JANE SHORE
The Examiner.
(Drury-Lane) January 5, 1817.
Miss Somerville, who gave so interesting a promise of a fine tragic actress in the part of Imogine in Bertram, last year, appeared the other evening in Alicia in Jane Shore. We do not think Rowe’s heroine so well adapted to the display of her powers as that of the modern poet. Miss Somerville is a very delightful sentimental actress, but she makes an indifferent scold. Alicia should be a shrew, and shrill-tongued: but Miss Somerville throws a pensive repentant tone over her bitterest imprecations against her rival, and her mode of recitation is one melancholy cadence of the whole voice, silvered over with sweet gleams of sound, like the moonbeams playing on the heaving ocean. When she should grow sharp and virulent, she only becomes more amiable and romantic, and tries in vain to be disagreeable. Though her voice is out of her controul, she yet succeeds in putting on a peevish dissatisfied look, which yet has too much of a mournful, sanctified cast. If Mr. Coleridge could write a tragedy for her, we should then see the Muse of the romantic drama exhibited in perfection. The fault of Miss Somerville, in short, is, that her delivery is too mannered, and her action without sufficient variety.
Mr. Bengough, as the Duke of Gloster, was in one or two scenes impressive, in others ridiculous. He has a singular kind of awkward energy and heavy animation about him. He works himself up occasionally to considerable force and spirit; and then, as if frightened at his own efforts, his purpose fails him, and he sinks into an unaccountable vein of faltering insipidity. The great merit of Mr. Kean is his thorough decision and self-possession: he always knows what he means to do, and never flinches from doing it.