upheld by the talents of one man, let them be ever so brilliant-two or three good lamps enliven the darkness much better than the most eyeblinding flashes of lightning; and Kean is not to be kept on the stage constantly, throughout five acts, as you may a glass chandelier. Goodfor-nothing people have a notion that the Drury Roscius has something to do with this beggarly array, and do not scruple to charge him with the "lowest players' vices-envy and jealousy, and miserable cravings after applause one who in the exercise of his profession is jealous, even of the women performers that stand in his way, full of tricks, stratagems, and finesse."-If these things were true, let him be whistled down the wind, a sport for chiding fortune; " for why should honour survive honesty?” But we have a better opinion of Mr. Kean's theatrical knowledge; he must be aware that his feeling and nature cut sadly against the coldness and impracticability of his colleagues, and that the audience soon get tired of his hectoring triumphs over their evident inferiority. There is no sport! he walks over the course; and tortstrung must those powers be which are not enervated by this dangerous facility. To our mind some trifling symptoms of this degeneracy are, if we may use the figure, creaming over the style of Kean. Flattery before him, and weakness beside him, have swelled a proper self-appreciation into a dreaming security; he seems, generally speaking, to have composed a sort of off-hand compendious theory of setting giddy palms in motion, lively and imposing, flashy and shallow, which, though more affected than the graceful majesty of John Kemble, is termed nature by his parasites. All these pictorially-mean and petty gestures, (nearly as disgusting to a man of taste as a courtier's finical bow) come home to their trammeled comprehensions; and consequently the broadly expanded noble actions of John Philip are to them foolishness. We are running counter, we know, to the present doctrine in vogue; but we confess with Sir Joshua Reynolds, that it appears more honourable to fall in flying after M. Angelo than to succeed by creeping with Ostade and Brouwer. C. Lamb himself has failed to change this studiously weighed opinion of ours; so has Hazlitt (though to differ from him is a good deal presumptuous, and not a little dangerous). At present Mr. Kean too often resembles his double, Booth, rather than himself; the harmonizing glazings are scoured off in patches, and the dead colouring is left bare. It is the delicate, almost imperceptible finishing, that shows the master; the imitating pupils can forward the picture. K's lazy play is in singular unison with the developements of character in Müllner; every word is anatomized and commented on; every expression must be marked and insisted on. The faculties of attention and comprehension are kept painfully tense he is inflexible that his art shall be apprehended; there is an excess of consciousness; the audience admire and applaud, and few take the trouble to investigate whether they were moved by the keys of the heart or the head. I have as great a dislike to all this glitter and blaze as I have to a picture where every. face and body is eruditely and indiscriminately fore-shortened. Kean's worst is preferable to Young's best; and when the afflatus comes on him, as in Othello, he wrings the heart-strings even to breaking. To return to our starting place, (we have a sad kuack of bolting, as Buckle would say,) if the popularity of this true genius is on the wane, he may lay it to his own sluggishness, and to the play-bill puffs which blush in red letters at their own grossness. "MR. KEAN'S performance of Sir Giles Overreach exceeded even the effects of his first delineation of that character, and was honoured with repeated bursts of applause until the falling of the curtain! The whole of the play seeming also to contribute highly to Still We have not forgotten Mr. Hazlitt's attack on our old friend Janus, in the Table Talk, and had thought to have taken up the cudgels, but W. assured us that he was quite satisfied:-1. Because he had no mind to another drubbing.-2. Because most of the points answered themselves.-3. Because he had made the great Lion wag his tail. -And, 4. Because the satire of his Diogenes had immortalized the victim. be damned, than mentioned not at all." "Better the public satisfaction, it will be repeated to-morrow, being MR. KEAN's last appearance until the termination of the Christmas Holidays!!" This latter sentence is untrue-he has played Hastings and Macbeth twice cach! after announcing Hastings ("for this night only.') People are sick of such quackery. cite the softer emotions; and hence, in his Fair Penitent, Jane Shore, and Lady Jane Grey, he has successfully chosen female heroines and their weaknesses for his subject." All we know of his Jane Grey is, that there is a very pretty print by Sherwin, of Mrs. -, by way of frontispiece in Lowndes's New English Theatre, published circa 1780. We never read or saw The Fair Penitent, being amply contented with Massinger's original. Of Jane Shore we can speak from several painful experiences which sit heavy on our memories. Rowe is reported to have meant it for a Drama in the spirit of Shakspeare-we cannot find any touch of the great artist either in the con duct, the cast of thought, or the language. Were you to take away the measure and the exterior ornaments from Hamlet, there would still be poetry and sweetness; but the elevation of Rowe resides in a sort of cautious mouthing far beneath the hot rants of Eleazar, Edipus, and Alexander; while his melody is little better than the monotonous recurrence of a Merlin's swing, or the easy trundle of a family coach. One of the personages is called Belmour, and this delicate appellation is a felicitous type of a Drama which "assumes to be poetry because it is not prose." If Miss Edmiston displayed little intuition into, or observation of, the secrets of nature in the guilty Jane, we must not argue thence her insufficiency; for of what use could the deepest insight into the genuine passions be in passages after this plan, with which, for the sake of better justifying our objections, we shall entreat the reader to contrast the death of Mrs. Frankford, the Woman killed with Kindness, of that prose Shakspeare, Old Heywood-straw versus flesh and blood, He will find the scene in Lamb and Campbell. Dec. 16.-A fuller house was assembled than on any previous night in the season. The pit was crowded, and the front rows of the dress circle looked gay with silks, gold combs, flowers, variegated shawls, and richcoloured jewels. The attraction was a Miss Edmiston in the part of Jane Shore, supported by Kean in the wavering Hastings; and by the noisy partisans of that gentleman, who it seems had prognosticated success; therefore she was to succeed. The lady, who appears about seven and twenty, received the welcoming hubbub with all imaginable serenity. Her curtsey sank into a kneel, and drew, as was intended, a fresh tumult of applause. An affected drag in her step was construed, by those determined to think favourably, into a modest tremor; so was the inaudibility of her level speaking: we cold critics have the cruel faculty of detecting the truth, and to us there was too much of artifice in her gentleness. It is ill-advised to confess it perhaps; but the singular self-possession that marked "this first appearance on any stage" hardened our hearts considerably against her charms: the reader will, therefore, make allowance for a little un-gallantry towards an unprotected female, as folks say. We must pass the sentence of the law, though the tears run down our judge-like cheeks. Perhaps we were out of humour to see that our share of encouragement was needless, for she could do nothing to please us the whole night. We did not like her voice, we did not like her gesticulation, we did not like her pathetics, we did not like her heroics; and though her figure and features were good, we neither liked her in full Your husband lives: 'tis he, my worthiest dress nor in dishabille. Something of this lack-sympathy grew out of the character itself, and the whole indefinite diction of the play. A. Schlegel kindly says that "Rowe did not possess boldness and vigour, but sweetness and feeling; he could ex * Bel. How fare you, lady? Jane. My heart is thrill'd with horror, Bel. friend-look up. Jane. I dare not ! Be of courage: Oh! that my eyes could shut him out for A burden to the world, myself, and thee, Would I had ne'er survived to see thee more. Jane. Oh! thou most injured-dost thou live indeed? Fall then, ye mountains, on my guilty head! Hide me, ye rocks, within your secret ca verns ! Cast thy black veil upon my shame, oh night, And shield me with thy sable wing for ever! Who will pretend that this has either originality or vraisemblance. Not to insist on such hollow talk as "black night and sable wing," it is throughout manifest that the writer has merely skimmed the surface; he puts down words instead of things; no distinction of character is to be found. "When we accurately examine the most of their (the dramatists of that day) tragical speeches, we shall find that they are seldom such as would be delivered by persons speaking or acting by themselves, without any restraint; we shall generally discover something in them which betrays a reference more or less to the spectator." Still Rowe must have his due; and it cannot be denied, that by incorporating his exposition or statement of the preliminary and actual situation of things with positive dramatic action, he has overcome that tedium which oppresses in the awkward prologues of Euripides, and the chief French writers both in Tragedy and the higher Comedy. We should not have been so wordy on this leaden stock piece, were it not that while many excellent plays of Thomas Heywood, Marston, Fletcher, Jonson, Ford, &c. lie dustily honoured in the collections of Dodsley and Reed, or the somewhat more popular editions of Gifford and Weber, the stage libraries creak with a body of respectable doaters, who, like Tithonus, seem to preserve immortality in senilé decrepitude. The character of Alicia (to return, we are always returning !) is in itself sufficiently ugly and coarse. Why should it be delivered over to Mrs. Merrilies, Mrs. (what is her name?) Egerton. Mr. Pope acted the nobleminded husband well. Mr. Cooper as the Lord Protector, ditto. Kean's Hastings saved the play.- -Of De Montfort we would rather be silent. The great little man made the most desperate and oftimes brave attempts to career it on his part over the necks of the audience: but it: is sorry work to ride a saddle without a horse. Geraldi Duval, the laughable farce of Monsieur Tonson, and "The splendid exhibition of the Coronation!" have been alternated during the last month as usual.— THE OTHER LARGE HOUSE. The stage proceedings here are best given from their own bills.— The PLAY of THE TWO GENTLEMEN of VERONA, again produced as great an effect on a brilliant and overflowing audience as any previous revival of SHAKSPEARE. The introduction of his SONNETS and the MUSICK, were enthusiastically received, and the CARNIVAL was not only deemed a most magnificent spectacle, but a classical embellishment of a Play of our Immortal Bard.-The Two Gentlemen of Verona will therefore be performed on Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and four times a week till further no tice. The New Entertainment, called THE Two PAGES OF FREDERICK THE GREAT, continuing to be received throughout with the highest approbation and applause, will be repeated every evening. In consequence of the increased demand for places, The EXILE will be performed for the 29th and 30th times to-morrow and Tuesday. We shall not discharge our function thoroughly if we do not say one word on the first of the above loadstars. Let Mr. Reynolds write original dramatic rhapsodies as long and as often as he pleases, and as the good-natured gallery will bear; but let him not attempt to darn Shakspeare's Plays that need no mending, and least of all such mending as Mr. Reynolds can give them. The exterior ornaments are showered over the withered carcase of this Play with a brave prodigality; it is as if Sir Epicure Mammon sat in the treasury, "lord of the medicine." Marble halls cooled with water jets, which catch, and fling back fresher, the languid richness of the orange blossoms; dark hoary woods; silent shrubbed lawns, trimmed, curled, and set in order,-lucid lakes, blackdashing torrents, and sunny casinos, form the back-ground to the wellformed figures of Miss M. Tree, Jones, and Abbott. Then shines forth the pantomimical triumph of that Ami des Enfans Mr. Farley,"Go with him, and he will show" The actors come next, we believe? To glow the delicate cheeks which they did Miss Tree's Julia was in a higher cool, And what they did, undid. In sober truth the Carnival, with its illuminations, processions, dances, and pageants, is surprisingly splendid, and would be admirable any where else but where it is; and the same may be said of the extraneous lyrical poetry, the sole effect of which is to distract the most determined attention, and retard the natural developement of the fable. The effect of the only song proper to the play, ("Who is Sylvia?") is marred beyond all conceivable indignation, by Bishop and Reynolds together having, for the sake of a female voice in the glee, made the wretched Julia assist in praising her dreaded rival, while the ensuing dialogue is retained, as if to throw ridicule on their own folly. "Host. How now, you are sadder than you were before? How do you do, man? The music likes you not!-Julia. You mistake! The musician likes me not. He plays false, father. - Host. How? out of tune on the strings?Julia. Not so; but yet so false that he grieves my very heart-strings." Is this the language of a person who has just sung her part at sight? This is not all: how can it be reconciled even to poetical possibility, that an utter stranger (which Julia absolutely is) both to the music and the words, should swim so toppingly off in her share of each. This comes of a Sir Thurio meddling, who does not know the distinction between a regular romantic Drama and an Opera. We should have thought any fool (Hamlet's grave digger to borrow) might have surmised, that if the great author of the detached poems in taste, in a deeper gusto, than any of the other personations. She threw herself devotedly into the part, received passively the inspiration of her author, and, thus possessed wholly with his idea, poured forth into every gesture, look, and word, the genuine woman when she loves-yearningly timid, bashfully bold. Miss Tree has gradually gained to herself a superior and more permanent station than she originally made pretension to; and is now no longer a singer who can act, but an actress who can sing. Her figure round, yet slender-her limbs full, yet long-show to greater advantage her advantageously contrived androgynal vestments;whose softly harmonised colours evidence much sentiment and feeling, either in herself or her adviser. Her light-bending attitudes when greedily yet fearfully drinking in the accents of her lover, may be contemplated as untiringly as the living lilies of Allegri and Parmegiano. Messrs. Abbott and Blanchard come next, for intelligence, spirit, and propriety in discharging their respective characters. Miss Beaumont was not half arch enough in Lucetta: she is a pretty girl, with an honest English expression spread over her face like a steady sunshine. Of Liston and Farren we cannot speak with commendation: yet they failed divergingly: Launce was not liked by the former, and Sir Thurio was at feud with the latter. Farren had not only missed his way, like Liston (who had the discretion to remain uncomfortably dubious), but dashed merrily along the lane of error. Does Mr. F. suppose that quizzing glasses were created in the opening of the sixteenth century? Or that if they were, a butterfly, like Sir Thurio, would have employed one on Valentine without brooking the buffet or the stab? Miss Hallande sings very loud; and well, we make no doubt, as great applause followed the heels, or the final cadential shakes of several vocal difficulties, which, with Johnson, we wished were impossibilities.* It would be very unfair, as well as ungrateful, to criticise the lively Jones's Valentine. He was altogether thrust into a misfit; and it showed no little talent that he never was offensive or liable to ridicule. This gentleman wears a long Spanish cloak better than any one on the stage; indeed, he graces every costume. Of the "Two Pages," we can only say that it is an old story pleasantly retold. There was a very interesting piece on this subject, some years back (from the pen of Mr. Abbott, of this theatre) in which Terry as Frederic William, the father of Frederic the Great, was unapproachable. REPORT OF MUSIC. THE progress of Madame Catalani through the country has been marked by festivals at Bath, Bristol, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. We related in our last some anecdotes of her performances at the first named city. The lady is, however, creating for herself hosts of enemies while her powers make their natural impression. The exorbitancy of her demands (generally a considerable share of the receipts) transfers to her pocket so disproportionate a sum, that disparagement and hostility are scarcely to be wondered at. By the Bath Concerts Mr. Ashe, the conductor, was really a loser of 2001 while Catalani gained nearly 500l. At Bristol her emoluments were about the same, while the conductor there just escaped loss. At Glasgow the following has been published as the statement of the payment of the several performers, and the result to the charity for which the Concert was made. The gross receipts a mounted to about 2,3007, and the expenses to 2,100. Madame Catalani received about 7601. Mr. Braham, 250l. Mrs. Salmon, 2601. Signor Spagnoletti, 1201. Signor Placci, 80l. and upwards of 300l. were expended in alterations on the house. The profits to the charity will be about 2001. The arrangements for the King's theatre are at length settled. It is announced by Mr. Ebers that the opera will be under the direction of a committee of noblemen. The bal let is to be splendid. The performers engaged for the vocal department are as follows: Madame Camporese, Madame Ronzi di Begni, Signora Ciutai, from the Italian Theatre Royal, Paris, Signora Graziani, from the Theatre Royal, Munich, (neither of the two latter have yet appeared in this country), Signora Rosalbina Caradori, Signor Curioni, Signor Cerutti, from the grand Theatre, Genoa, (who has never yet appeared in this country), Signors di Begni, Ambrogetti, Placci, Angrisani, and Cartoni, from the grand Theatre de Bologne d' Italie, Signor Zucchelli, from the Theatre Aliberti, Rome, (neither of the two latter have yet appeared in this country). Spagnoletti leads. We are sorry to perceive that Mr. Ayrton is no longer in the direction. The deputy director, the Chevalier Petracchi, is from Milan. The talents of the new singers, we suspect, do not rank very high. It is arranged that Mr. Bochsa is to have the Oratorios at Covent Garden; and he enjoys the able assistance of Sir George Smart, as conductor. Catalani actually refused 1,500l. as the price of her engagement, and would listen to nothing under 2,000l. The publishers of music seem to proceed upon a very singular, and perhaps not quite a fair plan as it respects each other: no sooner has one started an idea, than another endeavours to participate in the success of the invention by an imitation of the The music was flashy and perishable. Mr. Bishop judges an English audience unworthy of his finer compositions. Rossini's lees are good enough for them! we believe he is right. |