The “best authorities” furnish us, next, with an interior; that of “the Mug, a chocolate house and tavern,” where a new plot is hatched against the crown and dignity of the late respected George the First, by a party of Jacobites. These consist of a half-dozen of Hanoverian Whigs, who enter, duly decorated with an equal number of hats of every variety of cock and cockade. The heroine seems to have engaged herself here as waitress, on purpose to meet her persecutor, Sir Gregory, and her late lover, Jack Ketch. What comes of this rencontre it is impossible to make out, for a general mélée ensues, caused by a discovery of the plot; which is by no means a gunpowder plot; for although a file of soldiers present their arms for several minutes full at the conspirators, not a single musket goes off. Perhaps gunpowder was expensive in the reign of George the First. Jack Ketch ends the act with a dream—an apropos finale, for we caught several of our neighbours napping. The scene in which this vision takes place is the crowning result of the painter’s researches amongst the “best authorities;” it being no less than “a garret in Grub-street, in which the great Daniel De Foe composed his romance of Robinson Crusoe!!”
A fishing-party—whose dulness is relieved by a suicide—opens the last act: one of the anglers having finished a comic song—which from its extreme gravity forms an appropriate dirge to the forthcoming felo-de-se—goes off with his companion to leave the water clear for Barbara Allen, who enters, takes an affecting leave of her laird lover, and straightway drowns herself. Jack Ketch is now, by a rapid change of scene, discovered in limbo, and condemned to death; why, we were too stupid to make out. The fatal cart—very likely modelled after “the best authorities”—next occupies the stage, drawn by a real horse, and filled with Sir Gregory Gash (who it seems is going to be hanged) and Jack Ketch not as a prisoner, but as an officer of the crown; for we are to suppose that Mr. Barabbas, having retired from the public scaffold to private life, has seceded in favour of Jack Ketch, who is saved from the rope himself, on condition of his using it upon the person of Sir Gregory and every succeeding criminal. All the characters come on with the cart, and a dénouement evidently impends. The distracted lover demands of somebody to restore his mistress, which Gipsy George is really so polite as to do; for although the bills expressly inform us she has committed “suicide,” and we have actually seen her jump into the river Lea; yet there she is safe and sound!—carefully preserved in an envelope formed partly by the Gipsy himself, and partly by his cloak. She, of course, embraces her lover, and leaves Jack Ketch to embrace his profession with what appetite he may; all, in fact, ends happily, and Sir Gregory goes off to be hanged.
This, then, is the state to which the founders of the Newgate school of dramatic literature, and the march of intellect, have brought us. Nothing short of actual hanging—the most revolting and repulsive of all possible subjects to enter, much less to dwell in any mind not actually savage—must now be provided to meet the refined taste of play-goers. In the present instance, nothing but the actual spiciness of the subject saved the piece from the last sentence of even Sadler’s Wells’ critical law; for in construction and detail, it is the veriest mass of incoherent rubbish that was ever shot upon the plains of common sense. The sketch we have made is in no one instance exaggerated. Our readers may therefore easily judge whether we speak truly or not.
PUNCH AT THE NEW STRAND.
When Napoleon first appeared before the grand army after his return from Elba—when Queen Victoria made her débût at the assemblage of her first parliament—when Kean performed “Othello” at Drury Lane immediately after he had caused a certain friend of his to play the same part in the Court of King’s Bench—the public mind was terribly agitated, and the public’s legs instinctively carried them, on each occasion, to behold those great performers. When—to give these circumstances their highest application,—“Punch,” on Thursday last, came out in the regular drama, the excitement was no less intense. Boxes were besieged; the pit was choked up, and the gallery creaked with its celestial encumbrance.
As the curtain drew up, there would have been a death-like silence but for the unparalleled sales that were taking place in apples, oranges, and ginger-beer. Expectation was on tip-toe, as were the persons occupying that department of the theatre called “standing-room.” The looked-for moment came; the “drop” ascended, and the spectators beheld Mr. Dionysius Swivel, a pint of ale, and Punch’s theatre!
“Tragedy,” saith the Aristotelian recipe for cooking up a serious drama, “should have the probable, the marvellous, and the pathetic.” In the tableau thus presented, the audience beheld the three conditions strictly complied with all at once. “It was highly probable,” as Mr. Swivel observed to the source of pipes, ’bacca, and malt—in other words, to the landlady he was addressing—that his master, the showman, was unable to pay the score he had run up; it was marvellous that the proprietor of so popular a puppet as “Punch” should not have even the price of a pint of ale in his treasury; lastly, that circumstance was deeply pathetic; for what so heart-rending as the exhibition of fallen greatness, of broken-down prosperity, of affluence regularly stumped and hard-up! The fact is, that “Punch,” his theatre, and corps dramatique, are in pawn for eight-and-ninepence!
In the midst of this distress there appears a young gentleman, giving vent to passionate exclamations, while furiously buttoning up a tight surtout. The object of his love is the daughter of the object of his hate. Mr. Snozzle, having previously made his bow, overhears him, and being the acting manager of “Punch,” and having a variety of plots for rescuing injured lovers from inextricable difficulties on hand, offers one of them to the lover, considerably over cost price; namely, for the puppet-detaining eight-and-ninepence, and a glass of brandy-and-water. The bargain being struck, the scene changes.
To the happiness of being the possessor of “Punch,” Mr. Snozzle adds that of having a wonderful wife—a lady of universal talents; who dances in spangled shoes, plays on the tamburine, and sings Whitechapel French like a native. This inestimable creature has already gone round the town on a singing, dancing, and cash-collecting expedition; accompanied by the drum, mouth-organ, and Swivel. We now find her enchanting the flinty-hearted father, Old Fellum. Having been instrumental, by means of her vocal abilities, in drawing from him a declaration of amorous attachment and half-a-crown, she retires, to bury herself in the arms of her husband, and to eradicate the score, recorded in chalk, at Mrs. Rummer’s hotel.