Every One has his Fault.
Among the best dramatic performances that have appeared during the last half of the eighteenth century, I have no hesitation in giving this admirable comedy, by Mrs. Inchbald, a conspicuous place. For strongly marked characters, interesting incidents, correct sentiments, and chaste language, I know none to be preferred to it. It appeared here, at the opening of the New Theatre in 1793, under as much advantage, as if the authoress had actually studied the force of the company, and written the parts for the respective performers. I was somewhat dissatisfied at first with one particular character, lord Norland. I thought it hardly possible such a being could have been drawn from nature. A further view of mankind, has convinced me that I was in error. I annex the dramatis personæ, and leave the reader to judge whether a higher dramatic feast can probably be found at Covent Garden or Drury Lane.
| Lord Norland, | Mr. Whitlock, |
| Capt. Irwin, | Mr. Fennel, |
| Sir Robert Ramble, | Mr. Chalmers, |
| Mr. Placid, | Mr. Moreton, |
| Harmony, | Mr. Bates, |
| Solus, | Mr. Morris, |
| Edward, | Mrs. Marshal. |
| Lady Erwin, | Mrs. Whitlock, |
| Mrs. Placid, | Mrs. Shaw, |
| Miss Woburn, | Mrs. Morris, |
| Miss Spinster, | Mrs. Bates. |
It may be heresy and schism to institute the most distant comparison between any modern writer and Shakspeare. But if so, I cannot help being a heretic and schismatic, for I believe that the scene between lord Norland, lady Irwin, and Edward, in which the latter abandons his grandfather, and flies into the arms of his mother, then newly discovered to him, is actually equal, for pathos and interest, to any scene ever represented in the English or any other language. Mrs. Inchbald, it is said, intended this drama for a tragedy, and made captain Irwin suffer death: but by the advice of her friends converted it into a comedy.
Prostitution of the Theatre.
Those who do not look beyond the mere surface of things, are prone to censure managers with great severity, when Theatres, which ought to be held sacred for exhibiting the grandest effusions of the human mind, are prostituted to puppet-shows, rope dancing, pantomimes and exhibitions of elephants, &c. Whatever of censure is due to this preposterous perversion, attaches elsewhere. It falls on those who frequent theatres. Dr. Johnson, in a prologue which he wrote for Garrick, places this idea in the strongest point of light.
"Ah! let not censure term our fate our choice:
The stage but echoes back the public voice.
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give:
For those who live to please, must please to live."
And therefore if Romeo and Juliet, the Clandestine Marriage, the West Indian, the Gamester, Every one has his fault, and other dramatic works of this order, fail to afford attractions equal to Mother Goose, Cinderilla, the Forty thieves, an elephant, or a band of Indians, can it be a subject of surprise if the managers furnish those bills of fare, which possess the greatest gratification for that public on whom they depend?
Samuel Foote.
It is an old and trite maxim that ridicule is by no means a test of truth—and yet it is an equally ancient remark, that many a serious truth has been put out of countenance by ridicule, and that ridicule unsupported by wit or humour.