Chapter XXV: Preface (16)

We saw Mr. Kean at his benefit at the risk of our limbs, and are
sorry for the accident that happened to himself in the course of the
evening. We have longed ever since we saw Mr. Kean—that is, any time
these six years—to see him jump through a trap-door—hearing he could
do it. ‘Why are those things hid? Is this a time to conceal
virtues?’ said we to ourselves. What was our disappointment, then,
when on the point of this consummation of our wishes—just in the
moment of the projection of our hopes—when dancing with Miss Valancy
too, he broke the tendon Achilles, and down fell all our promised
pleasure, our castles in the air! Good-reader, it was not the jump
through the trap-door that we wished literally to see; but the leap
from Othello to Harlequin. What a jump! What an interval, what a
gulph to pass! What an elasticity of soul and body too—what a
diversity of capacity in the same diminutive person! To be Othello,
a man should be all passion, abstraction, imagination: to be
Harlequin, he should have his wits in his heels, and in his fingers’
ends! To be both, is impossible, or miraculous. Each doubles the
wonder of the other; and in judging of the aggregate amount of
merit, we must proceed, not by the rules of addition, but multiply
Harlequin’s lightness into Othello’s gravity, and the result will
give us the sum total of Mr. Kean’s abilities. What a spring, what
an expansive force of mind, what an untamed vigour, to rise to such
a height from such a lowness; to tower like a Phoenix from its
ashes; to ascend like a pyramid of fire! Why, what a complex piece
of machinery is here; what an involution of faculties, circle within
circle, that enables the same individual to make a summersault, and
that swells the veins of his forehead with true artificial passion,
and that turns him to a marble statue with thought! It is not being
educated in the fourth form of St. Paul’s school, or cast in the
antique mould of the high Roman fashion, that can do this; but it is
genius alone that can raise a man thus above his first origin, and
make him thus various from himself! It is bestriding the microcosm
of man like a Colossus, and, by uniting the extremes of the chain of
being, seemingly implies all the intermediate links. We do not think
much of Mr. Kean’s singing: we could, with a little practice and
tuition, sing nearly as well ourselves: as for his dancing, it is
but _so so_, and anybody can dance: his fencing is good, nervous,
firm, fibrous, like that of a new pocket Hercules:—but for his
jumping through a hole in the wall,—clean through, head over heels,
like a shot out of culverin—‘by Heavens, it would have been great!’
This we fully expected at his hands, and ‘in this expectation we
were baulked.’ Just as our critical expectations were on tip-toe,
Mr. Kean suddenly strained his ancle:—as it were to spite us;—we
went out in dudgeon, and were near missing his Imitations, which
would not have signified much if we had. They were tolerable,
indifferent, pretty good, but not the thing. Mr. Matthews’s or Mr.
Yates’s are better. They were softened down, and fastidious. Kemble
was not very like. Incledon and Braham were the best, and Munden was
very middling. The after-piece of the Admirable Crichton, in which
he was to do all this, was neither historical nor dramatic. The
character, which might have given excellent opportunities for the
display of a variety of extraordinary accomplishments in the real
progress of the story, was ill-conceived and ill-managed. He was
made either a pedagogue or an antic. In himself, he was dull
and grave, instead of being high-spirited, volatile, and
self-sufficient; and to show off his abilities, he was put into
masquerade. We did not like it at all; though, from the prologue, we
had expected more point and daring. Mr. Kean’s Jaffier was fine, and
in some parts admirable. This indeed, is only to say that he played
it. But it was not one of his finest parts, nor indeed one in which
we expected him to shine pre-eminently: but on that we had not
depended, for we never know beforehand what he will do best or
worst. He is one of those wandering fires, whose orbit is not
calculable by any known rules of criticism. Mr. Elliston’s Pierre,
was, we are happy to say, a spirited and effectual performance. We
must not forget to add that Mrs. M’Gibbon’s Belvidera was excellent,
declaimed with impassioned propriety, and acted with dignity and
grace.

‘And what of this new opera of David Rizzio, that the _New Times_
makes such a rout about?’—Nothing. ‘Nothing can come of nothing.’ We
truly and strictly could not make a word of sense of it. We wonder
whose it can be. It is praised too in the Chronicle; but that is no
matter. The story promised much; the music, the old Scotch tunes,
more. They were both completely _transmogrified_,—they melted into
thin air. The author set aside the one, and the composers (of whom
there are no less than five) the other. This required some
ingenuity. The plot turns altogether upon this, that Rizzio (Braham)
is supposed and made to be in love with Lady Mary Livingstone (Miss
Carew), and by warbling out her Christian name in ballads in the
open air, is imagined, by Darnley and the rest, to be in love
with Mary, Queen of Scots (Mrs. West), from which strange
misinterpretation all the mischief and confusion ensue. We fancy
there is no foundation for this in tradition or old records. The
author has indeed reversed the method of the writer of the Scotch
Novels, for, instead of building as much as possible on facts and
history, he has built as little as possible on them—and has produced
just the contrary effect of the Great Unknown, that is, has spun a
tissue of incidents and sentiments out of his own head, worth
nothing, unmeaning, feeble, languid, disjointed, and for the most
part, incomprehensible. Most of the scenes in the two first acts,
consisted of the Exits and Entrances of single persons, who only
appeared to deliver an introductory speech, and sing a song, and
then vanished before any one else could come on to entrap them into
a dialogue—a delicate evasion of the wily dramatist! Mr. Barnard
repeated these Operatic soliloquies so often, as to be almost hissed
off the stage, and Miss Povey (his sweetheart) by coming to his
relief half a minute after he was gone, did not much mend the
matter, either by the charms of her voice or person. This young lady
is pretty, and sings agreeably enough, but we do not see what she
can have to do with romantic sentiments or situations. Some of those
in which she was placed, would require the utmost delicacy of the
most accomplished heroine to carry them off without an obtrusive
sense of impropriety. For instance, after warbling a ditty to the
desert air of Holyrood House, she retires into a summer-house hard
by, to keep an assignation with the persuasive Mr. Barnard, and is
presently surprised and carried off, instead of the silver-voiced
Carew, by a band of ruffians, who—on her making many exclamations,
and repeating ‘Oh! dear me!’ and saying she only came to meet a
young man—reply very laconically, ‘Aye, you came to meet one young
man, and now you have met with four—that’s better!’ In the last
scene, the catastrophe is brought about by Rizzio’s being discovered
by the conspirators at a magnificent entertainment in the apartment
of the Queen, which confirms their former suspicions and infuriates
their revenge; and he is hurried from her frantic embraces, which
display all the tenderness of a mistress, rather than the attachment
of a sovereign, to be despatched in the adjoining chamber. His
assassins find their error too late, when, from the passionate
declaration of Lady Mary Livingstone that she is his wife, they are
convinced of his and the Queen’s innocence. The lesson to be drawn
from this fiction, seems to be, that ladies (whether Princesses or
not) who defy opinion, must take the consequences of their
infatuated self-indulgence, or involve others in ruin: for the
presumption is, that no woman in her senses will risk her character,
unless she has a further object in view, namely, to gratify her
passions. This was not, however, the inference drawn by the
generality of the audience; for several passages, construed in
allusion to passing events, were loudly and triumphantly cheered.
They, indeed, saved the piece from final and absolute damnation, for
it drooped from the beginning, and to the end, and had no other
interest than what arose from the occasional parallelism of
political situations. Mr. Braham (as David Rizzio) disappointed us
much. He sung the airs he had probably himself selected, without any
affectation indeed—‘softly sweet in Lydian measures’—but without any
effect whatever upon our ears; he fell into simplicity and
insipidity, plump together, ten thousand fathoms down. The other
singers acquitted themselves very well, but there was nothing to
excite an interest in itself, or to answer the previous expectations
arising from the title of the piece. We had hoped to have been
treated to some old Scotch airs, at least: but the joint-composers
seemed to have a strong aversion to any thing connected with the
sound of a bagpipe. This we suppose is a symptom of the progress of
a more refined taste among us. The causes of our want of sympathy
with it have been explained above. The piece has been repeated once
or twice since.

Giovanni in London has been transferred to this theatre (Drury Lane)
from the Olympic. It was a favourite with the town there; it has
become a favourite with the town here. There is something in
burlesque that pleases. We like to see the great degraded to a level
with the little. The humour is extravagant and coarse, but it is
certainly droll; and we never check our inclinations to laugh, when
we have an opportunity given us. We have not laughed so heartily a
long time, as at seeing the meddlesome lawyer tossed in a blanket in
the King’s Bench; and we should imagine there is a natural and
inevitable connection between the performance of that gentle
salutary mode of discipline, and the titillation of the lungs of the
spectators. Madame Vestris played, sung, and looked the incorrigible
Don John very prettily and spiritedly; but, we confess, we had
rather see her petticoated than in a Spanish doublet and hose, hat
and feather. Yet she gave a life to the scene, and Pluto relented as
she sung. There is a pulpy softness and ripeness in her lips, a
roseate hue, like the leaves of the damask rose, a luscious honeyed
sound in her voice, a depth and fulness too, as if it were clogged
with its own sweets, a languid archness, an Italian lustre in her
eye, an enchanting smile, a mouth—shall we go on? No. But she is
more bewitching even than Miss Brunton. Yet we like to see her best
in petticoats. It cannot be denied that Mrs. Gould (late Miss
Burrell) of the Olympic, who played it first, was the girl to play
Giovanni in London. She had a hooked nose, large staring eyes, a
manlike voice, a tall person, a strut that became a rake.

‘She forgot to be a woman: changed fear, and niceness,
(The hand maids of all women, or more truly
Woman its pretty-self) into a waggish courage;
Ready in gibes, quick answered, saucy, and
As quarrellous as the weasel.’

All this Madame Vestris attempts; but in spite of her efforts to the
contrary, she shrinks back into feminine softness and delicacy, and
her heart evidently fails her, and flutters, ‘like a new ta’en
sparrow,’ in the midst of all her pretended swaggering and
determination to brazen the matter out. On the night we saw this
afterpiece, Mr. Knight played Leporello, instead of Mr. Harley: so
that we can praise neither.

L.

No. VIII

_August, 1820._

It is now the middle of July, when we are by turns drenched with
showers and scorched with sun-beams: the winter theatres are closed,
and the summer ones have just opened, soon to close again—

‘Like marigolds with the sun’s eye.’

We are not, however, in the number of those who deprecate the
shortness of the summer season, as one of the miseries of human
life, or who think little theatres better than big. We like a
play-house in proportion to the number of happy human faces it
contains (and a play-house seldom contains many wretched ones)—and
again we like a play best when we do not see the faces of the actors
too near. We do not want to be informed, as at the little theatre in
the Haymarket, that part of the rich humour of Mr. Liston’s face
arises from his having lost a tooth in front, nor to see Mr. Jones’s
eyes roll more meteorous than ever. At the larger theatres we only
discover that the ladies paint red: at the smaller ones we can
distinguish when they paint white. We see defects enough at a
distance, and we can always get near enough (in the pit) to see the
beauties. Those who go to the boxes do not go to see the play, but
to make a figure, and be thought something of themselves (so far
they probably succeed, at least in their own opinion): and if the
Gods cannot hear, they make themselves heard. We do not like
_private theatricals_. We like every thing to be what it is. We have
no fancy for seeing the actors look like part of the audience, nor
for seeing the pit invade the boxes, nor the boxes shake hands with
the galleries. We are for a proper distinction of ranks—at the
theatre. While we are laughing at the broad farcical humour of the
Agreeable Surprise, or critically examining Mrs. Mardyn’s dress in
the Will, we do not care to be disturbed by some idle whisper, or
mumbling disapprobation of an old beau, or antiquated dowager in a
high head-dress, close at our ear, but in a different part of the
house.—Mr. Arnold has taken care of this at the New English
Opera-house in the Strand, of which he is proprietor and patentee.
The ‘Great Vulgar and the Small’ (as Cowley has it) are there kept
at a respectful distance. The boxes are perched up so high above the
pit, that it gives you a head-ache to look up at the beauty and
fashion that nightly adorn them with their thin and scattered
constellations; and then the gallery is ‘raised so high above all
height,’ it is nearly impossible for the eye to scale it, while a
little miserable shabby upper-gallery is partitioned off with an
iron railing, through which the poor one-shilling devils look like
half-starved prisoners in the Fleet, and are a constant butt of
ridicule to the genteeler rabble beneath them. Then again (so vast
is Mr. Arnold’s genius for separating and combining), you have a
Saloon, a sweet pastoral retreat, where any love-sick melancholy
swain, or romantic nymph, may take a rural walk to Primrose-hill, or
Chalk-farm, by the side of painted purling streams, and sickly
flowering shrubs, without once going out of the walls of the
theatre:—

‘Such tricks hath strong Imagination!’

If the Haymarket has been praised by a contemporary critic (of whom
we might say, that he is _alter et idem_) for being as hot as an
oven in the midst of the dog-days; the Lyceum, on the other hand, is
as cool as a well; and much might, we think, be said on both sides.
As a matter of taste, or fancy, or prejudice, (we shall not pretend
to say which) we do not greatly like the new English Opera-house.
The house is _new_, the pieces are _new_, the company are _new_, and
we do not know what to make of any of them. As to the things that
are acted there, they are a sort of pert, patched-up, insipid,
flippant attempt at mediocrity. They are like the odd-ends and
scraps of all the rejected pieces, which have come into the
manager’s possession in virtue of his office for a length of time;
and which he has stitched and tacked together in such a way that
neither the authors nor the public can know any thing of the matter.
They are a condensed essence of all the vapid stuff that has been
suppressed at home or acted abroad for a number of years last past.
Visions of farces, operas, and interludes, thin, blue, fluttering,
gawzy appearances, mock the empty sight, elude the public
comprehension, and the critic’s grasp. The worst of these slender,
wire-drawn productions is, that there is nothing to praise in them,
nor any thing to condemn. They ‘present no mark’ to friend or foe.
‘You may as well take aim at the edge of a pen-knife,’ as try to
pick any thing out of them. They are trifling, tedious, frivolous,
and vexatious. The best is, they do not last long, and ‘one bubble’
(to borrow an illusion from an eloquent divine, in treating on a
graver subject) ‘knocks another on the head, and both rush together
into oblivion!’—Miss Kelly is here; she might as well be a hundred
miles off. She is not good at child’s play, at the _make-believe_
fine-lady, or the _make-believe_ waiting-maid. Hers is _bonâ fide_
downright acting, and she must have something to do, in order to do
it properly. She is too clever and too knowing to act a part totally
without meaning, such as that lately given her in the Promissory
Note. Such was not her Yarico. Ah! there were tones, and looks, and
piercing sighs in her representation of the fond, injured, sun-burnt
Indian maid, that make it difficult to think of her in any inferior
part, or to speak slightingly of any theatre in which she is
concerned: but critics, as it has been said of judges, must not give
way to their feelings. There is Wrench here too, as easy as an old
glove, the same careless, hair-brained, idle, impudent, good
humoured, lackadaisical sort of a gentleman as ever; there is Harley
too, who has not been spoiled by the town, since we first saw him
here:—then there is Mr. Rowbotham, a grave young man, a new hand,
very like the real, the prudent Mr. Thomas Inkle: _encore un coup_,
we have Mr. Bartley, who, if not a new hand, is fresh returned from
America, and as much at home on these boards as before he went
abroad: in the Governor of Barbadoes, he had quite a Transatlantic
look with him: there is also Mr. Westbourn (we think he is at this
house) and a Mr. Wilkinson, and a Mr. Richardson (whose names and
persons we are apt to confound together), and Mr. Pearman (whom it
is not possible to mistake for any one else) and Miss Stevenson (a
very provoking young thing), and Miss Love, and Mrs. Grove, and a
whole _Sylva Critica_ of actors and actresses, of whom the very
nomenclature terrifies us. We give it up in despair: and so humbly
take our leave of the New English Opera house for the season!—‘We
had rather be taxed for silence, than checked for speech.’

At the other house, to which we ‘do more favourably incline,’ both
from old associations and immediate liking, though there are some
raw recruits (picked up we don’t know where), there is a large and
powerful detachment from the veteran corps of Covent Garden; Terry,
Jones, Mrs. Gibbs, Liston, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kemble, J. Russel,
Farley, and Mrs. Mardyn and Madame Vestris from Drury-Lane, and
last, Miss R. Corri, from the Opera House.—In fact, it is our
opinion that there is theatrical strength enough in this town only
to set up one good summer or one good winter theatre. Competition
may be necessary to prevent negligence and abuse, but the result of
this distribution of the _corps dramatique_ into different
companies, is, that we never, or very rarely indeed, see a play well
acted in all its parts. At Drury-Lane there is only one tragic
actor, Mr. Kean: all the rest are supernumeraries. No one, we
apprehend, would ever cross the threshold to see Mr. Pope’s Iago, or
Mr. Elliston’s Richmond, or Mr. Rae’s Bassanio, or Mr. Hamblin, or
Mr. Penley, or Mr. Fisher, or Mr. Philips, who plays the King in
Hamlet: though, ‘in the catalogue they go for actors.’ In comedy,
Drury-Lane is better off: yet, they cannot get up a real sterling
comedy, for want of actors and actresses to fill the parts of
_gentlemen_ and _ladies_. Miss Kelly is the best comic actress on
either stage, but she is only an appendage to the real fine lady,
Millamant’s Mrs. Mincing, ‘to curl her hair so crisp and pure’: in
cases of necessity, they have no one but Mr. Penley, jun. to top the
part of Lord Foppington: Mr. Munden is their Sir Peter Teazle, and
Mr. Elliston is his own Lord Townley. But they really hit off a
modern comedy, such as Wild Oats, which is a mixture of farce and
romantic sentiment, to an exact perfection. At Covent-Garden they
lately had one great tragic actress, Miss O’Neill; and two or three
actors who were highly respectable, at least in second-rate tragic
characters. At present, the female throne in tragedy is vacant; and
of the men ‘who rant and fret their hour upon the stage,’ Mr.
Macready is the only one who draws houses, or who finds admirers. He
shines most, however, in the pathos of domestic life; and we still
want to see tragedy, ‘turretted, crowned, and crested, with its
front gilt, and blood-stained,’ stooping from the skies (not raised
from the earth) as it did in the person of John Kemble. He is now
quaffing health and burgundy in the south of France. He perhaps
finds the air that blows from the ‘vine-covered hills’ wholesomer
than that of a crowded house; and the lengthened murmurs of the
Mediterranean shores more soothing to the soul, than the deep
thunders of the pit. Or does he sometimes recline his lofty,
laurelled head upon the sea-beat beach, and unlocking the cells of
memory, listen to the rolling Pæans, the loud never-to-be-forgotten
plaudits of enraptured multitudes, that mingle with the music of the
waves,

‘And murmur as the Ocean murmurs near?’

Or does he still ‘sigh his soul towards England’ and the busy hum of
Covent-Garden? If we thought so, (but that we dread all returns from
Elba) we would say to him, ‘Come back, and once more bid Britannia
rival old Greece and Rome!’—Or where is Mr. Young now? There is an
opening for _his_ pretensions too.—If the Drury-Lane company are
deficient in genteel comedy, we fear that Covent-Garden cannot help
them out in this respect. Mr. W. Farren is the only exception to the
sweeping clause we were going to insert against them. He plays the
old gentleman, the antiquated beau of the last age, very much after
the fashion that we remember to have seen in our younger days, and
that is quite a singular excellence in this. Is it that Mr. Farren
has caught glimpses of this character in real life, hovering in the
horizon of the sister kingdom, which has been long banished from
this? They have their Castle Rack-rents, their moats and ditches,
still extant in remote parts of the interior: and perhaps in famed
Dublin city, the _cheveux-de-fris_ of dress, the trellis-work of
lace and ruffles, the masked battery of compliment, the
port-cullises of formal speech, the whole artillery of sighs and
ogling, with all the appendages and proper costume of the ancient
regime, and paraphernalia of the _preux chevalier_, may have been
kept up in a state of lively decrepitude and smiling dilapidation,
in a few straggling instances from the last century, which Mr.
Farren had seen. The present age produces nothing of the sort; and
so, according to our theory, Mr. Farren does not play the young
gentleman or modern man of fashion, though he is himself a young
man. For the rest, comedy is in a rich, thriving state at
Covent-Garden, as far as the lower kind of comic humour is
concerned; but it is like an ill-baked pudding, where all the plums
sink to the bottom. Emery and Liston, the two best, are of this
description: Jones is a caricaturist; and Terry, in his graver
parts, is not a comedian, but a moralist.—Even a junction of the two
companies into one would hardly furnish out one set of players
competent to do justice to any of the standard productions of the
English stage in tragedy or comedy: what a hopeful project it must
be then to start a few more play-houses in the heart of the
metropolis as nurseries of histrionic talent, still more to divide
and dissipate what little concentration of genius we have, and still
more to weaken and distract public patronage? As to the argument in
favour of two or more theatres from the necessity of competition, we
shall not dispute it; but the actual benefits are not so visible to
our dim eyes as to some others. There is a competition in what is
bad as well as in what is good: the race of popularity is as often
gained by tripping up the heels of your antagonist, as by pressing
forward yourself: there is a competition in running an indifferent
piece, or a piece indifferently acted, to prevent the success of the
same piece at the other house; and there is a competition in
puffing, as Mr. Elliston can witness.—No, there we confess, he
leaves all competition behind!

The two pleasantest pieces we have seen this season at the Haymarket
are the Green Man, and Pigeons and Crows. They were both to us an
Agreeable Surprise; for we had not seen them when they were brought
out last year, or the year before. The first is moral and pointed;
the latter more lively and quaint. The Green Man abounds in laconic
good sense: in Pigeons and Crows there is as edifying a vein of
nonsense. We do not know the author of this last piece (to whom we
confess ourselves obliged for two mirthful, thoughtless evenings),
but we understand that the Green Man is adapted by Mr. Jones from a
French _petite pièce_, which was itself taken from a German novel,
we believe one of Kotzebue’s. The sentiments indeed are evidently of
that romantic, levelling cast, which formerly abounded in the
writings of the _ci-devant_ philanthropic enthusiast. The principal
character in it is that of the Green Man himself, who is a
benevolent, blunt-spoken, friendly cynic. The only joke of the
character consists in his being dressed all in green—he has a green
coat, a green waistcoat and breeches, green stockings, a green hat,
a green pocket handkerchief, and a green watch. This gives rise to
many pleasant allusions; and indeed, from the manner in which the
peculiarity of his personal appearance affects our notion of his
personal identity, he looks like a talking suit of clothes, a
sermonizing and sententious vegetable. Mr. Terry performs the part
admirably, and seems himself transformed into ‘a brother of the
groves.’ He does not aggravate the author’s meaning too much, but
gives just as much point as was intended, and passes on to what
comes next, as naturally, and with that sort of manner and
unconscious interest which a man really takes in his own, or other
people’s affairs. Mr. Terry’s acting always shows vigour and good
sense. His only fault is, that he is too jealous of himself, and
strives to do better than well. In the Green Man he was quite at
home, and quite at his ease; and made every one else feel equally
so. Mr. Jones is an overstarched French fop in this play, full of
foreign grimace and affectation, of which, however, he is cured by
his passion for the fair ward of the Green Man (Miss Leigh, a very
pleasing new actress), who does not at all tolerate such
impertinence, and he afterwards turns out (_dandyism_ apart) a very
good sort of a humane character. Perhaps, enough has never been made
on the stage of the frequent contradiction in this respect between
outside appearances and sterling qualities within. We carry our
prejudices both for and against dress too far. It is no rule either
way. A fop is not necessarily a fool, nor without feeling. A man may
even wear stays, and not be effeminate; or a pink coat, without
making his friends blush for him. The celebrated beau, Hervey, threw
the scavenger that ridiculed him into his own mud-cart; and a person
in our own time, who has carried extravagance of dress and
appearance to a very great pitch indeed, is, in reality, a very
good-natured, sensible, modest man. The fault, in such cases, is
neither in the head nor heart, but in the cut of a coat-collar, or
the size of a pair of whiskers.—Farley and J. Russell were Major
Dumpling and Captain Bibber in the same piece: and a scene of high
farce they made of it. The one is an officer in the army, the _local
militia_; the other is an officer in the navy. The one excels in
eating, the other in drinking. The one is most at home in the
kitchen, the other in the cellar. The one is fat, huge, and
unwieldy; the other, dapper, tight, and bustling. Farley is an actor
with whose merit, in such parts, the public are well acquainted:
Russel is one who will be liked more, the more he is known. Both in
Captain Bibber, Blondeau, the French showman in Pigeons and Crows,
and in Silvester Daggerwood, he has acquitted himself with great
applause, and entered into the humour, eccentricity, and peculiar
distinctions of his characters, with spirit and fidelity. His
mimicry is also good, and he sings a French rondeau, or a sailor’s
ditty, _con amore_. The part of Major Dumpling was originally played
by Mr. Tokely. It was one of three parts (Crockery and Peter
Pastoral were the other two) for which he seemed born, and having
rolled himself up in them, like the silk-worm, he died. Poor Tokely!
He relished his parts; with Crockery doated over an old sign-post,
or wept with honest Peter over a green leaf.

‘His tears were tears of oil and gladness.’

But he also relished his morning’s draught, and sipped the sweets
till he was drowned in a butt of whiskey. The said fair-looking,
round-faced, pot-bellied, uncouth, awkward, out-of-the-way,
unmeaning, inimitable Crockery, or Peter Pastoral, or Major
Dumpling, was the very little child that, in the year 1796, Kemble
used to carry off triumphantly on his arm in the original
performance of Pizarro! Thinking of these things, may we not say,
_sic transit gloria mundi_? So flies the stage away, and life flies
after it as fast!—Mrs. Gibbs, ‘that horse-whipping woman,’ in
Teazing made Easy, does not, however, wear the willow on his
account, but looks as smiling, as good-humoured, as buxom, as in the
natural and professional life-time of Mr. Tokely, and drinks her
bowl of cream as Cowslip, and expresses her liking of a roast-duck
with the same resignation of flesh and spirit as ever.

Mr. Liston in Pigeons and Crows plays the part of Sir Peter
Pigwiggin, knight, alderman, and pin-maker. What a name, what a
person, and what a representative! We never saw Mr. Liston’s
countenance in better preservation; that is, it seems tumbling all
in pieces with indescribable emotions, and a thousand odd twitches,
and unaccountable absurdities, oozing out at every pore. His jaws
seem to ache with laughter: his eyes look out of his head with
wonder: his face is unctuous all over and bathed with jests; the tip
of his nose is tickled with conceit of himself, and his teeth
chatter in his head in the eager insinuation of a plot: his forehead
speaks, and his wig (not every particular hair, but the whole
bewildered bushy mass) ‘stands on end as life were in it.’ In the
scene with his dulcinea (Miss Leigh) his approaches are the height
of self-complacent, _cockney_ courtship; his rhymes on his own
projected marriage,

‘What a thing!
Bless the King!’

would make any man (who is not so already) loyal, and his laughing
in the glass when he is told by mistake that Miss’s mamma is
eighteen, and his convulsive distortions as he recovers from his
first surprise, and the choking effects of it, out-Hogarth Hogarth!

‘Let those laugh now who never laugh’d before,
And those who still have laugh’d, now laugh the more.’

The scene where he is told he is poisoned, and his interview with
the drunken apothecary (Mr. Williams), though excellent in
themselves, were not so good: for Liston does not play so well to
any one else, as he does to himself. The rest of the characters were
well supported. Jones, as the younger Pigwiggin, alias Captain
Neville, the lover of Liston’s fair inamorata, ‘does a little bit of
fidgets’ very well. He is sprightly, voluble, knowing, and pleasant;
and is the life of a small theatre, only that he is now and then a
little too obstreperous; but he keeps up the interest of his part,
and that is every thing. The audience delight to hear his ‘View
Halloa’ before he comes on the stage (which is a sure sign of their
opinion), and expect to be amused for the next ten minutes. If an
actor can excite hope, and not disappoint it, what can he do more?
Mr. Russell, as the little French showman, Mr. Farley as Mr. Wadd,
and Mr. Connor as a blundering Irish servant, all sustained their
parts with great eclat: and so did the ladies. The scene where Jones
deceives two of his creditors, Russell and Farley, by appointing
each to pay the other, had a very laughable effect; but the
stratagem is borrowed from Congreve, who indeed was not the very
worst source to borrow from.

The house was crowded to excess to see the new appearances in the
Beggar’s Opera; Madame Vestris’s Captain Macheath, Miss R. Corri’s
Polly, and Mrs. Charles Kemble’s Lucy, which last, indeed, is an old
friend with a new face. Mrs. Kemble was the best Lucy we ever saw
(not excepting Miss Kelly, who is also much at home in this part),
and she retains all the spirit of her original performances. Miss
Kelly plays Lucy as naturally, perhaps more so; but Mrs. Kemble does
it more characteristically. She has no ‘compunctious visitings’ of
delicacy, but her mind seems hardened against the walls that enclose
it. She is Lockitt’s daughter, the child of a prison; the true
virago, that is to be the foil to the gentle spirit of Polly. The
air with which she throws the rat to the cat in the song has a
_gusto_ worthy of one of Michael Angelo’s Sybils; a box on the ear
from her right hand is no jesting matter. Her rage and sullenness
are of the true unmitigated stamp, and her affected civilities to
her fair rival are a parody (as the author intended) on the
friendships of courts.—Madame Vestris, as the Captain, almost shrunk
before her, like Viola before her enraged enemies. Indeed, she
played the part very prettily, with great vivacity and an agreeable
swagger, cocking her hat, throwing back her shoulders, and making a
free use of a rattan-cane, like Little Pickle, but she did not look
like the hero, or the highwayman, if this was desirable in her case.
If, however, she turned Macheath into a _petit-maitre_, she did not
play it like Mr. Incledon or Mr. Cooke, or Mr. Braham, or Mr. Young,
or any one else we have seen in it, which is no small commendation.
Miss Corri sang _Cease your funning_, and one or two other songs,
with sweetness and effect; but, in general, she was more like a
modern made-up boarding-school girl, than the artless and elegant
Polly. She lisps and looks pretty. The other parts were very
respectably filled, but some of the best scenes (we are sorry to say
it) were left out.

T.

No. IX

[_September, 1820._

DRURY LANE.—The following is a play-bill of this theatre, for which
we paid two-pence on the spot, to verify the fact—as some
well-disposed persons, to prevent mistakes, purchase libellous or
blasphemous publications from their necessitous or desperate
vendors.

_Theatre Royal, Drury Lane._—Agreeably to the former
advertisement, this theatre is now open for the last
performances of Mr. Kean, before his positive departure for
America. This evening, Saturday, August 19, 1820, his Majesty’s
servants will perform Shakespear’s tragedy of Othello. Duke of
Venice, Mr. Thompson; Brabantio, Mr. Powell; Gratiano, Mr. Carr;
Lodovico, Mr. Vining; Montano, Mr. Jeffries; Othello, Mr.
Kean—(his last appearance in that character); Cassio, Mr.
Bromley—(his first appearance in that character); Roderigo, Mr.
Russell; Iago, Junius Brutus Booth; Leonardo, Mr. Hudson; Julio,
Mr. Raymond; Manco, Mr. Moreton; Paulo, Mr. Read; Giovanni, Mr.
Starmer; Luca, Mr. Randall; Desdemona, Mrs. W. West; Emilia,
Mrs. Egerton—This theatre overflows every night. The patentees
cannot condescend to enter into a competition of scurrility
which is only fitted for minor theatres—what their powers really
are, will be, without any public appeal, legally decided in
November next, and any gasconade can only be supposed to be
caused by cunning or poverty.—After which, the farce of Modern
Antiques, &c.

A more impudent puff, and heartless piece of bravado than this, we
do not remember to have witnessed. _This theatre does not overflow
every night._ As to the competition of scurrility, which the manager
declines, it is he who has commenced it. The minor theatres—that is,
one of them—to wit, the Lyceum—put forth a very proper and
well-grounded remonstrance against this portentous opening of the
winter theatre in the middle of the dog-days, to scorch up the dry,
meagre, hasty harvest of the summer ones:—at which our mighty
manager sets up his back, like the great cat, Rodilardus; scornfully
rejects their appeal to the public; says he will pounce upon them in
November with the law in his hands; and that, in the mean time, all
they can do to interest the public in their favour by a plain
statement of facts, ‘can only be supposed to be caused by _cunning_
or _poverty_.’ This is pretty well for a manager who has been so
_thanked_ as Mr. Elliston! His own committee may laud him for
bullying other theatres, but the public will have a feeling for his
weaker rivals, though the angry comedian ‘should threaten to swallow
them up quick,’ and vaunt of his action of battery against them,
without any public appeal, ‘when wind and rain beat dark November
down.’ This sorry manager, ‘dressed’ (to use the words of the
immortal bard, whom he so modestly and liberally patronises)
‘dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks
before high Heaven,’—not ‘as make the angels weep,’—but his own
candle-snuffers laugh, and his own scene-shifters blush. He ought to
be ashamed of himself. Why, what a beggarly account of wretched
actors, what an exposure of the nakedness of the land, have we in
this very play-bill, which is issued forth with such a mixture of
pomp and imbecility! Mr. Kean’s name, indeed, stands pre-eminent in
lordly capitals, in defiance of Mr. Dowton’s resentment,—and Junius
Brutus Booth, in his way, scorns to be _Mistered_! But all the rest
are, we suppose—Mr. Elliston’s friends. They are happy in the favour
of the manager, and in the total ignorance of the town! Mr. Kean, we
grant, is in himself a host; a sturdy column, supporting the
tottering, tragic dome of Drury-Lane! What will it be when this
main, this sole striking pillar is taken away—‘You take my house,
when you do take the prop that holds my house’—when the patentees
shall have nothing to look to for salvation but the puffing of the
Great Lessee, and his genius for law, which we grant may rival the
Widow Black-acre’s—and when the cries of Othello, of Macbeth, of
Richard, and Sir Giles, in the last agonies of their despair, shall
be lost, through all the long winter months, ‘over a vast and
unhearing ocean?’ Mr. Elliston, instead of taking so much pains to
announce his own approaching dissolution, had better let Mr. Kean
pass in silence, and take his _positive departure for America_
without the pasting of placards, and the dust and clatter of a
law-suit in Westminster Hall. It is not becoming in him, W. R.
Elliston, Esq., comedian, formerly proprietor of the Surrey and the
Olympic, and author of a pamphlet on the unwarrantable encroachments
of the Theatres-royal, now to insult over the plea of self-defence
and self-preservation, set up by his brethren of the minor
play-houses, as the resource of ‘poverty and cunning!’—‘It is not
friendly, it is not gentlemanly. The profession, as well as Mr.
Arnold, may blame him for it:’ but the patentees will no doubt thank
him at their next quarterly meeting.

Mr. Kean’s Othello the other night did not quite answer our
over-wrought expectations. He played it _with variations_; and
therefore, necessarily worse. There is but one perfect way of
playing Othello, and that was the way in which he used to play it.
To see him in this character at his best, may be reckoned among the
consolations of the human mind. It is to feel our hearts bleed by
sympathy with another; it is to vent a world of sighs for another’s
sorrows; to have the loaded bosom ‘cleansed of that perilous stuff
that weighs upon the soul,’ by witnessing the struggles and the
mortal strokes that ‘flesh is heir to.’ We often seek this
deliverance from private woes through the actor’s obstetric art; and
it is hard when he disappoints us, either from indifference or
wilfulness. Mr. Kean did not repeat his admired farewell apostrophe
to Content, with that fine ‘organ-stop’ that he used,—as if his
inmost vows and wishes were ascending to the canopy of Heaven, and
their sounding echo were heard upon the earth like distant
thunder,—but in a querulous, whining, sobbing tone, which we do not
think right. Othello’s spirit does not sink under, but supports
itself on the retrospect of the past; and we should hear the lofty
murmurs of his departing hopes, his ambition and his glory, borne
onward majestically ‘to the passing wind.’ He pronounced the ‘not a
jot, not a jot,’ as an hysteric exclamation, not with the sudden
stillness of fixed despair. As we have seen him do this part before,
his lips uttered the words, but they produced and were caused by no
corresponding emotion in his breast. They were breath just playing
on the surface of his mind, but that did not penetrate to the soul.
His manner of saying to Cassio, ‘But never more be officer of mine,’
was in a tone truly terrific, magnificent, prophetic; and the only
alteration we remarked as an improvement. We have adverted to this
subject here, because we think Mr. Kean cannot wisely outdo himself.
He is always sufficiently original, sufficiently in extremes, and
when he attempts to vary from himself, and go still farther, we
think he has no alternative but to run into extravagance. It is true
it may be said of him that he is—

‘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._