MISS BRUNTON’S ROSALIND
| The Times.] | [September 20, 1817. |
Covent-Garden Theatre.
At this theatre last night Miss Brunton appeared in Rosalind, in As you Like it. She certainly played the part very respectably and very agreeably, but not exquisitely; and if it is not played exquisitely, in our mind it is spoiled. ‘But would Shakspeare’s Rosalind do so?’ is a question that, if put home as it ought to be, might deter many an accomplished young lady from attempting to give life to the careless, inimitable graces of this ideal creation of the poet’s art. Miss Brunton recited the different passages with considerable point, intelligence, and archness, like a lively and sensible school-girl, repeating it as an exercise; but she was not half giddy, fond, and rapturous enough for Rosalind. She spoke her sentences with ‘good emphasis and discretion,’ instead of running herself and the imaginations of the audience fairly out of breath with pleasure, love, wit, and playful gaiety. She has, however, white teeth and black eyes, a clear voice, a pleasing figure, with youth on her side, and a very good understanding to boot. What more can be required in a young actress, except by fastidious critics like us? She sung the Cuckoo song very prettily, and was encored in it. The other parts were not very elaborately got up. We liked Mr. Duruset’s two songs as well as any thing else. Mr. Young’s Jaques was less spirited than we have sometimes seen it: indeed, the character is in some measure spoiled to his hands by the prompt-book critics, who have put a great deal of improper praise of himself into the mouth of the melancholy Jaques. It required some contrivance to make him or Shakspeare an egotist! Mr. Fawcett’s Touchstone was amusing, but too rapid and slovenly. There are some parts of this character which the actor probably thinks it becoming his Managerial dignity to hurry over as fast as possible. Mrs. Gibbs’s Audrey is almost too good. If ‘the gods have not made her poetical,’ they have at least inspired her with the very spirit of folly, and with all its bliss. A Russian ballet, and The Libertine, closed the entertainments of the evening. The former of these is a curious exhibition of Russian costume, but it does not exhibit the Miss Dennetts to any advantage. The play of As you Like it was given out again for Monday, instead of The Slave.