| The Examiner.] | [November 12, 1815. |
The lovers of the drama have had a very rich theatrical treat this week, Mr. Kean’s first appearance in Bajazet, two new Miss Peggys in the Country Girl, and last, though not least, Miss Stephens’s reappearance in Polly. Of Mr. Kean’s Bajazet we have not much to say, without repeating what we have said before. The character itself is merely calculated for the display of physical passion and external energy. It is violent, fierce, turbulent, noisy, and blasphemous, ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Mr. Kean did justice to his author, or went the whole length of the text. A viper does not dart with more fierceness and rapidity on the person who has just trod upon it than he turns upon Tamerlane in the height of his fury. An unslaked thirst of vengeance and blood has taken possession of every faculty, like the savage rage of a hyaena, assailed by the hunters. His eyeballs glare, his teeth gnash together, his hands are clenched. In describing his defeat, his voice is choked with passion; he curses, and the blood curdles in his veins. Never was the fiery soul of barbarous revenge, stung to madness by repeated shame and disappointment, so completely displayed. This truth of nature and passion in Mr. Kean’s acting carries every thing before it. He was the only person on the stage who seemed alive. The mighty Tamerlane appeared no better than a stuffed figure dressed in ermine, Arpasia moaned in vain, and Moneses roared out his wrongs unregarded, like the hoarse sounds of distant thunder. Nothing can withstand the real tide of passion once let loose; and yet it is pretended, that the great art of the tragic actor is in damming it up, or cutting out smooth canals and circular basons for it to flow into, so that it may do no harm in its course. It is the giving way to natural and strong impulses of the imagination that floats Mr. Kean down the stream of public favour with all his faults—‘a load to sink a navy.’ The only wonder was to see this furious character suffered to go about and take the whole range of the palace of Tamerlane, without the least let or impediment. It shewed a degree of magnanimity in Mr. Pope, which is without any parallel, even in modern times. It is understood that the play was originally written by the whig poet Rowe, and regularly acted on the anniversary of our whig revolution, as a compliment to King William, and a satire on Louis XIV. For any thing we know, the resemblance of Tamerlane to King William may be sufficiently strong, there the historian and the poet may agree tolerably well; but what traits the Tartar Chieftain and the French Monarch had in common, it would be difficult to find out. If any more recent allusion was intended in its revival, it fell still wider of the mark. The play of Tamerlane may be divided into two heads—cant and rant. Tamerlane takes the first part, and Bajazet the second. This last hurls defiance at both gods and men. He is utterly regardless of consequences, and rushes upon his destruction like a wild beast into the toils. He utters but one striking sentiment, when he defends ambition as the hunger of noble minds. Bajazet’s character is energy without greatness. He is blind to every thing but the present moment, and insensible to every thing but the present impulse. True greatness is the reverse of this. It shews all the energy of courage, but none of the impatience of despair. It struggles with difficulty, but yields to necessity. It does every thing, and suffers nothing. It sees events with the eye of history, and makes Time the Judge of Fortune. Courage with calmness constitutes the perfection of the heroic character, as the effeminate and sentimental unite the extremes of activity and irritability. We never saw Mr. Kean look better. His costume and his colour had a very picturesque effect. The yellow brown tinge of the Tartar becomes him much better than the tawny brick-dust complexion of the Moor in Othello.
Now for our two Country Girls. We have seen both without any great effort of our patience: to confess a truth, we had rather see the Country Girl two nights running than Tamerlane; as we would rather have been Wycherley than Rowe. The comedy of the Country Girl is taken from Moliere’s School for Wives. It is however a perfectly free imitation, or rather an original work, founded on the same general plot, with additional characters, and in a style wholly different. Scarcely a line is the same. The long, speechifying dialogues in the French comedy are cut down into a succession of smart conversations and lively scenes: there is indeed a certain pastoral sweetness or sentimental naivete in the character of Agnes, which is lost in Miss Peggy, who is however the more natural and mischievous little rustic of the two. The incident of her running up against her guardian as she is running off with her gallant in the park, and the contrivance of the second letter which she imposes on her jealous fool as Alithea’s, are Wycherley’s. The characters of Alithea, Harcourt, and of the fop Sparkish, who appears to us so exquisite, and to others so insipid, are additional portraits from the reign and court of Charles II. Those who object to the scenes between this gentleman and his mistress as unnatural, can never have read the Memoirs of the Count de Grammont,—an authentic piece of English history, in which we trace the origin of so many noble families. What an age of wit and folly, of coxcombs and coquets, when the world of fashion led purely ornamental lives, and their only object was to make themselves or others ridiculous. Happy age, when the utmost stretch of a morning’s study went no further than the choice of a sword knot, or the adjustment of a side curl; when the soul spoke out in all the persuasive eloquence of dress; when beaux and belles, enamoured of themselves in one another’s follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies in giddy mazes through the walks of St. James’s Park! The perfection of this gala out-of-door comedy is in Etherege, the gay Sir George! Then comes Wycherley, and then Congreve, who hands them into the drawing-room. Congreve is supposed to have been the inventor of the epigrammatic, clenched style of comic dialogue; but there is a great deal of this both in Wycherley and Etherege, with more of a janty tone of flippant gaiety in the latter, and more incident, character, and situation in the former. The Country Girl holds unimpaired possession of the stage to this day, by its wit, vivacity, nature, and ingenuity. Nothing can be worse acted, and yet it goes down, for it supplies the imagination with all that the actors want. Mr. Bartley had some merit as Moody, Mr. Fawcet none. Barrymore, at Covent Garden played Harcourt well. We have seen him in better company, and he reminded us of it. He was much of the gentleman, and as much at home on the stage (from long practice) as if he had been in his own apartments. As to the two Miss Peggys, we hardly know how to settle their pretensions. If Mrs. Mardyn overacts her part to that degree that she seems only to want a skipping-rope to make it complete, Mrs. Alsop is so stiff and queer that she seems to have only just escaped from a back-board and steel monitor. If Mrs. Alsop has the clearest voice, Mrs. Mardyn has the brightest eyes. Mrs. Alsop has most art, Mrs. Mardyn has most nature. If Mrs. Mardyn is too profuse of natural graces, too young and buoyant and exuberant in all her movements, the same fault cannot be found with Mrs. Alsop, whose smiles give no pleasure, and whose frowns give unmingled pain. Mrs. Alsop’s Peggy is a clever recitation of the character, without being the thing; and Mrs. Mardyn’s is a very full development of her own person, which is the thing itself. Mrs. Alsop is the best actress, though not worth a pin, and Mrs. Mardyn is the most desirable woman, which is always worth something. We may apply to these two ladies what Suckling said of one of his mistresses—
‘I take her body, you her mind,—
Which has the better bargain.’
DOCTRINE OF PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY
| The Examiner.] | [December 10, 1815 |
——‘For I had learnt a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,