The Examiner.
(Covent Garden) December 29, 1816.
Mr. Henry Johnston (from the Glasgow Theatre) who came out some time ago in Sir Archy Mac Sarcasm, with much applause, appeared on Friday, in Sir Pertinax Mac Sycophant. During the first acts, he went through this highly, but finely coloured part, with great spirit and force: but in the midst of his account to his son Egerton, of the manner in which he rose in the world by booing, and by marrying an old dowager, ‘like a surgeon’s skeleton in a glass-case,’ a certain disapprobation, not of the actor, but of the sentiments of the character, manifested itself through the house, which at this season of the year is not of a very refined composition; and some one cried out from the gallery for ‘another play.’ So little do the vulgar know of courts and the great world, that they are even shocked and disgusted at the satirical representation of them on the stage. This unexpected interruption given to the actor in the most prominent scene of the play, operated to damp his spirits considerably, nor did he rally completely again for the rest of the evening.
This is the second time that we have seen an actor fail in this character, not by any fault in himself, but by the fault of the Managers, in bringing them out in this part in the holiday season. The other was Mr. Bibby last year, certainly not inferior to Mr. Johnston in the conception or delineation of the sordid, gross, wily Scotchman: but who was equally or more unsuccessful, from the unintelligibility of the Scotch dialect and sentiments to the untutored and ‘unclerkly’ Christmas visitants. Upon the entrance indeed of Lord Castlereagh and some company of the higher classes, into the Prince’s box, Mr. Johnston seemed to recover himself a little, and to appeal with more confidence from the ignorance of the rabble to these more judicious appreciators of the merits of his delineation of Macklin’s idea of a modern statesman.
We wonder the Managers of either Theatre ever bring out a comedy relating to the artificial manners of high life, on occasions like the present. They ought either to have a tragedy and a pantomime, or two pantomimes the same evening; or a melo-drama, a puppet-show, and a pantomime. The common people like that which strikes their senses or their imagination: they do not like Comedy, because, if it is genteel, they do not understand the subject matter of which it treats—and if it relates to low manners and incidents, it has no novelty to recommend it. They like the dazzling and the wonderful. One of the objections constantly made by some persons who sat near us in the pit, to the play of the Man of the World, was, that the same scene continued through the whole play. This was a great disappointment to the pantomime appetite for rapid and wonderful changes of scenery, with which our dramatic novices had come fully prepared.
The pantomime, with Mr. Grimaldi, soon brought all to rights, and the audience drank in oblivion of all their grievances with the first tones of their old friend Joe’s voice, for which indeed he might be supposed to have a patent. This great man (we really think him the greatest man we saw at the theatre last night) will not ‘die and leave the world no copy,’ as Shakespear has it, for his son is as like him in person as two peas. The new pantomime itself, or the ‘Beggar of Bethnal-green,’ is not a very good one. It has a clever dog and a rope-dancing monkey in it. The degeneracy of the modern stage threatens to be shortly redeemed by accomplished recruits from the four-footed creation. The monkey was hissed and encored, but this is the fate of all upstart candidates for popular applause, and we hope that Monsieur will console himself for this partial ill-will and prejudice manifested against him, by the reflection that envy is the shadow of merit.—Miss F. Dennett was the Columbine, and played very prettily as the daughter of the Blind Beggar. But who shall describe the pas de trois by the three Miss Dennetts, ‘ever charming, ever new,’ and yet just the same as when we saw them before, and as we always wish to see them? If they were at all different from what they are, or from one another, it would be for the worse. The charm is in seeing the same grace, the same looks, the same motions, in three persons. They are a lovely reflection of one another. The colours in the rainbow are not more soft and harmonious; the image of the halcyon reflected on the azure bosom of the smiling ocean is not more soft and delightful.
JANE SHORE
The Examiner.
(Drury-Lane) January 5, 1817.
Miss Somerville, who gave so interesting a promise of a fine tragic actress in the part of Imogine in Bertram, last year, appeared the other evening in Alicia in Jane Shore. We do not think Rowe’s heroine so well adapted to the display of her powers as that of the modern poet. Miss Somerville is a very delightful sentimental actress, but she makes an indifferent scold. Alicia should be a shrew, and shrill-tongued: but Miss Somerville throws a pensive repentant tone over her bitterest imprecations against her rival, and her mode of recitation is one melancholy cadence of the whole voice, silvered over with sweet gleams of sound, like the moonbeams playing on the heaving ocean. When she should grow sharp and virulent, she only becomes more amiable and romantic, and tries in vain to be disagreeable. Though her voice is out of her controul, she yet succeeds in putting on a peevish dissatisfied look, which yet has too much of a mournful, sanctified cast. If Mr. Coleridge could write a tragedy for her, we should then see the Muse of the romantic drama exhibited in perfection. The fault of Miss Somerville, in short, is, that her delivery is too mannered, and her action without sufficient variety.