- —He whose piece, albeit successful, is withdrawn to make room for the Christmas pantomine, Easter piece, or other entertainment equally cherished by the manager, who thereupon groundeth a plea of non-payment.
- —He who being a creditor of the manager, and the same being unable to meet his obligations, by an ingenious contrivance of the law becometh cleansed thereof, an operation which hath been conceitedly termed “whitewashing.”
- —He that writeth a piece with a friend, and the same claimeth the entire authorship thereof and emolument therefrom.
And there be divers other calamities which we have neither space nor time to enumerate, but which be all incentives to abstain from dramatic writing.
PERDITUS.
PUNCH’S THEATRE.
JACK KETCH; OR, A LEAF FROM TYBURN TREE.
Modern legislation is chiefly remarkable for its oppressive interference with the elegant amusements of the mob. Bartholomew-fair is abolished; bull-baiting, cock-pits, and duck-hunts are put down by act of Parliament; prize-fighting, by the New Police—even those morally healthful exhibitions, formerly afforded opposite the Debtors’ Door of Newgate, for the sake of example—that were attended by idlers in hundreds, and thieves in thousands—are fast growing into disuse. The “masses” see no pleasure now: even the hanging-matches are cut off.
Deeply compassionating the effects of so illiberal an innovation, Mr. G. Almar the author to, and Mr. R. Honner the proprietor of, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, have produced an exhibition which in a great degree makes up for the infrequent performances at the Old Bailey. Those whose moral sensibilities are refined to the choking point—who can relish stage strangulation in all its interesting varieties better than Shakspere, are now provided with a rich treat. They need not wait for the Recorder’s black cap and a black Monday morning—the Sadler’s Wells’ people hang every night with great success; for, unless one goes early, there is—as is the case wherever hanging takes place—no standing room to be had for love or money.
The play is simply the history of Jack Ketch, a gentleman who flourished at the beginning of the last century, and who, by industry and perseverance, attained to the rank of public executioner; an office he performed with such skill and effect that his successors have, as the bills inform us, inherited “his soubriquet” with his office. He is introduced to the audience as a ropemaker’s apprentice, living in the immediate neighbourhood of Execution-Dock, and loving Barbara Allen, “a young spinster residing at the Cottage of Content, upon the borders of Epping Forest, supporting herself by the produce of her wheel and the cultivation of her flower-garden.” He beguiles his time, while twisting the hemp, by spinning a tedious yarn about this well-to-do spinster; from which we infer Barbara’s barbarity, and that he is crossed in love. The soliloquy is interrupted by an elderly man, who enters to remark that he has come out for a little relaxation after a hard morning’s work: no wonder, for we soon learn that he is the Jack Ketch of his day, and has, but an hour before, tucked up two brace of pirates. With this pleasing information, and a sharp dialogue on his favourite subject with the hero, he retires.
Here the interest begins; three or four foot-stamps are heard behind; Jack starts—“Ah, that noise,” &c.—and on comes the author of the piece, “his first appearance here these five years.” He approaches the foot-lights—he turns up his eyes—he thumps his breast—and goes through this exercise three or four times, before the audience understand that they are to applaud. They do so; and the play goes on as if nothing had happened; for this is an episode expressive of a “first appearance these five years.” Gipsy George or Mr. G. Almar, whichever you please, having assured Jack Ketch that he is starving and in utter destitution, proceeds to give five shillings for a piece of rope, and walks away, after taking great pains to assure everybody that he is going to hang himself. Before, however, he has had time to make the first coil of a hempen collar, Jack looks off, and descries the stranger in the last agonies of strangulation, amidst the most deafening applause from the audience, whose disgust is indignantly expressed by silence when he exits to cut the man down. Their delight is only revived by the apparition of Gipsy George, pale and ghastly, with the rope round his neck, and the exclamation that he is “done for.” Barabbas, the hangman, who re-appears with the rest, is upbraided by Jack for coolly looking on and letting the man hang himself, without raising an alarm. Mr. B. answers, that “it was no business of his.” Like Sir Robert Peel and the rest of the profession, it was evidently his maxim not to interfere, unless “regularly called in.” The Gipsy, so far from dying, recovers sufficiently to make to Jack some important disclosures; but of that mysterious kind peculiar to melodrama, by which nobody is the wiser. They, however, bear reference to Jack’s deceased father, a clasp-knife, a certain Sir Gregory of “the gash,” and the four gentlemen so recently suspended at Execution-Dock.