One of the novelties of the Castle of Andalusia, as got up at this theatre, was Mr. Herring’s Pedrillo; an odd fish certainly, a very outlandish person, and whose acting is altogether incoherent and gross, but with a certain strong relish in it. It is only too much of a good thing. His oil has not salt enough to qualify it. He has a great power of exhibiting the ludicrous and absurd; but by its being either not like, or over-done, the ridicule falls upon himself instead of the character. Indeed he is literally to the comedian, what the caricaturist is to the painter; and his representation of footmen and fine gentlemen, is just such as we see in Gillray’s shop-window. The same thing perhaps is not to be borne on the stage, though we laugh at it till we are obliged to hold our sides, in a caricature. We do not see, however, why this style of acting might not make a distinct species of itself, like the Italian opera buffa, with Scaramouch, Harlequin, and Pantaloon, among whom Mr. Herring would shine like a gold fish in a glass-case.
TWO WORDS
The Examiner.
Sept. 8, 1816.
It was the opinion of Colley Cibber, a tolerable judge of such matters, that in those degenerate days, the metropolis could only support one legitimate theatre, having a legitimate company, and acting legitimate plays. In the present improved state of the drama, which has ‘gone like a crab backwards,’ we are nearly of the same opinion, in summer time at least. We critics have been for the last two months like mice in an air-pump, gasping for breath, subsisting on a sort of theatrical half-allowance. We hate coalitions in politics, but we really wish the two little Theatres would club their stock of wit and humour into one. We should then have a very tight, compact little company, and crowded houses in the dog-days.
The new after-piece of ‘Two Words,’ at the English Opera, is a delightful little piece. It is a scene with robbers and midnight murder in it; and all such scenes are delightful to the reader or spectator. We can conceive nothing better managed than the plot of this. The spell-bound silence and dumb-show of Rose, the servant girl at the house in the forest, to which the benighted travellers come, has an inimitable effect; and to make it complete, it is played by Miss Kelly. The signals conveyed by the music of a lone flute in such a place, and at such a time, thrill through the ear, and almost suspend the breath. Mr. Short did not spoil the interest excited by the story, and both Mr. Wilkinson and Mrs. Grove did justice to the parts of the terrified servant, and the mischievous old housekeeper, who is a dextrous accomplice in the dreadful scene. The fault of the piece is, that the interest necessarily falls off in the second act, which makes it rather tiresome, though the second appearance of Miss Kelly in it, as the ward of Bartley at his great castle, is very ingeniously contrived, and occasions some droll perplexities to her lover, Don ——, whose life she has just saved from the hands of the assassins, only escaping from their vengeance herself by the arrival of her valorous guardian and a party of his soldiers. On the whole, this is the best novelty that has been brought out during the season at the English Opera, and we wish it every possible success.
Mr. Terry last week had for his benefit the Surrender of Calais. He played the part of Eustace de St. Pierre in it with judgment and energy, but without a pleasing effect. When Mr. Terry plays these tragic characters,
‘The line too labours, and the thoughts move slow.’
He sticks in tragedy like a man in the mud; or to borrow a higher figure from a learned critic, ‘he resembles a person walking on stilts in a morass.’ We shall always be glad to lift him out of it into the common path of unpretending comedy: there he succeeds, and is himself. The Surrender of Calais is as interesting as a tragedy can be without poetry in it. It has considerable pathos, though of a kind which borders on the shocking too much. It requires accomplished actors to carry it off; but it was not, in the present instance, very heroically cast. The Haymarket Theatre inclines more to comedy than to tragedy; and there are several scenes in this tragedy (for such it really is till it is over), which, ‘not to be hated,’ should be seen at the greatest possible distance that the stage allows. One advantage, at least, of our overgrown theatres is, that they throw the most distressing objects into a milder historical perspective.