THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.
| Comedy personified, in Mr. CLARKE, has now reigned at BOOTH'S for nearly six weeks. During that time there has been a perceptible change in the metaphorical atmosphere of the house. The audience no longer wears the look of subdued melancholy which was once involuntarily assumed by each mourner for the memory of SHAKSPEARE, who passed the solemn threshold. The ushers no longer find it necessary to sustain their depressed spirits by the surreptitious chewing of the quid of consolation, and are now the most pleasant, as they were always the most courteous, of their kind. Persons have even been heard, within the past week, to allude to BOOTH'S as a "theatre," instead of a "temple of art;" and though the convulsions of nature which attend the shifting of the scenery, and cause castles to be violently thrown up by volcanic eruptions and forests to be suddenly swallowed by gaping earthquakes, impart a certain solemnity to the brightest of comedies, still there is a general impression among the audience that BOOTH'S has become a place of amusement. And in noting this change PUNCHINELLO does not mean to jeer at the former and normal character of BOOTH'S. BEETHOVEN'S Seventh Symphony, DANTE'S Inferno, JEFFERSON'S Rip Van Winkle, and EDWIN BOOTH'S Hamlet are not amusing, but it does not follow that they are therefore unworthy of the attention of the public, which is pleased with the rattle of De Boots, and tickled with the straw of Toodles. |
FOX vs. GOOSE is a three act comedy in which Mr. CLARKE last week made his audience laugh as freely as though the tomb-stones of all the Capulets were not gleaming white and awful in the lamplight of the property-room; or, at all events, would be gleaming if any body were to hunt them up with a practicable lantern. The opening scene is the tap-room of an inn, where Mr. FOX FOWLER, an adventurer, is taking his ease and his unpaid-for gin-and-milk.
Enter Landlord, presenting his bill. "Here, sir, you've been drinking my beer for several years, and now I want you to pay for it."
Fox. "My friend! why ask me to pay bills? Do you not perceive that I wear a velvet coat? And, besides, even if I wanted to pay I could not until my baggage, which I gave to an expressman ten years ago, shall reach me. It will probably arrive in a month or two more."
Landlord. "Here comes Sir GANDER GOSLING. I'll complain to him of your conduct."
(Enter Sir Gander.)
Fox. "My dear Sir GANDER. Allow me to embrace you."
Sir Gander. "I don't know you. I'm not my son JACK."