WATTS PHILLIPS assures us that they were, I might begin to have some idea of what the play is about."
But then—the undersigned would respectfully ask—what would one gain by understanding the play? He would find it noisy and tedious, even if it were intelligible. The admirable acting of Messrs. OWEN FAWCETT and F.F. MACKAY, in the slight and subordinate parts allotted to them, would still be overshadowed by the melodramatic absurdity of Mr. WALCOT. Miss IRENE GAY could not look prettier than she does, nor could Mrs. WALCOT be more thoroughly pleasing; but the drums would be just as intolerable, were the plot as plain as a strong-minded woman. And then, after all, there are many reasons why WATTS PHILLIPS, when unintelligible, is decidedly preferable to WATTS PHILLIPS when made plain to the weakest intellect.
MATADOR.