‘Never so sure our passion to create,
As when he treads the brink of all we hate—’
but still one step over the precipice is destruction. We also fear that the critical soil of America is slippery ground. Jonathan is inclined to the safe side of things, even in matters of taste and fancy. They are a little formal and common-place in those parts. They do not like liberties in morals, nor excuse poetical licenses. They do not tolerate the privileges of birth, or readily sanction those of genius. A very little excess above the water-mark of mediocrity is with them quite enough. Mr. Kean will do well not to offend by extraordinary efforts, or dazzling eccentricities. He should be the Washington of actors, the modern Fabius. If he had been educated in the fourth form of St. Paul’s school, like some other top-tragedians that we know, we should say to him, in classic terms, in medio tutissimus ibis. ‘Remember that they hiss the Beggar’s Opera in America. If they do not spare Captain Macheath, do you think they will spare you? Play off no pranks in the United States. Do not think to redeem great vices by great virtues. They are inexorable to the one, and insensible to the other. Reserve all works of supererogation till you come back, and have safely run the gauntlet of New York, of Philadelphia, of Baltimore, and Boston. Think how Mr. Young would act,—and act with a little more meaning, and a little less pomp than he would—who, we are assured on credible authority, is that model of indifference that the New World would worship and bow down before.’—We have made bold to offer this advice, because we wish well to Mr. Kean; and because we wish to think as well as possible of a republican public. We watch both him and them ‘with the rooted malice of a friend.’ We have thus paid our respects to Old Drury in holiday-time; and thought we had already taken leave of the New English Opera-House for the season. But there were Two Words to that bargain. The farce with this title is a very lively little thing, worth going to see; and the new Dramatic Romance (or whatever it is called) of the Vampyre is, upon the whole, the most splendid spectacle we have ever seen. It is taken from a French piece, founded on the celebrated story so long bandied about between Lord Byron, Mr. Shelley, and Dr. Polidori, which last turned out to be the true author. As a mere fiction, and as a fiction attributed to Lord Byron, whose genius is chartered for the land of horrors, the original story passed well enough: but on the stage it is a little shocking to the feelings, and incongruous to the sense, to see a spirit in human shape,—in the shape of a real Earl, and, what is more, of a Scotch Earl—going about seeking whom it may marry and then devour, to lengthen out its own abhorred and anomalous being. Allowing for the preternatural atrocity of the fable, the situations were well imagined and supported: the acting of Mr. T. P. Cooke (from the Surry Theatre) was spirited and imposing, and certainly Mrs. W. H. Chatterley, as the daughter of his friend the Baron, (Mr. Bartley), and his destined bride, bid fair to be a very delectable victim. She is however saved in a surprizing manner, after a rapid succession of interesting events, to the great joy of the spectator. The scenery of this piece is its greatest charm, and it is inimitable. We have seen sparkling and overpowering effects of this kind before; but to the splendour of a transparency were here added all the harmony and mellowness of the finest painting. We do not speak of the vision at the beginning, or of that at the end of the piece,—though these were admirably managed,—so much as of the representation of the effects of moonlight on the water and on the person of the dying knight. The hue of the sea-green waves, floating in the pale beam under an arch-way of grey weather-beaten rocks, and with the light of a torch glaring over the milder radiance, was in as fine keeping and strict truth as Claude or Rembrandt, and would satisfy, we think, the most fastidious artist’s eye. It lulled the sense of sight as the fancied sound of the dashing waters soothed the imagination. In the scene where the moonlight fell on the dying form of Ruthven (the Vampire) it was like a fairy glory, forming a palace of emerald light: the body seemed to drink its balmy essence, and to revive in it without a miracle. The line,
‘See how the moon sleeps with Endymion,’
came into the mind from the beauty and gorgeousness of the picture, notwithstanding the repugnance of every circumstance and feeling. This melodrame succeeds very well; and it succeeds in spite of Mr. Kean’s last nights, and without Miss Kelly!
At the Hay-market there has been a new comedy, called ‘the Diamond Ring, or Exchange no Robbery.’ It is said to be by Mr. Theodore Hook. We should not wonder. The morality, and the sentiment are very flat, and very offensive; we mean, all the half platonic, half serious love scenes between Sir Lennox Leinster, (Mr. Conner), and Lady Cranberry (Mrs. Mardyn). This actress,—young, handsome, and full of spirit as she is, and as the character she represents is supposed to be,—and married to an old husband, who is always grumbling, and complaining,—does not appear fitted to be engaged in half an amour; nor as if she would excuse Sir Lennox for being ‘figurative,’ in that way. Her conduct is at least equivocal, and without any ostensible motive but a gross one, which yet she does not acknowledge to herself. A Milan commission would inevitably have ruined her, even though Sir Lennox had been a less likely man than a well-looking, impudent, Irish Baronet. His personal pretensions are certainly formidable to her jealous spouse (Mr. Terry, an Adonis of sixty)—though it is hard to find out the charms in his conversation that recommend him so powerfully to the friendship of the lady. He has one joke, one flower of rhetoric, interspersed through all his discourse, witty or amorous—the cant phrase, ‘You’ll excuse my being figurative.’ His metaphorical turn would not however have been excused, but for the matter-of-fact notions and accomplishments of Mr. Liston—who plays a bona fide pot boy in the comic group, the supposed son of old Cranberry, but the real and proper off-spring of old Swipes, the landlord of The Pig and Gridiron. This hopeful young gentleman has been palmed upon his pretended father, (to the no small mortification and dismay of both parties) instead of the intrepid Lieutenant Littleworth (Mr. Barnard) the true heir to the Cranberry estate and honours. Liston, as young Swipes, has nothing genteel about him; not even the wish to be so. His inclinations are low. Thus he likes to drink with the butler; makes a young blackamore, whom he calls ‘snowdrop,’ drunk with claret, and is in love with Miss Polly Watts, who has red hair, a red face, and red elbows. He has vowed to elope with her before that day week, and make her Mrs. C., and would no doubt have been as good as his word if the secret of his birth had not been discovered by his mother-in-law, in revenge for a matrimonial squabble; and the whole ends, as a three-act piece should do—abruptly but agreeably. Mr. Liston’s acting in such a character as we have described, it is needless to add, was infinitely droll, and Terry was a father worthy (pro tempore) of such a son.
The Manager of the English Opera House on Monday, 21st ult. brought out an occasional farce against the Manager of Drury-Lane, called Patent Seasons; deprecating the encroachments of the winter theatres, and predicting that, in consequence, ‘the English Opera would soon be a Beggar’s Opera.’ His hits at his overbearing rival were good, and told; but the confession of the weakness and ‘poverty,’ which Mr. Elliston had thrown in his teeth, rather served to damp than excite the enthusiasm of the audience. Every one is inclined to run away from a falling house; and of all appeals, that to humanity should be the last. The town may be bullied, ridiculed, wheedled, puffed out of their time and money, but to ask them to sink their patronage in a bankrupt concern, is to betray an ignorance of the world, who sympathise with the prosperous, and laugh at injustice. Generosity is the last infirmity of the public mind. Pity is a frail ground of popularity: and ‘misery doth part the flux of company.’ If you want the assistance of others, put a good face upon the matter, and conceal it from them that you want it. Do not whine and look piteous in their faces, or they will treat you like a dog. The 170 families that Mr. Arnold tells us depend upon his minor theatre for support are not ‘Russian sufferers,’ nor sufferers in a triumphant cause. Talk of 170 distressed families dependent on a distressed manager (not an autocrat of one vast theatre) and the sound hangs like a mill-stone on the imagination, ‘or load to sink a navy.’ The audience slink away, one by one, willing to slip their necks out of it. Charity is cold.
The Manager of the English Opera House, however, does not stand alone in his difficulties. The theatres in general seem to totter, and feel the hand of decay. Even the King’s Theatre, we understand, has manifested signs of decrepitude, and ‘palsied eld,’ and stopped,—we do not say its payments, but its performances. Of all the theatres, we should feel the least compassion for the deserted saloons and tattered hangings of the Italian Opera. We should rather indeed see it flourish, as it has long flourished, in splendour and in honour: we do not like ‘to see a void made in the Drama: any ruin on the face of the land.’ But this would touch us the least. We might be disposed to write its epitaph, not its elegy.
L.