"Now, dear Mr. Shandy," cried the Widow, edging nearer, and opening the optic to its widest, "tell me—tell me truly, do you, can you detect the slightest suspicion of Green in my eye——?"
"I protest, Madam," said my Uncle Toby, "I can see nothing whatever of the sort!"
THE B. AND S. DRAMA AT THE ADELPHI.
B-ch-n-n. "The prize from the lucky-bag"——
S-ms. "A blank?"
"Some one has blundered!" Who? The Messrs. Gatti, in sending to Messrs. Buchanan and Sims ("B. & S.") for an Adelphi melodrama? Surely not! These two might have been trusted to turn out the right article. So the Gattis leave the Court without a stain on their managerial character. Therefore, 'tis the brother-authors, "hoi Adelphoi," who have blundered. Undoubtedly. An Adelphi audience is not to be satisfied with a one-scene piece, when that scene is without any incident in it worth a melodramatic father's cuss. A fancy-dress ball at Covent Garden, however well put on the stage,—and, after all, it has not beaten the record of the Masked Ball at the Opera House in Paris, as given in Mr. Irving's revival of The Corsican Brothers,—will not carry a piece of far stronger calibre than The Black Domino, and it won't carry this. Neither will a charming "set," representing the terrace of the "Star and Garter," at Richmond, carry a piece to a successful finale, if the audience has lost all interest in the characters, and does not very much care what becomes of any one of them, male or female. To the play-goer it is not attractive; he has seen it all before. "He knows that man and that woman,—they come from Sheffield;" i.e., the persons and the incidents are taken out of a lot of dramas which dwell in his memory, from Boucicault's Formosa at Drury Lane, up to Oscar's Lady Windermere's Fan at the St. James's. Of course, my imaginary play-goer is the Bill of the play, who has "matured," and is not a junior member of the Play-goer's Club. Then, in the old blind German, there is a touch of Tom Taylor's Helping Hands, and, as for all the rest of the characters, well, they can be found in the common stock-pot of the melodramatic authors of the last half-century, for, like Shakspeare himself, these wicked lawyers and gamblers—the aiders and a-betters—are "not for an age" (would they were, and that age passed!) "but for all time!"
Nothing saves the piece from being absolutely dull, except the admirable acting, and, I may add, the scenery. It is impossible to count upon renewing such effects as those in Formosa, The Flying Scud, and in the Prodigal Daughter at Drury Lane, wherein the wrong horse was poisoned (in a really dramatic scene), and Leonard Boyne, riding the winner, cleared the brook, thus causing part-author Druriolanus to clear—any amount of money. There are no two exciting scenes like these in this Adelphi drama. Its comic relief is "poor relief," and would go for nothing at all, were it not in the hands of Mr. Dale, who played and sang so well in Miss Decima at the Criterion, and of the vivacious Miss Clara Jecks.
Mr. W. Dennis, as the Earl of Arlington, is own brother to the old Peer in The Bauble Shop. Perhaps this is a tribute to the representative of the aristocracy at the Criterion, or it indicates with great subtlety that, like Members of Parliament, "Peers are, after all, human—very human," and that one old Peer is uncommonly like another old Peer. Miss Evelyn Millard, as the soprano heroine, and Mrs. Patrick Campbell as the base heroine, look handsome, and act excellently. They take the audience with them as far as the audience will go. As good as they possibly can be in such conventional puppet-parts are Messrs. Glenny and Abingdon, the first as the well-intentioned but weak-willed Lord Dashwood, and the second as that old-fashioned scoundrel, Captain Greville. Mr. Arthur Williams rather suggests Mr. Blakeley as the oily, scoundrelly lawyer, Joshua Honybun; and Mr. Le Hay gives variety to the entertainment (which is his special line) in the entirely new and original character part of an Irish Major, with nothing particularly humorous to say, and nothing at all, humorous, or otherwise, to do.