In her flight Nina has been taken unwell—with the poison—just in that part of the forest where her spouse is left, by his enemy, in a swoon. They meet, and she dies in his arms. Two being now defunct, only one remains; but there is some difficulty in getting rid of Doria, for he is (as is always the case when a stage felo-de-se impends) unprovided with a weapon. Going up to his trusty friend D’Estala, he engages him in talk, and, with the dexterity of a footpad, steals his dagger, and stabs himself. All the principal characters being now dead, the piece cannot go on, and the curtain drops.
A word or two on the merits of Nina Sforza. There are two classes of dramatists who are just now contending for fame—those who cannot get their plays acted because they are not dramatic, and those who can, because their pieces are merely dramatic. Mr.—we beg pardon, R. Zouch S. Troughton, Esquire,—belongs to the latter class. He is evidently well acquainted with the mechanics of the stage; he knows all about “situation”—that is, sacrificing nature to startling effect. His language is essentially dramatic, and only fails where it aims at being poetical. His characters, too, are not drawn from life, from nature, but are copied—and cleverly copied—from other characters that strut about in the “stock” tragedies of Rowe et hoc genus. The fable, or plot, is deficient, from the absence of one sustaining, pervading incident to excite, and keep up a progressive interest. With every new act a new circumstance arises, which, though it is in some instances (especially in the fourth act) conducted with great skill, yet the interest it produces is not sustained, being made to give place to the author’s succeeding effort to get up a new “situation” by a new incident. Though the tragedy possesses little originality, it will, from its melo-dramatic and exciting character, be most likely a very successful one. Besides, it is very well acted, by Miss Faucit, Wallack, and Macready, as Spinola; which, being a most unnatural character, is well calculated for so conventional an actor as Macready.
The author will doubtless become a successful dramatist, because he has taken the trouble to learn what is proper for, and effective on, the stage. Having gained that acquirement, if he will now study nature, and put men and women upon the stage that act and speak like real mortals, we may safely predict an honourable dramatic career for Mr. ——; but our space is limited, and we can’t afford enough of it to print his names a third time.
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.