THE QUADROON SLAVE.
A new discussion of the Slave question seems to have been much wanted on the stage. It is, alas, the black truth that “The Slave” par excellence, in spite of the brothers Sharpset and Bishop’s music, ceases to interest. The woes of “Gambia” have been turned into ridicule by the capers of “Jim Crow,” and the twin pleasantries of “Jim along Josey.” Since the moral British public gave away twenty millions to emancipate the black population, and to raise the price of brown sugars, they are not nearly so sweet upon the niggers as formerly; for they discover that, now Cæsar being “massa-pated, him no work—dam if he do!”
To meet this dramatic exigency, the “Quadroon Slave” has been produced. It may be classed as an argumentative drama; carried on with that stage logic which always makes the heroine get the best of it. The emancipation side of the question is supported by Julie, ably backed by Vincent St. George, but opposed by Alfred Pelham; and the lingual combatants rush in medias res at the very rising of the curtain—the “house,” immediately taking sides, vehemently applauding the arguments of their respective favourites. Vincent St. George—ably entrusted to that interesting advocate Mr. J. Webster—opened the discussion by protesting against the flogging system, especially as applied to females. Alfred Pelham answered him; the reply being taken up by the heroine Julie in broken French, because she is personated by Madlle. Celeste. The state of parties as here developed turns out to be curious. The heroine, a quadroon, is on the point of matrimonial union with her antagonist, and openly resents the tender advances of her ally. “Call ye this backing of your friends?” Vincent St. George, disgusted at such gross tergiversation, flies entirely away from the point at issue, and applies those remarks to Julie which all disappointed lovers seem to be bound to utter in such cases. Indeed, on the re-appearance of his rival, he challenges him—unblushingly forsaking every branch of the main point, by engaging in a long and not very lively discourse on the subject of duelling; amidst, however, impatient cries of “question!” “question!” from the audience.
This brings Vincent back to the point, and with a vengeance! Like a great many other orators on the liberal side of the black question, he is a slave-owner himself, having—as his “attorney” Vipper is careful to tell us—no fewer than two hundred and eight of those animals. Now, before he took upon himself to become an emancipationist, he might—one cannot help thinking—have had the decency—like Saint Fowell Buxton—to sell his slaves to somebody else, and to come into court with clean hands. But so far from doing so, Vipper having discovered that Julie is a run-away slave from Vincent’s estate, just as she is ending the first act by going to be married, the latter takes the whole of the second act to claim her!
Though the argufiers change sides on account of the change of affairs—Vincent insisting, as liberals so often do, upon his vested rights in Julie as opposed to Pelham’s matrimonial ones—though the heroine renders her pathetics affecting by a prostration or two before the rivals—though she rushes upon a parapet to commit suicide—though she is saved, and at length succeeds by force of mere argument to get her new-found master to give her up to her husband; yet this second act was somewhat dull; insomuch that the audience did not seem to regret when the curtain dropped the subject, and announced their own emancipation from the theatre.
Besides the parts we have named, Webster the elder played a Telemachus Hearty, who, further than skipping about the stage, talking very fast, and making himself not altogether disagreeable, had no more to do with the piece than his namesake, or Fénélon Archbishop of Cambray himself.
This attempt to discuss moot points upon the stage—to turn as it were the theatre into a debating society—will certainly not succeed. Audiences—especially Haymarket ones—have a taste for being amused rather than reasoned with; besides, those on that side of the question which the author chooses shall be the weaker, do not like to see the stage-orators get the upper hand, without having a chance of answering them. Even dancing is preferred by them to didactics, though it be
A PAS SEUL TO A BARK-AROLE.