Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 71, No. 438, April 1852
"The power I have upon you is to pardon."
And who can tell what may be at some future time the result on the happiness of one hundred millions of subjects, of sentiments like these implanted in so pure a soil? The actor's province is not far distant from the preacher's. A happy time, if it should ever arrive, when this unity of purpose will be acknowledged by both, when the "reverend gentleman" will think it no part of his calling to rail upon the stage; and the actor will not find a strong inclination to retort by accusations of Mawworm and Tartuffe. But an objection is made in many quarters more to the theatre than to what is represented there. A play in a drawing-room is very different from a play at the Haymarket. One is all correct and proper; the other wicked and intolerable. This objection must therefore arise either from the different characters of the performers or of the audience. An officer of the Guards, who is great at theatricals, is an edifying sight in the part of Joseph Surface in the hall of a great country house in the Christmas week; and the same part is revolting and dangerous in the hands of poor Bob Finings on the regular stage. And yet the Honourable Captain Muff has been before the Consistory Court, has also made a brilliant appearance in Basinghall Street, has shot his kindest friend at Chalkfarm, and is an authority in the betting-ring second only to Mr Davis. Bob Finings is a steady, dull, respectable man, who has seen hard times, and struggled manfully against them; has brought up his children to honest callings, and totters through the part with the most helpless and reassuring imbecility. Is there danger there? But if the cases were reversed, and poor Bob Finings were the roué, and the honourable captain the respected pater-familias, why should that interfere with our appreciation of their dramatic skill? Surely most inoffensive would the wildest of Bob's transgressions be to the morals or feelings of the spectators in the boxes, pit, or gallery, who were never brought into contact with him in any other character than that of Joseph Surface, and neither sup with him after the play, nor waltz with him after the supper, as might possibly be the case with the gallant Lothario Muff. Then it must be the miscellaneousness of the company assembled in a theatre. Less select, certainly, than in the county gathering to the private play; but surely quite as safe. Is there a magnetic sympathy with vice that makes one or two sinners, locked up, we will suppose, in a private box, the electro-biologists of the whole assembly? Insolent faces will occasionally be turned to where we sit, hair-covered faces, and eyes that are uncomfortable to look upon; foreign-looking men dressed in the extremest fashion of Paris or Vienna, but whether British imitation or the real article is quite immaterial; – to this vulgar and audacious stare we shall certainly be exposed. But not more than in the street, or in the park, or in the Crystal Palace, or occasionally in a Belgravian chapel of ease to Rome, where we have observed the rosaried nun by no means inconvenienced by the unmistakable glances of those whiskered pandours. But let us, for the satisfaction of all squeamish spinsters, and for the honour of the Haymarket lessee, announce a small fact which we think redounds greatly to his honour. Brazen-faced men in elegant apparel, it is, of course, impossible to exclude, but the moment the royal patronage was extended to the theatre, most rigid orders were given to the door-keepers and attendant police to exclude every brazen-faced personage of the other sex, however elegant might be her apparel. This holds good, not only on the evenings on which royalty condescends to share the gay or sad feelings of loyalty, but on all nights and on all occasions. This is a sacrifice to propriety and decorum, which persons acquainted with the interior workings of a theatre have stated to us to amount to several thousands a-year. Independent of the five-shilling payments made every night by forty or fifty of the Jezebels who used to flaunt in the upper circle, it is a moderate calculation to assume that the attraction of their presence allured to the theatre at least double that number of Tittlebats, and the other pillars of Mr Tagrag's establishment; and if any person with a competent knowledge of arithmetic will find out the sum total of a hundred and fifty crowns, and multiply it by six, he will find out the weekly effect on the treasury, of this very noble and praiseworthy conduct. The royal box brings in about two hundred a-year, and can never be let for the benefit of the theatre on the most crowded nights. Go, therefore, in perfect safety to the Haymarket. If wickedness is there, it is completely in eclipse. Go, and the farces will improve in humour and refine in plot; Buckstone will be as ridiculous as ever, and give full scope to his wit and drollery without the slightest touch of the buffoon.
In all the theatres of London, a race is run in the variety and beauty of the decorations. If actors have fallen off, the scene-painter and machinist are in the ascendant. Now, this is far from a good sign, or, in the end, of any good effect in the advancement of the drama. A decent amount of illustration is indispensable – a proper attention to truthfulness of costume is highly commendable; but truly absurd is it to see the length to which this zeal is carried. In the Elizabethan time, the spectator was informed of the scene of the play by a board with the name of the locality suspended from the roof. Side-scenes then crept in; appropriate dresses were introduced at a later period; and now there is not a button wrong, not a single anachronism in the shape of a shoe, or ribbon of a cap; gorgeous landscapes are presented to the eye; noble chambers open their treasures of furniture and vertu; and in the midst of all this internal improvement, the histrionic, art diminishes day by day. "Man is the only plant that dwindles here." Thus we find that almost every manager plumes himself on restoring Shakspeare when he surrounds the play with gorgeous accessories – when the balcony scene is painted by Stanfield, or the hall of Macbeth's castle by David Roberts. This is the mode of decoration adopted by the warriors of old, when they covered the Roman traitress with their ornaments of silver and gold. This is to smother Shakspeare, not to illustrate him. This is to bury Cæsar, not to praise him. Let us assure those enterprising caterers for the public, that a play well acted is worth all the correct dresses, and all the befitting scenery in the world. Half the money wasted on these expensive accessories would tempt men of talent and education once more to look to the stage as a profession. Rather give us Burbage as Coriolanus in Sir Philip Sidney's clothes, than a modern declaimer in the most faultless of togas. But when scenery, dresses, and decorations, from being the casual accompaniments of a noble tragedy, which they only encumber with their help, form of themselves the staple commodity with which an appeal is made to the favour of the town, the matter becomes of very serious importance, and is probably more injurious to the dramatic taste than anything that can be named. Nothing has so depreciated the drama as the frequency, during late years, of burlesques – a contemptible species of entertainment, where parody is substituted for wit, and glitter and show for interest or language. A fairy tale, that enchanted our childhood, is chosen for a theme, and soon stript, by the ruthless playwright, of all its poetry and romance. Aladdin makes puns about the Crystal Palace. Camaralzaman and Badoura are witty about the electric telegraph; and all the time their miserable jargon is illustrated by the scenery of men of genius – with landscapes that Poussin would not be ashamed to own, and wing-covered nymphs that would have been the astonishment of all the glowries. Why vulgarise the fairy mythology by mixing it up with the oratory of the cabstand? Why not leave it as they find it? – and if they are determined to lavish ornament on whatever they produce on the stage, why not give us, from end to end, a real dear old fairy story, with scenery as gorgeous as they please – strange apparitions of power or beauty – clothing the tale in language fit for the fairy interlocutors; and show us all the spouting waterfalls, and ticking clocks, and chattering pages, and lovely companions, of Tennyson's "Sleeping Beauty?" In this the airy dances, and splendid robes, and marble palaces, would all be in keeping. The eye would be pleased without the taste being offended; and there would be no tremendous burst of human passion cast into the background by the predominance of hats and feathers. "King John" at the Princess's, we pronounce, on this ground, to be a great success as a spectacle, but a failure as a play. Mr Kean has great merits; quick appreciation, sound intelligence, and occasionally a burst of something which, if it is not genius, is describable by no other word; but he is certainly mistaken in relying so much on the resources of his painter and costumier. The chivalrous audacity of Wigan is sufficient of itself to attract attention, which is too likely to be distracted by the magnificence of the scene in which it is displayed by that versatile and accomplished actor. John himself ceases to be the human centre figure in a group of other men – with passions, fears, remorses, all chasing each other along his cruel and haggard countenance – and becomes the centre figure of a noble historic tableau, where the words even of Shakspeare grow subsidiary to colour and effect. But let us go into that prettiest of theatres in Oxford Street, ascend the handsome steps into the dress circle, and see what entertainment is provided by the present bearer of the name of Kean. The playbills tell us the name of the drama to-night is the "Corsican Brothers;" so with vague reminiscences of old Madame Mère, and the four young Buonapartes in the attorney's mansion in Ajaccio, we wait for the drawing up of the curtain. The house is quite full. The stage is admirably commanded from all parts of the building; the boxes are most comfortable and wide; a thousand expectant faces are all turned towards the scene; a great crash takes place among the fiddles; a little bell rings, and we are in a room in the house of the Dei Franchis, a poor but noble family of Corsica. A maid is singing at her wheel – a song which was evidently not the composition of either Burns or Moore – and is interrupted by the entrance of a traveller, who brings a letter of introduction from Paris from Louis Dei Franchi, a son of the house, who has resided there for some time. The countess comes in and receives him graciously. Fabian Dei Franchi, the stay-at-home brother, also is very kind, and inquires anxiously after Louis's health. He is well, and happy; but the stranger has not seen him for three weeks! Fabian makes a motion of disappointment. "I have heard of him more recently." – "How? – when?" exclaims the mother. – "Last night," replies Fabian; "and he is ill." He takes the stranger apart; hurriedly tells him not to be incredulous, or, at all events, disdainful, of their old Corsican superstitions; informs him that he and his brother are twins, and so like each other as to be almost undistinguishable; that from their birth, absent or united, a strange sympathy exists between them; that one cannot experience joy or grief that is not in this mysterious manner shared by the other; and, seeing a smile on the gay Frenchman's countenance, he relates an anecdote of a similar case which occurred three hundred years before, and in the very house in which they then stood. A strange wild story it was, and prepares us for what is to come. To prepare us also for the bitterness of a Corsican vendetta, a tumultuous scene is introduced of the compulsory reconcilement of a quarrel between two peasants, which, in a few years, had cost nine lives, and took its origin from some indignity offered to a hen of the Orlandos. Colonna makes the amende by presenting his adversary with a white cock; and Fabian is again left alone. The stage grows dark; something wild and unearthly is felt in the sudden hush of the dim hall; he sits down at the side to write to Louis. "Brother," he says, "I feel so miserable, that I am certain you are in pain. Write – write!" While he is setting down these words, a pallid, dreadful countenance rises from the boards at the other end of the stage – rising gradually and without sound – neck, shoulders, body – and advancing at the same time towards the table at which Fabian writes; it reaches its feet when it comes within touch of his shoulder. The features of the brothers are the same; the height, the figure, even the dress – for Fabian has taken off his coat before he began to write, – and all the difference is a speck of blood on the left breast of Louis' shirt; and gazing on the group before him, (for the mother has entered in the mean time,) he slowly sinks. But this is not the end. The window at the back of the hall opens, and through that vista, what do we see? The brother exactly as we saw him a moment before, lying dead beneath the stump of a tree, supported in the arms of his seconds – a gentleman in his shirt sleeves wiping his sword – two other gentlemen in attitudes of watchfulness: it is the Bois de Boulogne; a duel has been fought. Louis dei Franchi is the victim, and the drop-scene falls, leaving the Countess and Fabian transfixed with horror at this wondrous sight.
The next act takes us into the actual events of which these are but the shadowings. It is a masked ball at the opera in Paris. There are waltzes, gallops, and polkas, with shouts of demoniac revelry; women career from end to end of the enormous salle, dancing, singing, shrieking; they are dressed in all costumes – as men, as mountebanks – but in all the unmistakable presence of wild enjoyment and a spirit of depravity, worthy of the orgies of Circe. Some gentlemen come in. Among them, M. de Chateau Renaud, whose ambition it is to be considered the greatest roué in Paris; when he fails to triumph over female virtue, he withers a woman's reputation with a lie. He is accused of having boasted, without foundation, of his intimacy with Madame de Lesharre. He bets he will bring her that very night into the supper-room, where there has been prepared a symposium for the prettiest of the debardeurs, and wickedest of the men. Louis dei Franchi is of the party, for Madame de Lesharre has been the object of his love before her marriage, and he has heard of her reported liaison with Chateau Renaud. He invites himself to the supper – is cold, abstracted, severe – and keeps his eye on the boaster's face. The ball is over; the supper-room is gorgeously lighted; the clock strikes four – the appointed hour at which Chateau Renaud had betted he would introduce Madame de Lesharre. Her he had inveigled hither, under the false pretence of restoring to her some letters which she had imprudently, but innocently, written to him before her wedding, and before she had discovered the character of her admirer. He blinds her still; and as the last sound of the clock dies upon the ear, he walks in with Madame de Lesharre upon his arm. There is a shout of derision from the women assembled; a shrug of surprise from the men; the wager is acknowledged to be lost; but Madame de Lesharre, perceiving the shameful trick that has been played, indignantly pours forth her scorn on the pitiful scoundrel who had been guilty of it; recognises her old lover, Louis dei Franchi, and throws herself on his protection. He steps forward, accepts the charge, and is challenged of course by Chateau Renaud, who is the best swordsman in France. Madame do Lesharre retires supported by Louis, and a laugh of contempt and hatred resounds through the room. We are now in the Bois de Boulogne. The scene we had seen in the first act is exactly reproduced here: Louis is lying under the tree; Chateau Renaud is wiping his sword; the seconds are in attitudes of expectation – suddenly the wood opens at the back, and we see Fabian and his mother in the old hall in Corsica, gazing with rigid eyes on the scene before them; and we have now arrived at the exact position we attained half-an-hour ago. The whole of the third act passes in a glade in the forest of Fontainbleau. Chateau Renaud, flying with his second from justice, is upset on the high-road; comes into the wood in search of aid; sends a peasant for a blacksmith to repair the carriage; and sits down, depressed and feverish, on the stump of a tree. Suddenly he looks round, and recognises the scene. It is the place where, five days before, he had had the encounter with Louis dei Franchi, and he is anxious to leave the spot. He is met by Fabian dei Franchi, in form and semblance so exactly similar to Louis, that it amounts almost to identity; a similar accident has happened to his carriage. He looks around, and he also recognises the scene presented to him in the vision. On that intimation, and no other, he has hurried from Corsica, in search of Chateau Renaud; he has found him here. He is calm; there is no room for human passion in a mission so evidently laid upon him by fate. He challenges the murderer. The challenge is refused; he twits him with his crimes – with cowardice – with falsehood – with assassination; and the bravo is compelled to fight. They fence long and warily; they rest by mutual consent. In trying the sword preparatory to the next bout, it breaks in Chateau Renaud's hand. The second declares the combat at an end, for the weapons are unequal. "No!" said Fabian quietly, and breaks his across his knee. They muffle their hands in their handkerchiefs, and seize the broken weapons. The fight is renewed. One must die. Which? They hold the fragments of their blades like daggers, point downward, and at one lucky opening Fabian strikes the blow, and Chateau Renaud falls unpitied, unforgiven – a sacrifice to Corsican honour. "Now I can weep for you, dear Louis," says the conqueror, and covers his face with his hands. Again the murdered Louis crosses the stage in the same mysterious manner as before. The brothers recognise each other; vengeance is obtained, and the curtain falls.
The language contained in this play would occupy about twenty minutes; the duration of the piece is two hours. It is a ghost story put into shape – a chapter of Mrs Radcliffe, done into tableaux vivants. The company at this theatre comprises Mr and Mrs Kean, Mr Wigan, Mr Meadows, Mr Ryder, Mr Bartley, and last, not least, Mr and Mrs Keeley. There is not a barn in England that could not furnish quite good enough representatives of any person in the drama. The speeches are vapid and commonplace; the situations, as regards the development of character, very weak; and it possesses no strength whatever but the admirable stage management of the supernatural and the frightful verisimilitude of the carnival ball. Are these legitimate means of support to a theatre like this? Should the Princess's be reduced to a salle de spectacle—
"Where from below the trap-door demons rise,
And from above hang dangling deities?"
But, more than all, it certainly is no place for the production of so revolting a scene as the open license of the ball, or the more quiet but quite as offensive supper-party after it. Real water, real horses, and real elephants have been banished from the stage, it being found that the real things interfere essentially with the truthfulness of the scene. A great distinction should always be taken between mere representation and identity – a difference clearly established and rigidly preserved between the fiction and the fact, or why not have a real fight with true swords? Why not go back at once to Thurtell's gig and Weir's pistol? Now, in the instance of the carnival ball, the resemblance is carried beyond all bounds. It ceases to be an imitation, and becomes a reproduction. We will be bound to say, at no saturnalia in the opera ball-room of Paris was there ever exhibited a wilder scene of revelry and debauch – women, indelicately clothed in male attire, whirl in fantastic attitudes to a noisy crash of music – their voices in the mad excitement of the moment are joined to the noise of the orchestra; petticoats, where preserved at all, assume the dimensions of kilts; it is evidently the crowning hour of the night's festivity – modesty, decorum, propriety, all laid aside, and a grinning buffoon in white gown, with chalk-covered face and ludicrous contortions, adding a new feature of disgust to the display, which is sickening enough already. We can easily imagine that this vivid scene may have injurious effects – that it may be even more hurtful than a visit to the original meeting would have been; for there is probably here a heightening of the attractions of the show, in as much as the dancers are chosen for their beauty, and the dresses selected for the very purpose of captivation and allurement. If such a scene was required at all, it should, certainly, have been produced in a less attractive form. We should not have been so severe on this subject if we did not feel that no theatre in London less needs to depend on such displays for success. No theatre in London has it so completely in its power to show to what noble uses a stage may be applied; for on none is there so near an approach to the ancient glory of the drama in the skill and ensemble of the actors. Exercising talents like these on ghosts and festivals is a mere waste of power. It is turning a steam-engine to the manufacture of pins – of pins that are useless in spite of their polished heads, and poisonous if they penetrate the skin. Let not this one departure from taste be urged against theatrical amusements in general, or the entertainments at this house in particular. It is a French importatation – this ghostly melodrama, this unmeasured ball. But Shakspeare is here with his English heart, and "empire absolute" over the feelings. The poetry of "Twelfth Nigh" alternates with the wondrous picture in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." The gentle Viola speaks in tones that never die away from the memory. Mrs Ford answers smile for smile and grip for grip to Mrs Brook – Caius, for the first time, is the perfect gentleman which only Wigan can depict; and scene after scene floats away before us, till it is only by an effort we wake from a dream of Herne the Hunter's Oak to the harsh realities of eighteen hundred and fifty-two.
In some future communication we will extend our Commissionership to the other theatres, and to various places of amusement not often brought forward 'neath the glimpses of the moon. Beware, then, ye managers and caterers of public shows; be conscious of the importance and responsibilities of your position. When we see talent, enterprise, and skill, not slow shall we be to give the word of cheer; but where we observe the smallest deviation into the coarse or the insipid, remember you have nothing to expect but rebukes sharper than swords.
"A chield's amang ye takin' notes,
And, faith, he'll print it."