Chapter XX: Preface (11)

Mr. Kenney’s new Comedy called the Touch-stone, or the World as it
goes, has been acted here with great success. It possesses much
liveliness and pleasantry in the incidents, and the dialogue is neat
and pointed. The interest never flags, and is never wound up to a
painful pitch. There are several _coups de théatre_, which shew that
Mr. Kenney is an adept in his art, and has the stage and the actors
before him while he is writing in his closet. The character of Dinah
Cropley, which is admirably sustained by Miss Kelly, is the chief
attraction of the piece. The author has contrived situations for
this pretty little rustic, which bring out the exquisite _naiveté_
and simple pathos of the actress in as great a degree as we ever saw
them. Mr. Kenney, we understand, wrote this Comedy abroad; and there
is a foreign air of homely contentment and natural gaiety about the
character of poor Dinah, like the idea we have of Marivaux’s
_Paysanne parvenue_. She seemed to have fed her chickens and turned
her spinning-wheel in France, under more genial and better-tempered
skies. Perhaps, however, this may be a mere prejudice in our minds,
arising from our having lately seen Miss Kelly in such characters
taken from French pieces. Her lover, Harley, (Peregrine Paragon), is
of undoubted home growth. He is a very romantic, generous, amorous
sort of simpleton, while he is poor; and for want of knowing better,
thinks himself incorruptible, till temptation falls in his way, and
then he turns out a very knave: and only saves his credit in the end
by one of those _last act_ repentances which are more pleasing than
probable. He is in the first instance a poor country schoolmaster,
who is engaged to marry Dinah Cropley, the daughter of a
neighbouring farmer. They cannot, however, obtain the consent of
their landlord and his sister (Holland and Mrs. Harlowe), the one a
town coquette, the other a commercial gambler; when just in the nick
of time, news is brought that Holland is ruined by the failure of an
extravagant speculation, and that a distant relation has left his
whole fortune to Harley. The tables are now turned. Harley buys the
mansion-house, furniture, and gardens, takes possession of them with
highly amusing airs of upstart vanity and self-importance; is
flattered by the Squire’s sister, who discards and is discarded by a
broken fortune-hunting lover of the name of Garnish (Wallack), makes
proposals of marriage to her, and thinks no more of his old
favourite Dinah. Garnish in the mean time finding the pliability of
temper of Peregrine Paragon, Esq., and to make up for his
disappointment in his own fortune-hunting scheme, sends for his
sister (Mrs. Alsop) whom he introduces to the said Peregrine
Paragon. The forward pretensions of the two new candidates for his
hand, form an amusing contrast with the sanguine hopes and rejected
addresses of the old possessor of his heart, and some very
ridiculous scenes take place, with one very affecting one, in which
Miss Kelly makes a last vain appeal to her lover’s fidelity, and
(Oxberry) her father watches the result with a mute wonderment and
disappointed expectation infinitely natural, and well worth any
body’s seeing. By-and-bye it turns out that the fortune has been
left not to Harley, but by a subsequent will to Miss Kelly, who is
also a relation of the deceased, when instantly his two accomplished
mistresses give over their persecution of him, their two brothers
set off to make love to the new heiress, who exposes them both to
the ridicule they deserve, and Harley, without knowing of the change
of fortune, is moved by a letter he receives from her, to repent
just in time to prove himself not altogether unworthy of her hand.

Such is the outline of this Comedy. Dowton acts the part of a
friendly mediator, and spectator in the scene; and Hughes makes a
very fit representative of a shuffling, officious, pettifogging
attorney. The most unpleasant part of the play was the undisguised
mercenary profligacy of the four characters of Wallack, Holland,
Mrs. Alsop, and Mrs. Harlowe: and a precious _partie quarrée_ they
are. The scrapes into which their folly and cunning lead them are,
however, very amusing, and their unprincipled selfishness is very
deservedly punished at last.

THE LIBERTINE

_The Examiner._

(_Covent Garden_) _May 25, 1817._

The Libertine, an after-piece altered from Shadwell’s play of that
name, and founded on the story of Don Juan, with Mozart’s music, was
represented here on Tuesday evening. Almost every thing else was
against it, but the music triumphed. Still it had but half a
triumph, for the songs were not _encored_; and when an attempt was
made by some rash over-weening enthusiasts to _encore_ the
enchanting airs of Mozart, that heavy German composer, ‘that dull
Beotian genius,’ as he has been called by a lively verbal critic of
our times, the English, disdaining this insult offered to our native
talents, _hissed_—in the plenitude of their pampered grossness, and
‘ignorant impatience’ of foreign refinement and elegance, they
hissed! We believe that unconscious patriotism has something to do
with this as well as sheer stupidity: they think that a real taste
for the Fine Arts, unless they are of British growth and
manufacture, is a sign of disaffection to the Government, and that
there must be ‘something rotten in the state of Denmark,’ if their
ears, as well as their hearts, are not true English. We have heard
sailors’ songs by Little Smith, and Yorkshire songs by Emery, and
the Death of Nelson by Mr. Sinclair, _encored_ again and again at
Covent-Garden, so as almost ‘to split the ears of the groundlings,’
yet the other night they would not hear of _encoring_ Miss Stephens,
either in the Duet with Duruset, _La ci darem_, nor in the song
appealing for his forgiveness, _Batte, Massetto_; yet at the Opera
they tolerate Madame Fodor in repeating both these songs, because
they suppose it to be the etiquette, and would have you believe that
they do not very warmly insist on the repetition of the last song
she sings there, out of tenderness to the actress, not to spare
their own ears, which are soon cloyed with sweetness, and delight in
nothing but noise and fury.

We regard Miss Stephens’s Zerlina as a failure, whether we compare
her with Madame Fodor in the same part, or with herself in other
parts. She undoubtedly sung her songs with much sweetness and
simplicity, but her simplicity had something of insipidity in it;
her tones wanted the fine, rich, _pulpy_ essence of Madame Fodor’s,
the elastic impulse of health and high animal spirits; nor had her
manner of giving the different airs that laughing, careless grace
which gives to Madame Fodor’s singing all the ease and spirit of
conversation. There was some awkwardness necessarily arising from
the transposition of the songs, particularly of the duet between
Zerlina and Don Giovanni, which was given to Massetto, because Mr.
Charles Kemble is not a singer, and which by this means lost its
exquisite appropriateness of expression. Of Mr. Duruset’s Massetto
we shall only say, that it is not so good as Angrisani’s. He would
however have made a better representative of the statue of Don Pedro
than Mr. Chapman, who is another gentleman who has not ‘a singing
face,’ and whom it would therefore have been better to leave out of
the Opera than the songs; particularly than that fine one, answering
to _Di rider finira pria della Aurora_, which Mr. Chapman was
mounted on horseback on purpose, it should seem, _neither to sing
nor say!_

Mr. Charles Kemble did not play the Libertine well. Instead of the
untractable, fiery spirit, the unreclaimable licentiousness of Don
Giovanni, he was as tame as any saint;

‘And of his port as meek as is a maid.’

He went through the different exploits of wickedness assigned him
with evident marks of reluctance and contrition; and it seemed the
height of injustice that so well meaning a young man, forced into
acts of villainy against his will, should at last be seized upon as
their lawful prize by fiends come hot from hell with flaming
torches, and that he should sink into a lake of burning brimstone on
a splendid car brought to receive him by the devil, in the likeness
of a great dragon, writhing round and round upon a wheel of fire—an
exquisite device of the Managers, superadded to the original story,
and in striking harmony with Mozart’s music! Mr. Liston’s Leporello
was not quite what we wished it. He played it in a mixed style
between a burlesque imitation of the Italian Opera, and his own
_inimitable_ manner. We like him best when he is his own great
original, and copies only himself—

‘None but himself can be his parallel.’

He did not sing the song of Madamira half so well, nor with half the
impudence of Naldi. Indeed, all the performers seemed, instead of
going their lengths on the occasion, to be upon their good
behaviour, and instead of entering into their parts, to be thinking
of the comparison between themselves and the performers at the
Opera. We cannot say it was in their favour.

BARBAROSSA

_The Examiner._

(_Drury-Lane_) _June 1, 1817._

Mr. Kean had for his benefit on Monday, Barbarossa, and the musical
after-piece of Paul and Virginia. In the tragedy there was nothing
for him to do, and it is only when there is nothing for him to do,
that he does nothing. The scene in which he throws off his disguise
as a slave, and declares himself to be Achmet, the heir to the
throne, which Barbarossa has usurped by the murder of his father,
was the only one of any effect. We are sorry that Mr. Kean repeats
this character _till further notice_. In Paul we liked him
exceedingly: but we should have liked him better, if he had
displayed fewer of the graces and intricacies of the art. The
tremulous deliberation with which he introduced some of these
ornamental flourishes, put us a little in mind of the perplexity of
the lover in the Tatler, who was at a loss in addressing his
mistress whether he should say,

‘—And when your song you sing,
Your song you sing with so much art,’

Or,

‘—And when your song you sing,
You sing your song with so much art.’

As Mr. Bickerstaff, who was applied to by the poet, declined
deciding on this nice point, so we shall not decide whether Mr. Kean
sung well or ill, but leave it to be settled by the connoisseurs and
the ladies. His voice is clear, full, and sweet to a degree of
tenderness. Miss Mangeon played Virginia, and in so doing, did not
spoil one of the most pleasing recollections of our boyish reading
days, which we have still treasured up ‘in our heart’s core, aye, in
our best of hearts.’

MRS. SIDDONS’S LADY MACBETH

_The Examiner._

(_Covent Garden_) _June 8, 1817._

Mrs. Siddons’s appearance in Lady Macbeth at this Theatre on
Thursday, drew immense crowds to every part of the house. We should
suppose that more than half the number of persons were compelled to
return without gaining admittance. We succeeded in gaining a seat in
one of the back-boxes, and saw this wonderful performance at a
distance, and consequently at a disadvantage. Though the distance of
place is a disadvantage to a performance like Mrs. Siddons’s Lady
Macbeth, we question whether the distance of time at which we have
formerly seen it is any. It is nearly twenty years since we first
saw her in this character, and certainly the impression which we
have still left on our minds from that first exhibition, is stronger
than the one we received the other evening. The sublimity of Mrs.
Siddons’s acting is such, that the first impulse which it gives to
the mind can never wear out, and we doubt whether this original and
paramount impression is not weakened, rather than strengthened, by
subsequent repetition. We do not read the tragedy of the Robbers
twice; if we have seen Mrs. Siddons in Lady Macbeth only once, it is
enough. The impression is stamped there for ever, and any
after-experiments and critical enquiries only serve to fritter away
and tamper with the sacredness of the early recollection. We see
into the details of the character, its minute excellencies or
defects, but the great masses, the gigantic proportions, are in some
degree lost upon us by custom and familiarity. It is the first blow
that staggers us; by gaining time we recover our self-possession.
Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth is little less appalling in its effects
than the apparition of a preternatural being; but if we were
accustomed to see a preternatural being constantly, our astonishment
would by degrees diminish.

We do not know whether it is owing to the cause here stated, or to a
falling-off in Mrs. Siddons’s acting, but we certainly thought her
performance the other night inferior to what it used to be. She
speaks too slow, and her manner has not that decided, sweeping
majesty, which used to characterise her as the Muse of Tragedy
herself. Something of apparent indecision is perhaps attributable to
the circumstance of her only acting at present on particular
occasions. An actress who appears only once a-year cannot play so
well as if she was in the habit of acting once a-week. We therefore
wish Mrs. Siddons would either return to the stage, or retire from
it altogether. By her present uncertain wavering between public and
private life, she may diminish her reputation, while she can add
nothing to it.

MR. MAYWOOD’S SHYLOCK

_The Times._

(_Drury-Lane_) _September 26, 1817._

Mr. Maywood, from the Theatre Royal Glasgow, of whom report had
spoken highly, and we think not undeservedly so, appeared here in
the part of Shylock. He was received throughout with very great
applause; nor was there any part of his performance at which the
slightest disapprobation was expressed. His figure is rather short;
his face, though not regularly formed, expressive; his voice full,
and capable of great depth of intonation; his attitudes firm and
well conceived: the most spirited scene, we thought, was that in
which Tubal brings him information of Antonio’s losses and impending
ruin, and of his daughter’s waste of his money. His exclamation,
‘Thank God! thank God!’ on hearing of the shipwreck, was as animated
as any thing we ever heard. In the last scene, the glare of
malignity with which he eyed Antonio after his defeated revenge
recoils upon his own head, was truly terrific. Upon the whole, we
consider this gentleman as an acquisition to the tragic strength of
the theatre; and are persuaded that what seemed the principal defect
in his performance, an occasional want of decision of tone, and
firmness of action, was attributable only to that diffidence which
is natural to a young actor on his first appearance before a London
audience, in a part of so much prominence, and which has been so
ably filled of late.

MR. KEMBLE’S RETIREMENT

_The Times._

(_Covent Garden_) _June 25, 1817._

Mr. Kemble took his leave of the Stage on Monday night, in the
character of Coriolanus. On his first coming forward to pronounce
his Farewell Address, he was received with a shout like thunder: on
his retiring after it, the applause was long before it subsided
entirely away. There is something in these partings with old public
favourites exceedingly affecting. They teach us the shortness of
human life, and the vanity of human pleasures. Our associations of
admiration and delight with theatrical performers, are among our
earliest recollections—among our last regrets. They are links that
connect the beginning and the end of life together; _their_ bright
and giddy career of popularity measures the arch that spans our
brief existence. It is near twenty years ago since we first saw Mr.
Kemble in the same character—yet how short the interval seems! The
impression appears as distinct as if it were of yesterday. In fact,
intellectual objects, in proportion as they are lasting, may be said
to shorten life. Time has no effect upon them. The petty and the
personal, that which appeals to our senses and our interests, is by
degrees forgotten, and fades away into the distant obscurity of the
past. The grand and the ideal, that which appeals to the
imagination, can only perish with it, and remains with us,
unimpaired in its lofty abstraction, from youth to age; as, wherever
we go, we still see the same heavenly bodies shining over our heads!
We forget numberless things that have happened to ourselves, one
generation of follies after another; but not the first time of our
seeing Mr. Kemble, nor shall we easily forget the last! Coriolanus,
the character in which he took his leave of the Stage, was one of
the first in which we remember to have seen him; and it was one in
which we were not sorry to part with him, for we wished to see him
appear like himself to the last. Nor was he wanting to himself on
this occasion: he played the part as well as he ever did—with as
much freshness and vigour. There was no abatement of spirit and
energy—none of grace and dignity: his look, his action, his
expression of the character, were the same as they ever were: they
could not be finer. It is mere cant, to say that Mr. Kemble has
quite fallen off of late—that he is not what he was: he may have
fallen off in the opinion of some jealous admirers, because he is no
longer in exclusive possession of the Stage: but in himself he has
not fallen off a jot. Why then do we approve of his retiring?
Because we do not wish him to wait till it is _necessary_ for him to
retire. On the last evening, he displayed the same excellences, and
gave the same prominence to the very same passages, that he used to
do. We might refer to his manner of doing obeisance to his mother in
the triumphal procession in the second act, and to the scene with
Aufidius in the last act, as among the most striking instances. The
action with which he accompanied the proud taunt to Aufidius—

‘Like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli;
Alone I did it——’

gave double force and beauty to the image. Again, where he waits for
the coming of Aufidius in his rival’s house, he stood at the foot of
the statue of Mars, himself another Mars! In the reconciliation
scene with his mother, which is the finest in the play, he was not
equally impressive. Perhaps this was not the fault of Mr. Kemble,
but of the stage itself, which can hardly do justice to such
thoughts and sentiments as here occur:

‘——My mother bows:
As if Olympus to a mole-hill should
In supplication nod.’

Mr. Kemble’s voice seemed to faint and stagger, to be strained and
cracked, under the weight of this majestic image: but, indeed, we
know of no tones deep or full enough to bear along the swelling tide
of sentiment it conveys; nor can we conceive any thing in outward
form to answer to it, except when Mrs. Siddons played the part of
Volumnia.

We may on this occasion be expected to say a few words on the
general merits of Mr. Kemble as an actor, and on the principal
characters he performed; in doing which, we shall

‘——Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice.’

It has always appeared to us, that the range of characters in which
Mr. Kemble more particularly shone, and was superior to every other
actor, were those which consisted in the developement of some one
solitary sentiment or exclusive passion. From a want of rapidity, of
scope, and variety, he was often deficient in expressing the bustle
and complication of different interests; nor did he possess the
faculty of overpowering the mind by sudden and irresistible bursts
of passion: but in giving the habitual workings of a predominant
feeling, as in Penruddock, or The Stranger, in Coriolanus, Cato, and
some others, where all the passions move round a central point, and
are governed by one master-key, he stood unrivalled. Penruddock, in
The Wheel of Fortune, was one of his most correct and interesting
performances, and one of the most perfect on the modern stage. The
deeply-rooted, mild, pensive melancholy of the character, its
embittered recollections, and dignified benevolence, were conveyed
by Mr. Kemble with equal truth, elegance, and feeling. In The
Stranger, again, which is in fact the same character, he brooded
over the recollection of disappointed hope till it became a part of
himself; it sunk deeper into his mind the longer he dwelt upon it;
his regrets only became more profound as they became more durable.
His person was moulded to the character. The weight of sentiment
which oppressed him was never suspended: the spring at his heart was
never lightened—it seemed as if his whole life had been a suppressed
sigh! So in Coriolanus, he exhibited the ruling passion with the
same unshaken firmness, he preserved the same haughty dignity of
demeanour, the same energy of will, and unbending sternness of
temper throughout. He was swayed by a single impulse. His
tenaciousness of purpose was only irritated by opposition; he turned
neither to the right nor the left; the vehemence with which he moved
forward increasing every instant, till it hurried him on to the
catastrophe. In Leontes, also, in The Winter’s Tale (a character he
at one time played often), the growing jealousy of the King, and the
exclusive possession which this passion gradually obtains over his
mind, were marked by him in the finest manner, particularly where he
exclaims—

‘——Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? Stopping the career
Of laughter with a sigh (a note infallible
Of breaking honesty)? Horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? Wishing clocks more swift?
Hours minutes? The noon midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web, but their’s; their’s only,
That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?
Why then the world and that’s in ‘t is nothing,
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia’s nothing,
My wife is nothing, if this be nothing!’

In the course of this enumeration, every proof told stronger, and
followed with quicker and harder strokes; his conviction became more
rivetted at every step of his progress; and at the end, his mind,
and ‘every corporal agent,’ appeared wound up to a phrenzy of
despair. In such characters, Mr. Kemble had no occasion to call to
his aid either the resources of invention, or the tricks of the art:
his success depended on the increasing intensity with which he dwelt
on a given feeling, or enforced a passion that resisted all
interference or control.

In Hamlet, on the contrary, Mr. Kemble in our judgment unavoidably
failed from a want of flexibility, of that quick sensibility which
yields to every motive, and is borne away with every breath of
fancy, which is distracted in the multiplicity of its reflections,
and lost in the uncertainty of its resolutions. There is a perpetual
undulation of feeling in the character of Hamlet; but in Mr.
Kemble’s acting, ‘there was neither variableness nor shadow of
turning.’ He played it like a man in armour, with a determined
inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating straight line, which is as
remote from the natural grace and indolent susceptibility of the
character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts to produce an
effect which Mr. Kean throws into it.

In King John, which was one of Mr. Kemble’s most admired parts, the
transitions of feeling, though just and powerful, were prepared too
long beforehand, and were too long in executing to produce their
full effect. The actor seemed waiting for some complicated machinery
to enable him to make his next movement, instead of trusting to the
true impulses of passion. There was no sudden collision of opposite
elements; the golden flash of genius was not there; ‘the fire i’ th’
flint was cold,’ for it was not struck. If an image could be
constructed by magic art to play King John, it would play it in much
the same manner that Mr. Kemble played it.

In Macbeth, Mr. Kemble was unequal to ‘the tug and war’ of the
passions which assail him: he stood as it were at bay with fortune,
and maintained his ground too steadily against ‘fate and
metaphysical aid;’ instead of staggering and reeling under the
appalling visions of the preternatural world, and having his frame
wrenched from all the holds and resting places of his will, by the
stronger power of imagination. In the latter scenes, however, he
displayed great energy and spirit; and there was a fine melancholy
retrospective tone in his manner of delivering the lines,

‘My way of life has fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf,’

which smote upon the heart, and remained there ever after. His
Richard III. wanted that tempest and whirlwind of the soul, that
life and spirit, and dazzling rapidity of motion, which fills the
stage, and burns in every part of it, when Mr. Kean performs this
character. To Mr. Kean’s acting in general, we might apply the lines
of the poet, where he describes

‘The fiery soul that, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay.’

Mr. Kemble’s manner, on the contrary, had always something dry,
hard, and pedantic in it. ‘You shall relish him more in the scholar
than the soldier:’ but his monotony did not fatigue, his formality
did not displease; because there was always sense and meaning in
what he did. The fineness of Mr. Kemble’s figure may be supposed to
have led to that statue-like appearance, which his acting was
sometimes too apt to assume: as the diminutiveness of Mr. Kean’s
person has probably compelled him to bustle about too much, and to
attempt to make up for the want of dignity of form, by the violence
and contrast of his attitudes. If Mr. Kemble were to remain in the
same posture for half an hour, his figure would only excite
admiration: if Mr. Kean were to stand still only for a moment, the
contrary effect would be apparent. One of the happiest and most
spirited of all Mr. Kemble’s performances, and in which even his
defects were blended with his excellences to produce a perfect
whole, was his Pierre. The dissolute indifference assumed by this
character, to cover the darkness of his designs, and the fierceness
of his revenge, accorded admirably with Mr. Kemble’s natural manner;
and the tone of morbid rancorous raillery, in which Pierre delights
to indulge, was in unison with the actor’s reluctant, contemptuous
personifications of gaiety, with the scornful spirit of his Comic
Muse, which always laboured—_invita Minerva_—against the grain. Cato
was another of those parts for which Mr. Kemble was peculiarly
fitted by his physical advantages. There was nothing for him to do
in this character, but to appear in it. It had all the dignity of
still-life. It was a studied piece of classical costume—a conscious
exhibition of elegantly disposed drapery, that was all: yet, as a
mere display of personal and artificial grace, it was inimitable.

It has been suggested that Mr. Kemble chiefly excelled in his Roman
characters, and among others in Brutus. If it be meant, that he
excelled in those which imply a certain stoicism of feeling and
energy of will, this we have already granted; but Brutus is not a
character of this kind, and Mr. Kemble failed in it for that reason.
Brutus is not a stoic, but a humane enthusiast. There is a
tenderness of nature under the garb of assumed severity; an inward
current of generous feelings, which burst out, in spite of
circumstances, with bleeding freshness; a secret struggle of mind,
and disagreement between his situation and his intentions; a lofty
inflexibility of purpose, mingled with an effeminate abstractedness
of thought, which Mr. Kemble did not give.

In short, we think the distinguishing excellence of his acting may
be summed up in one word—_intensity_; in the seizing upon some one
feeling or idea, in insisting upon it, in never letting it go, and
in working it up, with a certain graceful consistency, and conscious
grandeur of conception, to a very high degree of pathos or
sublimity. If he had not the unexpected bursts of nature and genius,
he had all the regularity of art; if he did not display the tumult
and conflict of opposite passions in the soul, he gave the deepest
and most permanent interest to the uninterrupted progress of
individual feeling; and in embodying a high idea of certain
characters, which belong rather to sentiment than passion, to energy
of will, than to loftiness or to originality of imagination, he was
the most excellent actor of his time. This praise of him is not
exaggerated: the blame we have mixed with it is not invidious. We
have only to add to both, the expression of our grateful
remembrances and best wishes—Hail, and farewell!

End of A VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE.

ESSAYS ON THE ACTED DRAMA IN LONDON
CONTRIBUTED TO
THE LONDON MAGAZINE (1820)

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

These essays, contributed to _The London Magazine_ in 1820, have
never been republished in their original form. A great part of them
was included in the so-called ‘second edition’ of _A View of the
English Stage_ (see the bibliographical note to that work, _ante_,
p. 170), but the essays were cut up and re-arranged, and many
passages were left out altogether. In the present edition, all the
essays are printed _verbatim_ from _The London Magazine_, except
that a part of Essay No. VI. and the whole of Essay No. X., being
plainly the work of another hand, have been omitted.

ESSAYS ON THE DRAMA

FROM

THE LONDON MAGAZINE, 1820

No. I

[_January, 1820._

In commencing our account of the drama for the year 1820, and
turning our eye back, as far as our personal recollection reaches,
towards the conclusion of the last century, we do not think we
should be justified, by the customary topics of comparison, or
privileges of criticism, in making a general complaint of the
degeneracy of the stage. Within our remembrance, at least, it has
not fallen off to any alarming degree, either in the written or the
acted performances. It has changed its style considerably in both
these respects, but it does not follow that it has altogether
deteriorated: it has shifted its ground, but has found its level.
With respect to the pieces brought out, we have got striking
melo-drames for dull tragedies; and short farces are better than
long ones of five acts. The _semper varium et mutabile_ of the poet,
may be transferred to the stage, ‘the inconstant stage,’ without
losing the original felicity of the application:—it has its
necessary ebbs and flows, from its subjection to the influence of
popular feeling, and the frailty of the materials of which it is
composed, its own fleeting and shadowy essence and cannot be
expected to remain for any great length of time stationary at the
same point, either of perfection or debasement. Acting, in
particular, which is the chief organ by which it addresses itself to
the mind;—the eye, tongue, hand by which it dazzles, charms, and
seizes on the public attention—is an art that seems to contain in
itself the seeds of perpetual renovation and decay, following in
this respect the order of nature rather than the analogy of the
productions of human intellect,—for whereas in the other arts of
painting and poetry, the standard works of genius being permanent
and accumulating, for awhile provoke emulation, but, in the end,
overlay future efforts, and transmit only their defects to those
that come after; the exertions of the greatest actor die with him,
leaving to his successors only the admiration of his name, and the
aspiration after imaginary excellence: so that in effect ‘no one
generation of actors binds another;’ the art is always setting out
afresh on the stock of genius and nature, and the success depends
(generally speaking) on accident, opportunity, and encouragement.
The harvest of excellence (whatever it may be) is removed from the
ground every twenty or thirty years, by Death’s sickle; and there is
room left for another to sprout up and tower to an equal height, and
spread into equal luxuriance—to ‘dally with the wind, and court the
sun’—according to the health and vigour of the stem, and the
favourableness of the season. But books, pictures, remain like
fixtures in the public mind; beyond a certain point incumber the
soil of living truth and nature; and distort or stunt the growth of
original genius. Again, the literary amateur may find employment for
his time in reading old authors only, and exhaust his entire spleen
in scouting new ones: but the lover of the stage cannot amuse
himself, in his solitary fastidiousness, by sitting to witness a
play got up by the departed ghosts of first-rate actors; or be
contented with the perusal of a collection of old play-bills:—he may
extol Garrick, but he must go to see Kean; and, in his own defence,
must admire or at least tolerate what he sees, or stay away against
his will. The theatrical critic may grumble a little, at first, at a
new candidate for the favour of the town, and say how much better
the part must have been done formerly by some actor whom he never
saw; but by degrees he makes a virtue of necessity, and submits to
be pleased ‘with coy, reluctant, amorous delay’—devoting his
attention to the actual stage as he would to a living mistress, whom
he selects as a matter of course from the beauties of the present,
and not from those of the last age! We think there is for this
reason less pedantry and affectation (though not less party-feeling
and personal prejudice) in judging of the stage than of most other
subjects; and we feel a sort of theoretical, as well as instinctive
predilection for the faces of _play-going_ people as among the most
sociable, gossipping, good-natured, and humane members of society.
In this point of view, as well as in others, the stage is a test and
school of humanity. We do not much like any person or persons who do
not like plays; and for this reason, viz. that we imagine they
cannot much like themselves or any one else. The really humane man
(except in cases of unaccountable prejudices, which we do not think
the most likely means to increase or preserve the natural
amiableness of his disposition) is prone to the study of humanity.
_Omnes boni et liberales_ HUMANITATI _semper favemus._ He likes to
see it brought home from the universality of precepts and general
terms, to the reality of persons, of tones, and actions; and to have
it raised from the grossness and familiarity of sense, to the lofty
but striking platform of the imagination. He likes to see the face
of man with the veil of time torn from it, and to feel the pulse of
nature beating in all times and places alike. The smile of
good-humoured surprise at folly, the tear of pity at misfortune, do
not misbecome the face of man or woman. It is something delightful
and instructive, to have seen Coriolanus or King John in the
habiliments of Mr. Kemble, to have shaken hands almost with Othello
in the person of Mr. Kean, to have cowered before the spirit of Lady
Macbeth in the glance of Mrs. Siddons. The stage at once gives a
body to our thoughts, and refinement and expansion to our sensible
impressions. It has not the pride and remoteness of abstract
science: it has not the petty egotism of vulgar life. It is
particularly wanted in great cities (where it of course flourishes
most) to take off from the dissatisfaction and _ennui_, that creep
over our own pursuits from the indifference or contempt thrown upon
them by others; and at the same time to reconcile our numberless
discordant incommensurable feelings and interests together, by
giving us an immediate and common topic to engage our attention, and
to rally us round the standard of our common humanity. We never hate
a face that we have seen in the pit: and Liston’s laugh would be a
cordial to wash down the oldest animosity of the most inveterate
pit-critics.

The only drawback on the felicity and triumphant self-complacency of
a play-goer’s life, arises from the shortness of life itself. We
miss the favourites, not of another age, but of our own—the idols of
our youthful enthusiasm; and we cannot replace them by others. It
does not shew that _these_ are worse, because they are different
from _those_: though they had been better, they would not have been
so good to us. It is the penalty of our nature, from Adam downwards:
so Milton makes our first ancestor exclaim,—

——‘Should God create
Another Eve, and I another rib afford,
Yet loss of thee would never from my heart.’

We offer our best affections, our highest aspirations after the good
and beautiful, on the altar of youth: it is well if, in our
after-age, we can sometimes rekindle the almost extinguished flame,
and inhale its dying fragrance like the breath of incense, of
sweet-smelling flowers and gums, to detain the spirit of life, the
ethereal guest, a little longer in its frail abode—to cheer and
soothe it with the pleasures of memory, not with those of hope.
While we can do this, life is worth living for: when we can do it no
longer, its spring will soon go down, and we had better not be!—Who
shall give us Mrs. Siddons again, but in a waking dream, a beatific
vision of past years, crowned with other hopes and other feelings,
whose pomp is also faded, and their glory and their power gone! Who
shall in our time (or can ever to the eye of fancy) fill the stage,
like her, with the dignity of their persons, and the emanations of
their minds? Or who shall sit majestic in the throne of tragedy—a
Goddess, a prophetess and a Muse—from which the lightning of her eye
flashed o’er the mind, startling its inmost thoughts—and the thunder
of her voice circled through the labouring breast, rousing deep and
scarce known feelings from their slumber? Who shall stalk over the
stage of horrors, its presiding genius, or ‘play the hostess,’ at
the banquetting scene of murder? Who shall walk in sleepless ecstasy
of soul, and haunt the mind’s eye ever after, with the dread
pageantry of suffering and of guilt? Who shall make tragedy once
more stand with its feet upon the earth, and with its head raised
above the skies, weeping tears and blood? That loss is not to be
repaired. While the stage lasts, there will never be another Mrs.
Siddons! Tragedy seemed to set with her; and the rest are but
blazing comets or fiery exhalations.—It is pride and happiness
enough for us to have lived at the same time with her, and one
person more! But enough on this subject. Those feelings that we are
most anxious to do justice to, are those to which it is impossible
we ever should!

To turn to something less serious. We have not the same pomp of
tragedy nor the same gentility, variety, and correctness in comedy.
There was the gay, fluttering, hair-brained Lewis; he that was
called ‘Gentleman Lewis,’—all life, and fashion, and volubility, and
whim; the greatest comic _mannerist_ that perhaps ever lived; whose
head seemed to be in his heels, and his wit at his fingers’ ends:
who never let the stage stand still, and made your heart light and
your head giddy with his infinite vivacity, and bustle, and hey-day
animal spirits. We wonder how Death ever caught him in his mad,
whirling career, or ever fixed his volatile spirit in a dull _caput
mortuum_ of dust and ashes? Nobody could break open a door, or jump
over a table, or scale a ladder, or twirl a cocked hat, or dangle a
cane, or play a jockey-nobleman, or a nobleman’s jockey, like him.
He was at Covent Garden. With him was Quick, who made an excellent
self-important, busy, strutting, money-getting citizen; or crusty
old guardian, in a brown suit and a bob wig. There was also Munden,
who was as good an actor then, as he is now; and Fawcett, who was at
that time a much better one than he is at present. He, of late,
seems to slur over his parts, wishes to merge the actor in the
manager, and is grown serious before retiring from the stage. But a
few years back (when he ran the race of popularity with Jack
Bannister) nobody could give the _view holla_ of a fox-hunting
country squire like him; and he sung AMO AMAS, as Lingo in the
Agreeable Surprise, in a style of pathos to melt the heart of the
young apprentices in the two shilling gallery. But he appears to
have grown averse to his profession, and indifferent to the applause
he might acquire himself, and to the pleasures he used to give to
others. In turbulent and pragmatical characters, and in all that
cast of parts which may be called the _slang_ language of comedy, he
hardly had his equal. Perhaps he might consider this walk of his art
as beneath his ambition; but, in our judgment, whatever a man can do
best, is worth his doing. At the same house was little Simmons, who
remained there till lately, like a veteran at his post, till he fell
down a flight of steps and broke his neck, without any one’s seeming
to know or care about the matter. Though one of those ‘who had
gladdened life,’ his death by no means ‘eclipsed the gaiety of
nations.’ The public are not grateful. They make an effort of
generosity, collect all their reluctant admiration into a heap, and
offer it up with servile ostentation at the shrine of some great
name, which they think reflects back its lustre on the worshippers.
Or, like fashionable creditors, they pay their debts of honour for
the _eclat_ of the thing, and neglect the claims of humbler but
sterling merit; such as was that of Simmons, one of the most
correct, pointed, _naive_, and whimsical comic actors, we have for a
long time had, or are likely to have again. He was not a buffoon,
but a real actor. He did not play _himself_, nor play tricks, but
played the part the author had assigned him. This was the great
merit of the good old style of acting. He fitted into it like a
brilliant into the setting of a ring, or as the ring fits the
finger. We shall look for him often in Filch, in which his
appearance was a continual _double entendre_, with one eye leering
at his neighbour’s pockets, and the other turned to the
gallows:—also in the spangled Beau Mordecai, in Moses, in which he
had all the precision, the pragmaticalness, and impenetrable secresy
of the Jew money-lender; and in my Lord Sands, where he had all the
stage to himself, and seemed to fill it by the singular
insignificance of his person, and the infinite airs he gave himself.
We shall look for him in these and many other parts, but in vain, or
for any one equal to him.

At the other house, there was King, whose acting left a taste on the
palate, sharp and sweet like a quince; with an old, hard, rough,
withered face, like a John-apple, puckered up into a thousand
wrinkles; with shrewd hints and tart replies; ‘with nods and becks
and wreathed smiles;’ who was the real amorous, wheedling, or hasty,
choleric, peremptory old gentleman in Sir Peter Teazle and Sir
Anthony Absolute; and the true, that is, the pretended, clown in
Touchstone, with wit sprouting from his head like a pair of ass’s
ears, and folly perched on his cap like the horned owl. There was
Parsons too, whom we just remember like a worn-out ‘suit of office’
in Elbow; and Dodd in Acres, who had the most extraordinary way of
hitching in a meaning, or subsiding into blank folly with the best
grace in nature; and whose courage seemed literally to ooze out of
his fingers in the preparations for the duel. There was Suett, the
delightful old croaker, the everlasting Dicky Gossip of the stage;
and, with him, Jack Bannister, whose gaiety, good humour, cordial
feeling, and natural spirits, shone through his characters, and
lighted them up like a transparency. Bannister did not go out of
himself to take possession of his part, but put it on over his
ordinary dress, like a _surtout_, snug, warm, and comfortable. He
let his personal character appear through; and it was one great
charm of his acting. In Lenitive, in the Prize, when the beau is
ingrafted on the apothecary, he came out of his shell like the
aurelia out of the grub; and surely never lighted on the stage,
which he hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision—gilding,
and cheering the motley sphere he just began to move in—shining like
a gilded pill, fluttering like a piece of gold-leaf, gaudy as a
butterfly, loud as a grasshopper, full of life, and laughter, and
joy. His Scrub, in which he spouts a torrent of home-brewed ale
against the ceiling, in a sudden fit of laughter at the waggeries of
his brother Martin;—his Son-in-law; his part in the Grandmother; his
Autolycus; his Colonel Feignwell; and his Walter in the Children in
the Wood, were all admirable. Most of his characters were exactly
fitted for him—for his good-humoured smile, his buoyant activity,
his kind heart, and his honest face: and no one else could do them
so well, because no one else could play Jack Bannister. He was, some
time since, seen casting a wistful eye at Drury-lane theatre, and no
doubt thinking of past times: others who also cast a wistful eye at
it, do not forget him when they think of old and happy times! There
were Bob and Jack Palmer, the Brass and Dick of the Confederacy; the
one the pattern of an elder, the other of a younger brother. There
was Wewitzer, the trustiest of Swiss valets, and the most ‘secret
Tattle’ of the stage. There was, and there still is, Irish
Johnstone, with his supple knees, his hat twisted round in his hand,
his good-humoured laugh, his arched eye-brows, his insinuating leer,
and his lubricated _brogue_, curling round the ear like a well oiled
mustachio. These were all the men. Then there was Miss Farren, with
her fine-lady airs and graces, with that elegant turn of her head,
and motion of her fan, and tripping of her tongue; and Miss Pope,
the very picture of a Duenna, a maiden lady, or an antiquated
dowager—the latter spring of beauty, the second childhood of vanity,
more quaint, fantastic, and old-fashioned, more pert, frothy, and
light-headed than any thing that can be imagined; embalmed in the
follies, preserved in the spirit of affectation of the last age:—and
then add to these, Mrs. Jordan, the child of nature, whose voice was
a cordial to the heart, because it came from it, rich, full, like
the luscious juice of the ripe grape; to hear whose laugh was to
drink nectar; whose smile ‘made a sunshine,’ not ‘in the shady
place,’ but amidst dazzling lights and in glad theatres:—who ‘talked
far above singing,’ and whose singing was like the twang of Cupid’s
bow. Her person was large, soft, and generous like her soul. It has
been attempted to compare Miss Kelly to her. There is no comparison.
Miss Kelly is a shrewd, clever, arch, lively girl; tingles all over
with suppressed sensibility; licks her lips at mischief, bites her
words in two, or lets a sly meaning out of the corners of her eyes;
is fidgetty with curiosity, or unable to stand still for spite:—she
is always uneasy and always interesting; but Mrs. Jordan was all
exuberance and grace, ‘her bounty was as boundless as the sea; her
love as deep.’ It was her capacity for enjoyment, and the contrast
she presented to every thing sharp, angular, and peevish, that
communicated the same genial heartfelt satisfaction to the
spectator. Her Nell, for instance, was right royal like her liquor,
and wrapped up in measureless content with lambs’ wool. Miss Kelly
is a dextrous knowing chambermaid: Mrs. Jordan had nothing dexterous
or knowing about her. She was Cleopatra turned into an oyster-wench,
without knowing that she was Cleopatra, or caring that she was an
oyster-wench. An oyster-wench, such as she was, would have been
equal to a Cleopatra; and an Antony would not have deserted her for
the empire of the world!

From the favourite actors of a few years back, we turn to those of
the present day: and we shall speak of them, not with grudging or
stinted praise.