The citizens consist of the famille Bearbinder, parents and daughter, together with Sir Hector Rumbush and a clownish son, who the former insists shall marry the sentimental Barbara Bearbinder, but who, accordingly, does no such thing.
The dialogues of these two “sets” go on quite independent of each other, action there is none, nor plot, nor, indeed, any progression of incident whatever. Lord Dangerfield tells you, in the first scene, he is trying to seduce Lady Whiffle, and you know he won’t get her. Directly you hear that Sir Paladin Scruple has declared in favour of Miss Dangerfield, you are quite sure she will marry the son; in short, there is not the glimmer of an incident throughout either department of the play which you are not scrupulously prepared for—so that the least approach to expectation is nipped in the bud. The whole fable is carefully developed after all the characters have once made their introduction; hence, at least three of the acts consist entirely of events you have been told are going to happen, and of the fulfilment of intentions already expressed.
One character our enumeration has omitted—that of Mr. Winnington, who being a lawyer, stock and marriage broker, is the bosom friend and confident of every character in the piece, and, consequently, is the only person who has intercourse with the two sets of characters. This is a part patched up to be the sticking plaster which holds the two plots together—-the flux that joins the mettlesome Captain Dangerfield (son of the Lord) to the sentimental citoyenne Barbara Bearbinder. In fact, Winnington is the author’s go-between, by which he maketh the twain comedies one—the Temple Bar of the play—for he joineth the “Court” with the “City.”
So much for construction: now for detail. The legitimate object of comedy is the truthful delineation of manners. In life, manners are displayed by what people do, and by what they say. Comedy, therefore, ought to consist of action and dialogue. (“Thank you,” exclaims our reader, “for this wonderful discovery!”) Now we have seen that in “Court and City” there is little action: hence it may be supposed that the brilliancy of the dialogue it was that tempted the author to brush away the well-deserved dust under which the “Discovery” and the “Tender Husband” have been half-a-century imbedded. But this supposition would be entirely erroneous. The courtiers and citizens themselves were but dull company: it was chiefly the acting that kept the audience on the benches and out of their beds.
Without action or wit, what then renders the comedy endurable? It is this: all the parts are individualities—they speak, each and every of them, exactly such words, by which they give utterance to such thoughts, as are characteristic of him or herself, each after his kind. In this respect the “Court and City” presents as pure a delineation of manners as a play without incident can do—a truer one, perhaps, than if it were studded with brilliancies; for in private life neither the denizens of St. James’s, nor those of St. Botolph’s, were ever celebrated for the brilliancy of their wit. Nor are they at present; if we may judge from the fact of Colonel Sibthorp being the representative of the one class, and Sir Peter Laurie the oracle of the other.
This nice adaptation of the dialogue to the various characters, therefore, offers scope for good acting, and gets it. Mr. Farren, in Sir Paladin Scruple, affords what tradition and social history assure us is a perfect portraiture of an old gentleman of the last century;—more than that, of a singular, peculiar old gentleman. And yet this excellent artist, in portraying the peculiarities of the individual, still preserves the general features of the class. The part itself is the most difficult in nature to make tolerable on the stage, its leading characteristic being wordiness. Sir Paladin, a gentleman (in the ultra strict sense of that term) seventy years of age, is desirous of the character of un homme de bonnes fortunes. Cold, precise, and pedantic, he tells the objects—not of his flame—but of his declarations, that he is consumed with passion, dying of despair, devoured with love—talking at the same time in parenthetical apologies, nicely-balanced antitheses, and behaving himself with the most frigid formality. His bow (that old-fashioned and elaborate manual exercise called “making a leg”) is in itself an epitome of the manners and customs of the ancients.
Madame Vestris and Mr. C. Matthews played Lady and Lord Whiffle—two also exceedingly difficult characters, but by these performers most delicately handled. They are a very young, inexperienced (almost childish), and quarrelsome couple. Frivolity so extreme as they were required to represent demands the utmost nicety of colouring to rescue it from silliness and inanity. But the actors kept their portraits well up to a pleasing standard, and made them both quite spirituels (more French—that Morning Post will be the ruin of us), as well as in a high degree natural.
All the rest of the players, being always and altogether actors, within the most literal meaning of the word, were exactly the same in this comedy as they are in any other. Mr. Diddear had in Lord Dangerfield one of those [pg 240]parts which is generally confided to gentlemen who deliver the dialogue with one hand thrust into the bosom of the vest—the other remaining at liberty, with which to saw the air, or to shake hands with a friend. Mr. Harley played the part of Mr. Harley (called in the bills Humphrey Rumbush) precisely in the same style as Mr. Harley ever did and ever will, whatever dress he has worn or may wear. The rest of the people we will not mention, not being anxious for a repetition of the unpleasant fits of yawning which a too vivid recollection of their dulness might re-produce. The only merit of “Court and City” being in the dialogue—the only merit of that consisting of minute and subtle representations of character, and these folks being utterly innocent of the smallest perception of its meaning or intention—the draughts they drew upon the patience of the audience were enormous, and but grudgingly met. But for the acting of Farren and the managers, the whole thing would have been an unendurable infliction. As it was, it afforded a capital illustration of
ATTRACTION AND REPULSION.