’Tis for a thousand pounds.’
What an impression was here made, never to be effaced! What a thing it is to be an author, and how much better a thing it is to be a reader, with all the pleasure and without any of the trouble—but without any of the fame, you will say. That is not worth two-pence. And yet true fame is something, the fame, for instance, of Cowper or of Thomson—not to live in the mouths of pedants, and coxcombs, and professional men, but in the heart and soul of every living being, to mingle with every thought, to beat in every pulse, to be hailed with transport by those who are young, and to be remembered with regret by those who are old, to be ‘first, last, and midst’ in the minds of others. True fame is like a Lapland sun, that never goes down; it rises with us in the morning, and rolls round and round till our night of life. Why, look here, what a thing it is to be an author! John Gilpin delighted us when we were children, and were we to die to-morrow, the name of John Gilpin would excite a momentary sense of pleasure. The same feeling of delight, with which at ten years old we read the story, makes us thirty years after go, laughing, to see the play. In all that time, the remembrance has been cherished at the heart, like the pulse that sustains our life. ‘That ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!’ and yet it was nearly broken the other night, in the after-piece of this name, and would have been quite so for the evening, if it had not been for Mr. Munden, who, as a subordinate agent, prevented Mr. Dowton from breaking his neck in the principal character. We differed from the audience on this occasion, who did not much relish Mr. Munden in his part of a cockney: we relished him altogether and mightily. His speech, his countenance, and his dress, were in high costume and keeping. There was a greatness of gusto about Timothy Brittle, Mrs. Gilpin’s favourite but unfortunate son-in-law. It might be said of Mr. Munden in this character, that not only did his dress appear to have come fresh from the shop-board, his coat, his pantaloons, his waistcoat—but his speech was clipped and snipped as with a pair of sheers, and his face looked just as if the tailor’s goose had gone over it. It was a fine and inimitable piece of acting, but it was damned.—Dowton, in The Rivals, played Mrs. Malaprop, and Mrs. Sparks played Sir Anthony Absolute. We cannot say much of these transformations, for the performers themselves remained just the same, breeches and petticoats out of the question; nothing was transformed or ridiculous but their dress. Dowton was as blunt and bluff, and Mrs. Sparks was as keen, querulous, and scolding, as in any of their usual characters. The effect was flat after the first entrée, and the whole play was, in other respects, very poorly got up;—quite in the comic negligé of Drury-lane.—We ought to say something of Mrs. Hill, who came out on Tuesday evening as Lady Macbeth. She is neither a good nor a bad actress. She has, however, a sentimental drawl in her voice and manner which is very little to our taste, and not at all in character as Lady Macbeth. The King never dies. Why should Mrs. Siddons ever die? Why, because Kings are fictions in law: Mrs. Siddons was one of nature’s greatest works.
DON GIOVANNI AND KEAN’S EUSTACE DE ST. PIERRE
| The Examiner.] | [May 18, 1817. |
The last time we saw the Opera of Don Giovanni was from a distant part of the house: we saw it the other evening near; and as the impression was somewhat different, we wish to correct one or two things in our former statement. Madame Fodor sings and acts the part of Zerlina as charmingly as ever, but she does not look it so well near as at a greater distance. She has too much em bon point, is too broad-set for the idea of a young and beautiful country girl: her mouth is laughing and good-natured, but does not answer to Spenser’s description of Belphebe,—and it cannot be concealed that Zerlina, the delightful Zerlina, has a cast in her eyes. Her singing, however, made us forget all these defects, and after the second line of La ci darem, we had quite recovered from our disappointment. On the whole, we at present prefer the air of Vedrai Carino, which she sings to Masetto to comfort him, even to the duet with Don Giovanni. There was some uncertainty about encoring her in this song,—not, we apprehend, because the audience were afraid of tiring the actress, but because they were tired themselves. Madame Fodor was encored in all her songs throughout the piece.—This might be thought hard upon her; we dare say she would have thought it harder if she had not. Signor Ambrogetti’s acting as Don Giovanni improves upon a nearer acquaintance. There is a softness approaching to effeminacy in the expression of his face, which accords well with the character, and an insinuating archness in his eye, which takes off from the violent effect of his action. The serenade of Don Giovanni was omitted. As to Naldi, he is in too confirmed possession of the stage to be corrigible to advice. He is one of those old birds that are not to be caught with chaff. The sly rogue, Leporello, seems to have grown grey in the service of iniquity, and hangs his nose over the stage with a formidable bravura aspect, as if he could suspend the orchestra from it. Angrisani is an admirable, and we might say, first-rate comic actor. He has fine features; a manly, rustic voice; and we never saw disdain, impatience, the resentment and relenting of the jealous lover, better expressed than in the scene between him and Madame Fodor, where she makes that affecting appeal to his forgiveness in the song of Batte, Batte, Masetto. It was inimitably acted on both sides.
Drury-Lane.
Mr. Kean has appeared in Eustace de St. Pierre in the Surrender of Calais. He has little to do in it; and he might as well not have appeared in the character, for he does not look well in it. He was badly dressed in a doublet of green baize, and in villainous yellow hose. It was like the player’s description of Hecuba—
‘A clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood: and for a robe
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up.’