PROSPECTUS.

The advantages of a correct
judgment and refined taste in all matters connected with literature, are
much greater than men in general imagine. The hateful passions have no
greater enemies than a delicate taste and a discerning judgment, which
give the possessor an interest in the virtues and perfections of others,
and prompt him to admire, to cherish, and make them known to the world.
Criticism, the parent of these qualities, therefore, mends the heart,
while it improves the understanding. The influence of critical knowledge
is felt in every department of social life, as it supplies elegant
subjects for conversation, and enlarges the scope, and extends the
duration of intellectual enjoyment. Without it, the pleasures we derive
from the fine arts would be transient and imperfect; and poetry,
painting, music, and that admirable epitome of life, the stage, would
afford nothing more than a fugitive, useless, pastime, if not aided by
the interposition of the judgment, and sent home, by the delightful
process of criticism, to the memory, there to exercise
2

the mind to the last of life, to be the amusement of our declining
years, and, when all the other faculties for receiving pleasure are
impaired by old age and infirmity, to cast the sunshine of delight over
the last moments of our existence.

In no age or country has the improvement of the intellectual powers
of man made a larger share of the business of life than in these in
which we live. In the promotion of this spirit the stage has been an
instrument of considerable efficacy, and, as such, lays claim to a full
share of critical examination; yet, owing to some cause, which it seems
impossible to discover, that very important subject has been little
attended to in this great commonwealth; and in Philadelphia, the
principal city of the union, has been almost totally neglected. No
apology, therefore, can be thought necessary for offering the present
work to the public.

The utility of miscellanies of this kind has been sometimes called in
question; nor are those wanting who condemn the whole tribe of light
periodical productions, as detrimental to the advancement of solid
science and erudition: yet, in the most learned and enlightened nations
of Europe, magazines and periodical compilations have, for more than a
century, been circulated with vast success, and, within the last twenty
years, increased in price as well as number, to an extent that shows how
essentially the public opinion, in that quarter of the world differs
from that of the persons who condemn them.

Taking that decision as a decree without appeal, in favour of such
works, the editors think themselves authorized in offering the present
without any formal apology. If the perusal of such productions had a
tendency to prevent the youth of the country from aspiring to deep and
solid erudition, or to divert men of talents from the prosecution of
more important studies, the editors would be among the last to make any
addition to the stock already in circulation; but, convinced that, on
the contrary, works of that kind promote the advancement of general
knowledge, they have no
3

scruple whatever in offering this to the American people; and so firm do
they feel in the conviction of its utility, that they let it go into the
world, unaided by any of those arts, or specious professions which are
sometimes employed, in similar cases, to excite the attention, enlist
the partialities, and seduce the judgment of the public.

Of those who possess at once the talents, the leisure, and the
inclination to hunt erudition into its deepest recesses, the number must
ever be inconsiderable; and of that number the portion must be small
indeed, who could be diverted from that pursuit by the casual perusal of
light fugitive pieces. On the other hand, the great majority of mankind
would be left without inducement to read, if they were not supplied, by
publications of the kind proposed, with matter adapted to their
circumstances, to their capacities, and their various turns of fancy;
matter accessible to them by its conciseness and perspicuity, attractive
by its variety and lightness, and useful by its easy adaptation to the
familiar intercourse of life, and its fitness to enter into the
conversation of rational society. Men whose time and labour are chiefly
engrossed by the common occupations of life, have little leisure to
read, none for what is called study. In books they do not search for
deep learning, but for amusement accompanied with information on general
topics, conveyed with brevity; happy if, in seeking relaxation from the
drudgery of business, they can pick up some new particles of knowledge.
For this most useful and numerous portion of society, some adequate
intellectual provision ought to be made. Nor should it be imagined that,
in supplying them, the general interests of literature are deserted. The
frequent perusal of well collated miscellanies imparts to youth an
appetite for diligent reading; by slow but certain gradation, stores the
young mind with valuable ideas; accumulates in it a large stock of
useful knowledge; and imperceptibly insinuates a correct and refined
taste. Nor is this all. It may serve, as it often has, to rouse the
indolent from the gratification of complexional sloth, and
4

recall the unthinking and irregular from the haunts of dissipation and
vice to the blessings of serious reflection.

Few things have more tended to inflame the general passion for
literature in Great Britain than the practice of uniting the plan of the
reviews with that of the magazines, and making them jointly vehicles of
dramatic criticism. Multitudes at this day know the character of books,
and form a general conception of their subjects, who, but for the light
periodical publications, would never have known that such books existed:
many who would not otherwise have extended their reading beyond the
columns of a newspaper, are led by the pleasures of a represented play,
to read the critic’s strictures upon it, and thence, by a natural
transition, to peruse attentively the various other subjects which
surround those strictures in the magazines. This is the reason why
hundreds read the Monthly Mirror and similar productions of London, for
one who reads the Rambler.

For the passionate love of books, and the rapid advancement of
literature which distinguish her from all young countries, America is
greatly indebted to her periodical publications. Those, though small in
number, and, unfortunately, too often shortlived, have been read in
their respective times and circles with great avidity, and produced a
correspondent effect. The Port Folio
alone raised, long ago, a spirit in the country which malicious
Dulness itself will never be able to lay. Yet the disproportion in
number of those miscellanies which have succeeded in America, to those
which enrich the republic of letters in England, is astonishing,
considering the comparative population of the two countries. London
boasts of several periodical publications founded on the DRAMA alone; and though the other magazines
occasionally contain short strictures on that subject, those have the
greatest circulation which are most exclusively devoted to the
stage.

5

In America there has not yet been one of
that description.

To supply this defect, and raise the United States one step higher in
laudable emulation with Great Britain, the editors have planned the
present work, of which, (though not to the total exclusion of other
matter) the basis will be

THE DRAMA.

The first and by far the larger share will be allotted to the stage,
and dramatic productions. The residue to miscellaneous articles, most of
them connected with the fashionable amusements, and designed to correct
the abuses, which intemperate ignorance, and Licentiousness, running
riot for want of critical control, have introduced into the public
diversions of this opulent and luxurious city.

In the composition of the several parts of this work, care will be
taken to furnish the public with new and interesting matter, and to
select from the current productions of the British metropolis such
topics as will best tend to promote the cultivation of an elegant taste
for knowledge and letters, and, at the same time, repay the reader for
the trouble of perusal, with amusement and delight. Abstracts from the
most popular publications will be given, accompanied with short critical
remarks upon them, and, whatever appears most interesting in the
periodical productions of Great Britain will be transferred into this;
pruned if they be prolix, and illustrated by explanatory notes, whenever
they may be found obscured by local or personal allusion.

As the leading object of the work is, not to infuse a passion, but to
inculcate a just and sober taste for dramatic poetry and acting, the
editors propose to give, seriatim, a history of the drama
from its origin, with strictures on dramatic poesy, and portraits of the
best dramatic poets of antiquity. To this will succeed the history of
the British stage, with portraits of the most celebrated poets, authors,
and actors who have flourished on it, and strictures on the professional
6

talents of the latter, illustrated by parallels and comparisons with
those who have been most noted for excellence on the American
boards.

From that history the reader will be able to deduce a proper
conviction of the advantages of the stage, and the importance, if not
the necessity, of putting the actors and the audience on a more proper
footing with each other than that in which they now stand. Actors must
lay their account with being told their faults. They owe their whole
industry and attention to those who attend their performance; but the
editors hold that critic to have forfeited his right to correct the
stage, and to be much more deserving of reprehension than those he
censures, who, in the discharge of his duty, forgets that the actor has
his rights and privileges also; that he has the same rights which every
other gentleman possesses, and of which his profession has not even the
remotest tendency to deprive him, to be treated with politeness and
respect; that he has the same right as every other man in society, as
the merchant, the mechanic, or the farmer, to prosecute his business
unmolested; shielded by the same laws which protect them from the
attacks of malicious libellers out of the theatre, and the insults of
capricious Ignorance or stupid Malevolence within. “Reproof,” says Dr.
Johnson, “should not exhaust its power upon petty failings;” and “the
care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults
of inexperience from defects of nature. On this principle the editors
will unalterably act. And, since they have cited the great moralist’s
maxim as a direction for critics, they, even in this their first step
into public view, beg leave to offer a few sentiments from the same high
source, for the guidance of AUDITORS.
“He that applauds him who does not deserve
praise is endeavouring to deceive the public; he that hisses in malice
or in sport is an oppressor and a robber.1”

7

This work, therefore, will contain a regular journal of all, worthy
of notice, that passes in the theatre of Philadelphia, and an account of
each night’s performances, accompanied with a critical analysis of the
play and after-piece, and remarks upon the merits of the actors. Nor
shall the management of the stage, in any particular, escape
observation. Thus the public will know what they owe to the manager and
to the leader of each department, and those again what they owe to the
public. To make The Mirror of Taste and
Dramatic Censor, as far as possible a general national work,
measures have been taken to obtain from the capital cities, of the other
states, a regular account of their theatrical transactions. To this
will be added a register of the other public exhibitions, and, in
general, of all the fashionable amusements of this city, and, from time
to time, the sporting intelligence of the new and old country.

To the first part, which will be entitled “The Domestic Dramatic
Censor,” will succeed the “Foreign Dramatic Censor.” This will contain a
general account of all that passes in the theatres of Great Britain,
likely to interest the fashionable world and amateurs of America,
viz. the new pieces, whether play, farce, or interlude, with their
prologues and epilogues, together with their character and reception
there, and critiques on the acting, collected from the various opinions
of the best critics, together with the amusing occurrences, anecdotes,
bon-mots, and greenroom chitchat, scattered through the various
periodical publications of England, Ireland, and Scotland.

The next head will be Stage Biography, under which the reader will
find the lives and characters of the leading actors of both
countries.

These will be followed by a miscellany collated from the foreign
productions, catalogues of the best books and best compositions in
music, published or preparing for publication in Europe or America, with
concise reviews of such as have already appeared.

8

Poetry, of course, will be introduced; not, as usual, under one head,
but scattered in detached pieces through the whole.

TERMS.

The price of the Mirror will be eight dollars per annum, payable
on the delivery of the sixth number.

A number will be issued every month, forming two volumes in the
year.

To each number will be added, by way of appendix, an entire play
or after-piece, printed in a small elegant type, and paged so as to be
collected, at the end of each year, into a separate volume.

The work will be embellished with elegant engravings by the first
artists.

9

THE MIRROR OF TASTE,

AND

DRAMATIC CENSOR.

HISTORY OF THE STAGE.

CHAPTER I.

OBJECTIONS TO THE STAGE CONSIDERED AND REFUTED.

That amusement is necessary to man,
the most superficial observation of his conduct and pursuits may
convince us. The Creator never implanted in the hearts of all his
intelligent creatures one common universal appetite without some
corresponding necessity; and that he has given them an instinctive
appetite for amusements as strong as any other which we labour to
gratify, may be clearly perceived in the efforts of infancy, in the
exertions of youth, in the pursuits of manhood, in the feeble endeavours
of old age, and in the pastimes which human creatures, even the
uninstructed savage nations themselves, have invented for their
relaxation and delight. This appetite evinces a necessity for its
gratification as much as hunger, thirst, and weariness, intimate the
necessity of bodily refection by eating, drinking, and
10

sleeping; and not to yield obedience to that necessity, would be to
counteract the intentions of Providence, who would not have furnished us
so bountifully as he has with faculties for the perception of pleasure,
if he had not intended us to enjoy it. Had the Creator so willed it, the
process necessary to the support of existence here below might have been
carried on without the least enjoyment on our part: the daily waste of
the body might be repaired without the sweet sensations which attend
eating and drinking; we might have had the sense of hearing without the
delight we derive from sweet sounds; and that of smelling without the
capability of enjoying the fragrance of the rose: but He whose wisdom
and beneficence are above all comprehension, has ordained in another and
a better manner, and annexed the most lively sensations of pleasure to
every operation he has made necessary to our support, thereby making the
enjoyment of pleasure one of the conditions of our existence. This is an
unanswerable refutation of one of the most abominable doctrines of the
atheists—the overbalance of evil; and as such, that wise and
amiable divine, doctor Paley, has made use of it in his Natural
Theology. It is true, that yielding to the tendency of our frail,
overweening nature to push enjoyment of every kind to its utmost verge,
men too often overshoot the mark, and frustrate the object they have
most at heart, by eagerness to accomplish it. For though to a reasonable
extent and in certain circumstances, all enjoyments are harmless, they
degenerate into crimes, when excessively indulged, and particularly when
the imagination is overstrained to improve their zest, or to refine or
exalt them beyond the limits which Nature and sobriety prescribe. But
this can no more be alledged as a reason for renouncing the moderate use of
the enjoyment, than the excesses of the drunkard or glutton for the
rejection of food and drink.

That man must have amusement of some kind, “Nature speaks aloud.” He,
therefore, who supplies society with entertainment unadulterated by
vice, who contributes to the
11

pleasure without impairing the innocence of his fellow-beings, and above
all, who instructs while he delights, may justly be ranked among the
benefactors of mankind, and lays claim to the gratitude and respect of
the society he serves. To that gratitude and respect the dramatic poet,
and those who contribute to give effect to his works, are richly
entitled. Accordingly history informs us that in all recorded ages
theatrical exhibitions have been not only held in high estimation by the
most wise, learned, and virtuous men, but sedulously cultivated and
encouraged by legislators as matters of high public importance,
particularly in those nations that have been most renowned for freedom
and science.

In the multitude and diversity of conflicting opinions which divide
mankind upon all, even the most manifest truths, we find some upon this
subject. Many well-meaning, sincere christians have waged war against
the enjoyment of pleasure, as if it were the will of God that we should
go weeping and sorrowing through life. The learned bishop of Rochester,
speaking of a religious sect which carries this principle as far as it
will go, says: “their error is not heterodoxy, but excessive, overheated
zeal.” Thus we find that the stage has ever been with many well-meaning
though mistaken men, a constant object of censure. Of those,
a vast number express themselves with the sober, calm tenderness
which comports with the character of christians, while others again have
so far lost their temper as to discard in a great measure from their
hearts the first of all christian attributes—charity. We hope, for
the honour of christianity, that there are but few of the latter
description. There are men however of a very different mould—men
respectable for piety and for learning, who have suffered themselves to
be betrayed into opinions hostile to the drama upon other grounds: these
will even read plays, and profess to admire the poetry, the language,
and the genius of the dramatic poet; but still make war upon scenic
representations, considering them as stimulants to vice—as a kind
of moral cantharides which
12

serves to inflame the passions and break down the ramparts behind which
religion and prudence entrench the human heart. Some there are again,
who entertain scruples of a different kind, and turn from a play because
it is a fiction; while there are others, and they are most worthy of
argument, who think that theatres add more than their share to the
aggregate mass of luxury, voluptuousness, and dissipation, which brings
nations to vitious refinement, enervation and decay.

In all reasoning of this kind, authority goes a great way, and
therefore before we proceed any further, we will enrol under the banners
of our argument a few high personages, whose names on such an occasion
are of weight to stand against the world, and enumerate some great
nations who reverenced and systematically encouraged the drama. If it
can be shown that some of the most exalted men that ever lived—men
eminent for virtue, high in power and distinction, and illustrious for
talents, in different countries and at different times, have
countenanced the stage and even written for it; nay, that some of that
description have themselves been actors, further argument may well be
thought superfluous: yet we will not rest the matter there, but taking
those along with us as authorities, go on and probe the error to which
we allude, even to the very bone.

It might not be difficult to prove by inference from a multitude of
facts scattered through the history of the world, that a passion for the
dramatic art is inherent in the nature of man. How else should it happen
that in every age and nation of the world, vestiges remain of something
resembling theatrical amusements. It is asserted that the people of
China full three thousand years ago had something of the kind and
presented on a public stage, in spectacle, dialogue and action, living
pictures of men and manners, for the suppression of vice, and the
circulation of virtue and morality. Even the Gymnosophists, severe as
they were, encouraged dramatic representation. The Bramins, whose
austerity in religious
13

and moral concerns almost surpasses belief, were in the constant habit
of enforcing religious truths by dramatic fictions represented in
public. The great and good Pilpay the
fabulist, is said to have used that kind of exhibition as a medium for
conveying political instruction to a despotic prince, his master, to
whom he dared not to utter the dictates of truth, in any other garb. In
the obscurity of those remote ages, the evidences of particular facts
are too faintly discernible to be relied upon: All that can be assumed
as certain, therefore, is that the elementary parts of the dramatic art
had then been conceived and rudely practised. But the first
regular play was produced in Greece, where the great Eschylus,
whose works are handed down to us, flourished not only as a dramatist,
but as an illustrious statesman and warrior.

Without dwelling on the many other examples afforded by Greece, we
proceed to as high authority as can be found among men: we mean Roscius
the Roman actor. That extraordinary man’s name is immortalized by
Cicero, who has in various parts of his works panegyrized him no less
for his virtues than for his talents. Of him, that great orator,
philosopher and moralist has recorded, that he was a being so perfect
that any person who excelled in any art was usually called a Roscius—that he knew better than any other
man how to inculcate virtue, and that he was more pure in his private
life than any man in Rome.

In the Roman catholic countries the priesthood shut out as far as
they could from the people the instruction of the stage. For ages the
fire of the HOLY inquisition kept
works of genius of every kind in suppression all over the south of
Europe. In France the monarch supported the stage against its enemies;
but though he was able to support the actors in life, he had not power
or influence sufficient to obtain for them consolation in death; the
rights of the church and christian burial being refused to them by the
clergy.

14

In England, where the clouds of religious intolerance were first
broken and dispersed by the reformation, the stage has flourished, and
exhibited a mass of excellence and a constellation of genius
unparalleled in the annals of the world. There it has been encouraged
and admired by men whose authority, as persons deeply versed in
christian theology and learned as it is given to human creatures to be,
we do not scruple to prefer to that of the persons who raise their
voices against the stage. Milton, Pope, Addison, Johnson, Warburton,
bishop of Gloucester, and many others have given their labours to the
stage. In many of his elegant periodical papers Mr. Addison has left testimonies of his veneration for
it, and of his personal respect for players; nay, he wrote several
pieces for the stage, in comedy as well as tragedy; yet we believe it
will not be doubted that he was an orthodox christian. The illustrious
Pope, in a prologue which he wrote for
one of Mr. Addison’s plays—the tragedy of Cato—speaks his
opinion of the stage in the following lines:

Warburton, the friend of Pope, a divine of the highest rank, wrote
notes to Shakspeare. And an infinite number of the christian clergy of
as orthodox piety as any that ever lived, have admired and loved plays
and players. If in religion doctor Johnson had a fault, it certainly was
excessive zeal—and assuredly his morality cannot be called in
question. What his idea of the stage was, may be inferred from his
labours, and from his private friendships. His preface to
Shakspeare—his illustrations and characters of the bard’s
plays—his tragedy of Irene, of which he diligently superintended
15

the rehearsal and representation—his friendship for Garrick and
for Murphy—his letters in the Idler and Rambler, from one of which
we have taken our motto for the Dramatic Censor, and his constant
attendance on the theatre, loudly proclaim his opinion of the stage. To
him who would persist to think sinful that which the scrupulous Johnson
constantly did, we can only say in the words of one of Shakspeare’s
clowns—“God comfort thy capacity.”

One example more. Whatever his political errors may have been, the
present old king of England can never be suspected of coldness in
matters of divinity, or of heterodoxy in religion. His fault in that way
leans to the other side—for it is doubted by the most intelligent
men in England whether his zeal does not border on excess. He has all
his life too taken counsel from those he thought the best divines; yet
he has done much to encourage the stage, and greatly delighted in scenic
representations—particularly in comedy. But as a much stronger
proof of his esteem for the drama, we will barely mention one fact: When
his majesty first read Arthur Murphy’s tragedy of the Orphan of China,
he sent the poet a present of a thousand guineas.

The notion that the theatre should be avoided as a stimulant to the
passions deserves some respect on account of its antiquity; for it is as
old as the great grand-mother of the oldest man living. In good times of
yore, when ladies were not so squeamish as they are now about words,
because they did not know their meaning, but were more cautious of
facts, because the meaning of facts cannot be misunderstood, young men
had a refuge from the temptations of the stage in the reserved
deportment and full clothing of domestic society, we cannot wonder that
the good old ladies who abhorred the slightest immodesty in dress
little, if at all less than they abhorred actual vice, should urge to
their sons the necessity of keeping aloof from the allurements of the
theatre. If at that time the costume of the stage differed essentially
from that of private life, and was the reverse of modest, or if the
actresses indulged in meretricious airs
16

which dared not be shown in domestic society, there was a very just
pretence, or rather indeed there was the most cogent reason for
preaching against the theatre. But at this day, no hypothesis of the
kind can be allowed. That beautiful young women ornamented with every
decoration which art can lend to enhance their charms will perhaps
excite admiration and licentious desires, is true; but that those arts
are more generally practised, or those incitements more strongly or
frequently played off on the boards of the theatre than in respectable
private life, our eyes forbid us to believe. He who looks from the
ladies on the stage to those seated on the benches, and compares their
dress and artificial allurements must have either very strong nerves or
very bad sight, if he persist in saying that there is more danger to be
apprehended from the former than the latter. He knows very little of
modern manners and must be a very suckling in the ways of the world who
imagines that a young man has any thing to fear from the actresses on
the stage, who has gone through the ordeal of a common ball-room, or
even walked of a fine day through our streets. The ladies of London,
Dublin, New-York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, have thrown those of the
stage quite into the back ground in the arts of the toilet. Nor is this
qualification confined to those of the haut-ton, but has
descended to tradesmen’s wives and daughters; to chambermaids,
laundresses, and wenches of the kitchen white, yellow, and black,
coloured and uncoloured.

Familiarity with impressive objects soon robs them of their
influence; and if our natural disgust and anger at the shameful
innovations in the female costume for which Great Britain and America
stand indebted to the virtues of France, be blunted by the
constant obtrusion of them on our sight, it is to be hoped that the
pernicious influence of them upon public morals will be diminished also.
In those regions where a tropical sun renders clothing cumbersome, and
the costume of the ladies of necessity exceeds a little that of ears in
transparency and scantiness, familiarity renders it
17

harmless; little or nothing is left for the imagination to feed upon;
cheapened by their obviousness, the female charms are rejected by the
fancy which loves to dwell on what it only guesses at, or has but rarely
seen, and the youthful heart finds its ultimate safety in the apparent
excess of its danger. Thus the stage, if it ever possessed, has lost its
vitious allurements, as a bucket of water is lost in the ocean. To test
this reasoning by matter of fact we appeal to the general feeling, and
have no fear of being contradicted when we assert that, with reference
to their comparative numbers, more mischievous throbs have been excited
in every theatre in London, New-York, and Philadelphia for some years
past before, than behind the curtain.

We are aware that there are some who will object, as a thing taken
for granted, the greater licentiousness of a player’s life; but this,
before it can be admitted in argument, must be proved, and the proof of
it would be very difficult indeed. From a long and attentive
consideration of the subject, founded upon a perfect knowledge of the
private characters of the stage, and the general complexion of society
off of it, we are persuaded that in point of intrinsic virtue the
players stand exactly on a par with the general mass of society. That
there are offenders against the laws of morality and religion among them
is certain; but it must be remembered that they labour in this respect
under great disadvantages, from the publicity of their situation. There,
they stand exhibited to public view, every turn of their conduct,
private and public, becomes a subject of general scrutiny. Ten thousand
eyes are rivetted upon them, for one that is fixed upon individuals in
private life. And though it often happens that some of them are
suspected whose lives are perfectly pure, none who have deviated from
the paths of virtue can long keep their fall concealed. Can the same be
said of the other departments of life? No. Now and then indiscretion,
accident, or a total abandonment of decency brings to light the
misconduct of an individual; but in general
18

the irregularities of private life either escape detection or are hushed
up by pride. Sometimes indeed one vitious purpose occasions the
detection of another, and family disgrace is revealed to pave the way to
a divorce, with a view to another marriage, and perhaps to another
divorce. Were the private conduct of individuals in other stations as
well known as that of the people of the stage, the former would have no
cause to exult at the superiority of their morals; and in truth if a
candid review be taken individually of the actresses of the English
stage, by which we mean every stage where the English language is
spoken, it will appear that, with few exceptions, they stand highly
respectable for private worth and pure moral character. In England,
Scotland and still more in Ireland, an unblemished reputation is
necessary to a lady’s success on the stage. In some instances, the
greatest favourites of the public have been driven for a time from the
stage, for trespasses upon virtue, and when permitted to return were
never after much more than endured. To these instances we shall have
occasion to advert in the course of this work.

While we assert, on the best grounds, that the theatre may be made,
by proper established regulations, a school of virtue and manners,
we do not wish to conceal our persuasion that there is nothing more
potent to debase and corrupt the minds of a people than a licentious
stage. But it may be averred with equal truth, that the abuses of every
other institution are fraught with no less mischief to the public. At
this very moment the abuse of the pulpit is the parent of more public
mischief in Great Britain and America than the stage ever produced in
its most prolific days of vice; and it is deplorable to reflect that the
former is rapidly increasing, while the vitiation of the latter has been
for a century on the decline. The licentiousness of the stage in the
reign of Charles II was enormous: but it was a licentiousness which the
theatre in common with the whole nation derived from the court, and from
a most flagitious monarch
19

whose example made vice fashionable. In servile compliance with the
reigning taste, the greatest poets of the day abandoned true fame, and
discarded much of their literary merit: Otway and Dryden sunk into the
most mean and criminal slavery to it—the former with the greatest
powers for the pathetic ever possessed by any man, Shakspeare excepted,
has left behind him plays which in an almost equal degree excite our
admiration and contempt, our indignation and our pity. It is charitable
to suppose that “his poverty and not his will consented.” But Dryden had
no such excuse to plead for his base subserviency to pecuniary
advantage, or for the detestable licentiousness of his comedies. He who
will take the pains to turn to that admirable tragedy, Venice Preserved,
by Otway, will find in the scenes between Aquileia and the old senator
Antonio enough to disgust the taste of any one not callous to all sense
of delicacy. But had Juvenal lived at that period, he would have
scourged Dryden out of society. To those we might add Wycherly. Congreve
and other cotemporary authors succeeded: but the offences
committed by those men can no more be alleged as a ground of general
condemnation of the stage, than the works of lord Rochester can be set
up as a reason for condemning Milton, Pope, Thomson, Goldsmith, and all
our other poets, or the innumerable murders committed by unprincipled
quacks, be alleged as a cause for abolishing the whole practice of
medicine.

Exasperated by the outrages of the dramatic poets, on virtue and
decency, Jeremy Collier, a non-juring clergyman, attacked the
stage. His charge against the authors was unquestionably right; but his
attack upon the stage itself, exhibited a disposition splenetic almost
to misanthropy, and an austerity of principle urged to unsocial
ferocity. In his fury he renounced the idea of reforming the stage; he
was for abolishing it entirely. He attacked the poets with
“unconquerable pertinacity, with wit in the highest degree keen and
sarcastic, and with all those powers exalted and invigorated
20

by just confidence in his cause.”3 Thus arose a controversy which lasted ten
years, during which time authors found it necessary to become more
discreet. “Comedy (says Dr. Johnson) grew more modest; and Collier lived
to see the reformation of the stage.” Colley Cibber, who was one of
those whose plays Collier attacked, candidly says, “It must be granted
that his calling our dramatic writers to this account had a very
wholesome effect upon those who writ after his time. Indecencies were no
longer wit; and by degrees the fair sex came again to fill the boxes on
the first day of a new comedy, without fear or censure.”

Such a licentious stage as is here described well deserved the
severest attacks: but what is there to justify severity now? at this day
not only the success of every new play so much depends upon its purity,
but so scrupulously correct in that particular is the public taste, and
so abstinent from every the slightest indelicacy are the authors of
plays and even farces, that not a word is uttered upon the stage from
which the most timid real modesty would shrink. In conformity to
this happy state of the general taste and morals, all the old plays that
retain possession of the stage, have been cleared of their pollution,
and all the offensive passages in them have been expunged; some have
been entirely thrown out as incapable of amendment, and in truth, purity
of sentiment, and delicacy of expression, have become so prevalent, that
it is very much to be doubted whether if it were proposed to act one of
Wycherly’s, Dryden’s, or Otway’s offensive plays in its original state,
a set of players could be found who would prostitute themselves so
far as to perform it.

From the offences of mankind arise despotic restrictions and penal
laws of every kind. From the licentiousness of the stage in England,
arose the licensing law which still continues to hold a heavy hand over
all the dramatic productions that are acted; and which has too often
been perverted to corrupt purposes.

21

But if the abuses of the stage in the times alluded to, serve to show
its power to do mischief, the general reformation in the public taste,
which followed that of the dramatic writings, equally show its
competency to effectuate good. Rousseau, who had little less dislike to
plays and players than Jeremy Collier, says, in a letter to D’Alembert,
“Let us not attribute to the stage the power of changing opinions or
manners, when it has only that of following and heightening them. An
author who offends the general taste may as well cease to write, for
nobody will read his works. When Moliere reformed the stage he attacked
modes and ridiculous customs, but he did not insult the public taste; he
either followed or explained it.” So far Rousseau was right. It is the
public that gives the stage its bias—necessarily preceding it in
taste and opinion, and pointing out the direction to its object. In
return the stage gives the public a stronger impulse in morals and
manners. Wherever the stage is found corrupted with bad morals, it may
be taken for granted that the nation has been corrupted before it; when
it labours under the evils of a bad taste, it may safely be concluded
that that of the public has been previously vitiated. The truth is
evident in the wretched state of dramatic taste in England at this
moment, where, corrupted by the spectacles and mummery of the Italian
opera, by the rage for preternatural agency acquired from the reading of
ghost novels and romances, and by the introduction of German plays or
translations, the people can relish nothing but melo-drame, show,
extravagant incident, stage effect and situation—goblins, demons,
fiddling, capering and pantomime, and the managers, in order to live,
are compelled to gratify the deluded tasteless multitude at an
incalculable expense.

What the advantages are which could be derived from abolishing the
stage can only be judged from a view of the moral state of those
countries in which the drama has been for ages discouraged and held in
disrepute, compared with that of countries where it has been supported
and cultivated.
22

Spain comes nearest to a total want of a regular drama of any Christian
country in Europe; and if there be any person who prefers the moral
state of that country to the moral state of Great Britain or America, we
wish him joy of his opinion, and assure him that we admire neither his
taste, his argument, nor his inference.

We have thus far entered into a vindication of the stage, not with
the slightest hope of changing the opinion of its enemies, nor with the
least desire to increase the admiration of its friends; but to awaken
public opinion to a sense of its vast importance, and of the advantages
which society may derive from giving full and salutary effect to its
agency, by generous encouragement, and vigilant control—by
directing its operations into proper channels, and fostering it by
approbation in every thing that has a tendency to promote virtue, to
improve the intellectual powers, and to correct and refine the taste,
and the manners of society. This desirable end can only be attained by
making it respectable, and sheltering its professors from the insult and
oppression of the ignorant, the base-minded, and the illiberal. None
will profit by the precepts of those whom they contemn; and the youth of
the country will be very unlikely to yield to the authority of the
instructor whom they see subjected to the sneers and affronts of the
very rabble they themselves despise. Besides, if actors were to be
treated with injustice and contumely, young gentlemen of talents and
virtue would be deterred from entering into the profession; and the
stage would soon become as bad as it is falsely described to be by
fanatics—a sink of vice and corruption: but the wisdom and
liberality of the British nation, after the example of old Rome, having,
on the contrary, given to the gentlemen of the stage their merited rank
in society, and raised actors and actresses of irreproachable private
character, to associate with the families of peers, statesmen,
legislators, and men of the highest rank in the nation, the profession
is filled with persons eminently respectable for talents, learning and
morals, and estimable as
23

those of other classes in social life—estimable as husbands,
fathers, children, friends and companions. But in Great Britain, they
have a twofold protection—that of the audience and that of the
law—from the insults and injustice of capricious, saucy, or
malignant individuals. There, the line that separates the rights of the
actor from those of the auditor has been exactly defined by the highest
judicial authority.4 And if an individual assaults a performer by hissing5 without
carrying the audience, or a large majority of it, along with him, the
performer has his action against his malicious assailant, and is
adjudged damages as certainly as persons of any of the other professions
or trades recover for an assault, a calumny, or a libel. Hence the
stage is looked up to as a great school, and the eminent actors are
universally looked to as the best instructors in action, elocution,
orthoepy, and the component parts of oratory. By following the same
liberal and wise system with respect to OUR stage, we may reasonably hope soon to bring it
to a reputable state of competition with that of Great Britain, and in
that as in most other parts of the elegancies of life, not very long
hence, to place the new on a complete footing with the old country.

24

BIOGRAPHY—FOR THE MIRROR.

The passion for inquiring into the
lives of conspicuous men is so universally felt, that we cannot help
indulging it in cases where not only the person is unknown, but where
his actions are so remote, that we can neither form a picture of the
one, nor any possible way be affected by the other. The delight with
which children themselves read the histories of remarkable characters,
and the avidity with which, at every period of life, we read biography,
are proofs that this passion has it source in nature, abstracted from
any connexion imagined to exist between the object and our own heart. It
is, however, more lively when the object lives in our time, and when his
actions are the subject of daily conversation in our hearing, or when we
have ourselves been witnesses of them; and still more so, when the
person being still in existence has found means by the force of his
talents to agitate a whole people, to rouse general curiosity and
admiration, and to form, as it were, a landmark in any interesting
department of civilized life.

That mankind, in general, derive greater pleasure from biography than
from most other kinds of writing is universally acknowledged. One of the
greatest moral philosophers of Britain justly observes, that of all the
various kinds of narrative writing, that which is read with the greatest
eagerness, and may with the greatest facility and effect be applied to
the purposes of life is biography; and the accomplished and sagacious
Montaigne, speaking in raptures, upon the same subject, says “Plutarch
is the writer after my own heart, and Suetonius is another, the like of
whom we shall never see.”

As a master key to the study of the human heart, the biographical
account of particular individuals is infinitely superior to history.
History, in fact, is not a just picture of man and nature, but a
registry of prominent actions which derive conspicuity from their name,
place, and date, while the inward nature of the agent, the secret
springs, the slow
25

and silent causes of those actions, being left unnoticed and
undistinguished, remain forever unknown. The man himself is seen only
here and there, and now and then, and lies hidden from view, except in
those points in which his conduct is connected with those actions. But
biography follows him from his public exhibition into his private
retreat, haunts him in his closet concealments, accompanies him through
his house, where his desires, passions, irregularities, vices, virtues,
foibles, and follies take their full swing—sits by his
fireside—watches for his unsuspecting, unguarded
moments,—catches and lays up all the ebullitions of his heart,
when it is freed from all restraint by domestic confidence—scans
all his expressions when he is mixing in free social converse with his
friends and family, and thus penetrates into his heart—detects
every secret emotion of the man’s soul, even when he thinks himself most
effectually concealed, and in every glance of his eye, every whisper,
every unpremeditated act and expression, dives to the very bottom of his
designs and brings up his real character.

In the regulation of life, therefore, or the improvement of moral
sentiment, little benefit is to be derived from a knowledge of the
events of history, the subjects of which are so far removed from the
ordinary business of the world, that they seldom address a salutary
example to the heart or understanding—seldom present an action in
any way applicable to the ordinary transactions of the world, or which
men in general can hope or wish to imitate, and which are therefore read
with comparative indifference, and passed by without improvement, while
biography conveys the best instruction for the conduct of life, by a
happy mixture of precept and example.

Doctor Johnson has, in some of his writings, given it as his opinion
that “a life has rarely passed, of which a judicious and faithful
narrative would not be useful; for not only, says he, every man has, in
the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with
himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients
would be of immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity
26

in the state of man considered apart from adventitious and separable
decoration and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good
or ill but is common to human kind.” How much more beneficial as a mass
of precept and example, and how much more captivating as a narrative
must be the biography of any person who has held a conspicuous place for
any length of time in the eye of the world, particularly if, by the
industrious exercise of vigorous or brilliant talents, he has
contributed more than his share to the happiness, the improvement, or
the innocent pleasure of society. In that case a mixed sentiment of
admiration and gratitude insensibly fills the public mind, from which
there arises a lively interest in all that concerns the person and an
eager curiosity to learn his origin, his early education, private
opinions and habits, the fortunes and incidents of his life, and, above
all, the singularities of his temper, and the peculiarities of his
manners and deportment. Few men in society stand so much in the public
eye, or have such opportunities to engage popular interest and personal
admiration as celebrated actors. In the general account current of life,
casting up the debtor and creditor between individual and individual,
the balance between the auditor and actor will be found largely in
favour of the latter. There are few, we know, to whom this assertion
will not appear paradoxical, because few have given themselves time to
consider that there is no place where a person, having an hour or two to
bestow on relaxation, can obtain so much delight and improvement with so
little concurrence of his own efforts as at the theatre. “At all other
assemblies,” says Dr. Johnson, “he that comes to receive delight will be
expected to give it; but in the theatre nothing is necessary to the
amusement of two hours but to sit down and be willing to be pleased.”
Where the private deportment and moral character of a celebrated actor,
therefore, are not at great variance with the general feelings, he
becomes by the very nature of his profession and talents an object of
general interest, and his life, character, and every circumstance
belonging
27

to him are inquired into with earnest curiosity and solicitude.

He who fairly considers the requisites indispensable to a tolerable
actor, will allow that the professors of that art must be persons of
intellectual capacity and personal endowments much superior to the
common herd of mankind. The vivid intelligence, the high animal spirits,
the aspiring temper, and the resolute intrepidity, which impel them to
the stage and support them under its difficulties, are generally
associated with an eccentricity of character and a giddy disregard of
prudential considerations, which generate adventure and chequer their
lives with a greater variety of incidents and whimsical intercourse with
the world than falls to the lot of men of other professions. Hence it
follows that the stage presents the most ample field for the biographer;
and that whether he writes for the instruction or the entertainment of
his readers, he will not be able to find in any other department of
society men whose lives comprise such an interesting variety as the
actors.

In selecting the persons with whose lives it is intended to enrich
this work, the editors find it necessary in the very first instance to
depart from the rule which their original purpose and strict justice, as
well as a due regard to priority, had prescribed to them. The biography
of the deceased Mr. Hallam, as the father of the American stage, no
doubt lays claim to the first place. There were others too, whose
priority to Mr. Cooper cannot be contested; but, as the materials were
not to be immediately had they have been obliged to postpone them.

28

LIFE OF MR. COOPER.

Mr. Thomas Abthorpe Cooper is the
descendant of a very respectable Irish family, though he was, himself,
born in England. His father, doctor Cooper—a gentleman universally
known, and not more known than beloved and respected by all who have had
any intercourse with East Indian affairs, was a native of Ireland, and
after having served his time to one of the most eminent surgeons in that
kingdom, with the reputation of a young man of genius and great promise,
went over to England, in order to acquire, in the London hospitals, more
perfect practical skill in his business, and to avail himself of the
lectures of the principal professors of surgery and medicine in that
metropolis; intending to return to his native country again, and there
practise for life. It happened with the doctor however, precisely as it
does with the greater part of young Irish gentlemen, who have their
fortunes to raise chiefly by their own efforts. London gradually
unfolded to his view all her irresistible charms; the ligaments which
tied him to his native home, grew every day more and more slender and
weak: the dictates of common sense and prudence, in this one instance at
least enforced by the attractions of pleasure, pointed out the vast
superiority of England to the oppressed, impoverished country which he
had left, as a field for genius and industry to work upon. Having a
prepossessing face and person, and manners frank, conciliating and firm,
he soon extended his acquaintance to a wide circle of friends, whose
advice conspired with his own taste to bring him to a determination, in
consequence of which he settled near the metropolis, and became a
practitioner in surgery and physic. While he was successfully engaged in
this career, he was introduced to some of the great men of
Leadenhall-street, by whom he was appointed to the lucrative office of
inspecting-surgeon of the recruits destined for the service of the East
India Company. In the discharge of this duty it fell to his share to
visit the ships preparing for
29

a voyage to India, and of course to mingle with the company’s servants
of all ranks and conditions, by whom he was in no common degree beloved
and respected—by the higher order for his agreeable and manly
deportment—by the lower for his tenderness and humanity. Though he
lived in England, he viewed his own country with a laudable fond
partiality; and being constitutionally benevolent, and having a heart
“open to melting Charity,” and a hand prompt to indulge it, it may
reasonably be conjectured that in his office of inspecting-surgeon he
was exposed to many sharp attacks upon his feelings; the far greater
part of the recruits who came under his inspection being unfortunate
Irish youths who had thrown themselves upon a strange world, destitute
of every thing but health, youth, and bodily vigor. By such objects, the
sympathy of such a warm heart as that which beat in doctor Cooper’s
bosom, could not fail to be strongly excited, and it was pretty
generally believed that his family had less reason than his unfortunate
countrymen to exult at the goodness of his nature. Nor was his
philanthropy confined to those wretched children of misfortune, the
recruits; many young Irish gentlemen who were going to India as cadets,
experienced his kindness also, but in another form. He had many friends,
and considering his rank, very extraordinary interest with the high
officers and commanders in the company’s service. This he never failed
to exert in favour of such of his young countrymen as he considered
deserving of it: and in short strained his powers in every way to
increase their comfort and accommodation during that trying ordeal,
their passage to India, and to procure them friends when they got
there.

His son Thomas, the subject of this paper, was born in the year 1777,
and received an early liberal education. As doctor Cooper’s interest lay
wholly with the East India company, his children were sent to that
emporium of wealth, Bengal, as soon as their ages fitted them for
admission into the world. Had he lived till our hero was of a suitable
age the probability is that the American stage would at this day want
one of its
30

greatest ornaments; and that the hand which now wields the truncheon of
Macbeth, Richard, and Coriolanus on the American boards, would be
grasping a sword or driving a quill in the service of the East India
company in Bengal, whither doctor Cooper at last went himself, being
promoted to a respectable rank on the medical staff of that settlement,
and where at length he died to the deep regret of all who knew him, and
to the irretrievable loss of an amiable family. To the last will and
testament of the generous man there is seldom any great trouble in
administering—doctor Cooper made a great deal of money; but
retained little of it. We do not mention this as a feature in that
worthy man’s character to be imitated. On the contrary we wish it, so
far as it goes, to operate as a warning against the indulgence of a
spirit, which, though it be a virtue of the highest order when kept
under the control of discretion, does, like every other virtue,
degenerate into a foible, when carried to excess. Fortunately for that
member of doctor Cooper’s family of whom we are writing, he found, when
his youth wanted it, a sincere friend. Mr. Godwin, whose name is
well known in the republic of letters, particularly as the author of a
work the name of which we will not put upon the same page with this
honourable instance of posthumous friendship to doctor Cooper, took the
youth to his own care; adopted, educated, and, as some say, intended him
for an author; a scheme too absurd in our opinion, to be meditated
by a person of Mr. Godwin’s sagacity, who would at least postpone such a
project till the genius of the young man should unfold itself in full
maturity. Such, however, is said to have been the plan, which, whether
the story be true or false, there is cause to rejoice was frustrated. At
this distance it would be hopeless, if indeed it were very desirable, to
trace that strange report to its origin, but we think it not at all a
forced conclusion that it arose from the nature of the education which
Mr. Godwin bestowed upon the youth. Hence without knowing the amount of
Mr. Cooper’s literary attainments, we think it may be fairly inferred
from the existence
31

of such a report, that his education was a learned one, and that he was
early grounded in the dead as well as the most useful modern languages.
Mr. Godwin cannot be suspected of intending for an author by trade,
a youth from whom he had withheld the Greek and Latin classics.

It is not necessary to recur to the instructions of Mr. Godwin for
the fervid partiality which Mr. Cooper early disclosed for the French
revolution. In that feeling he partook in common with men who as
radically, substantially, and essentially differed in principle from Mr.
Godwin, as light from darkness, or heat from cold. Several high
statesmen in England, who afterwards deplored it, at first viewed that
extraordinary event with a favourable eye, as likely to better the
condition of twenty millions of people. So, Mr. Dundas, now lord
Melville, for himself and his colleague Pitt, openly avowed in
parliament. And even Burke himself, whose penetrating eye discerned from
the outset, and foretold all the mischiefs that lurked under that event,
complimented a young Irish gentleman of reputable birth, upon his having
fought as a volunteer with Dumourier, at the battle of Jamappe; adding,
that he gloried in every instance in which he found his young countrymen
disclosing an enthusiastic love of freedom. Nay, he did not scruple to
declare very frequently that, considering the plausible appearance of
the revolution, he should entertain but a very poor opinion of a youth
who was not enamoured with it. With such an authority to warrant us, we
feel no hesitation in stating it as an honourable trait in the character
of Mr. Cooper, that he was delighted with the French revolution, and
that in his enthusiastic admiration of that event, he resolved to
abandon his literary pursuits to give his young arm (he being then not
above seventeen years of age) to the defence of the new republic and, as
he thought, the cause of liberty. He had scarcely taken this resolution,
and made preparations to go to the continent and join the army of the
French republic, when the war broke out between England
32

and France, and totally overset his purpose and his hopes of military
promotion, rendering that which before would have been lawful if not
laudable, an act of treason to his country, of the bare contemplation of
which, it is fair to believe, he was incapable.

It was on occasion of this disappointment and check to his military
ambition, that Mr. Cooper turned his thoughts to the stage. Young as he
was, he made a full and accurate estimate of his situation. Too proud by
nature to be dependant, his feelings suggested the necessity of
immediately doing something for his own support and advancement. He
boldly resolved to be the architect of his own fame and fortune, and it
is probable had too much common sense to take the author’s pen either as
a material or an instrument in constructing the edifice. Having made up
his mind to try his fortune on the stage, he imparted his intention to
Mr. Godwin, who received the communication with deep regret, and
encountered it with the most decided disapprobation, and with every
argument and dissuasive which ingenuity and a perfect knowledge of the
subject could lend to friendship. It was in vain every topic was urged
which could serve to dissuade, to deter, or to disgust: Mr. Cooper
firmly adhered to his purpose, and Mr. Godwin perceiving him immovable,
yielded to what he could not overcome, and resolved, since he could not
divert him from the stage, to do all he could to set him forward on it
to the best advantage. To this end, Mr. Holcroft, the friend of Mr.
Godwin, was called in; and he gave the young man some preparatory
lessons, a task for which he was exceedingly well qualified uniting
in himself the several talents of actor, author, and critic.

To procure admission on the stage in England is not always an easy
task. In the present instance it seemed to Mr. Holcroft and Mr. Godwin a
matter of serious consideration to whom an application should be made
for the purpose, and what theatre would be most likely to receive him
with least disadvantage. At length application being made
33

to Mr. Stephen Kemble he agreed, without seeing the young gentleman, to
take him under his auspices; and to that end Mr. Cooper repaired to
Edinburgh. Of his reception by Mr. Kemble the most ludicrous description
has been given; a description, which, as biographers, we should not
think of introducing on the present occasion, if it had not already
appeared in public, accompanied with an assertion that it came from Mr.
Cooper himself. “The writer of this sketch (says the publisher of that
account) has heard Cooper himself describe with great pleasantry his
first interview with the Scotch manager; he was at that time a raw
country youth of seventeen. On his arrival in Edinburgh, little
conscious of his appearance and incompetency, he waited on Mr. Kemble,
made up in the extreme of rustic foppery, proud of his talents, and
little doubting his success. When he mentioned his name and errand, Mr.
Kemble’s countenance changed from a polite smile to a stare of
disappointment: Cooper had been prepared for young Norval; but he was
obliged to exchange all his expected eclat for a few cold excuses from
the manager, and the chagrin of seeing some nights after, his part
filled by an old man and a bad player. During the remainder of the
season he continued with Stephen Kemble, without at all appearing on the
stage. From Edinburgh he went with the company to
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, there he lived as dependent, inactive, and
undistinguished as before, till, owing to the want of a person to fill
the part of Malcolm in Macbeth, he was cast to that humble character. In
so inferior a sphere did he begin to move who is now become one of the
brightest luminaries of the theatrical hemisphere. His debut was even
less flattering than his reception from the manager had been. Till the
last scene he passed through tolerably well, but when he came to the
lines which conclude the play—

34

After stretching out his hands and assuming the attitude and smile of
thankfulness, a slight embarrassment checked him, and he paused,
still keeping his posture and his look—the prompter made himself
heard by every one but the bewildered Malcolm, who still continued mute,
every instant of his silence naturally increasing ten-fold his
perplexity—Macduff whispered the words in his ear—Macbeth
who lay slaughtered at his feet, broke the bonds of death to assist his
dumb successor, the prompter spoke almost to vociferation. Each thane
dead or alive joined his voice—but this was only “confusion worse
confounded”—if he could have spoken the amazed prince might with
great justice have said, “So thanks to all at once”—but his
utterance was gone “vox faucibus hæsit”—a hiss presently
broke out in the pit, the clamor soon became general, and the curtain
went down, amid a universal condemnation.”

No part of biography is so interesting, or affecting as that which
brings before us the struggles of unassisted vigour and genius with the
obstructions which accident, or the ignorance or malice of vulgar souls
throw in their way, and their ultimate triumph over adversity. Few men
have enjoyed that triumph more than Mr. Cooper, for few have in their
outset met with a more mortifying repulse, or more discouraging
difficulties. There are not many whose resolution could have outlived
such a cruel discomfiture as that at Edinburgh: but on him it seemed to
have the happy effect of steeling his natural fortitude, and sending his
spirit forward in its career with increased impetuosity.

Disappointed and chagrined, but not humiliated, he returned back to
London, more determinately than ever resolved to persevere till he had
mastered fortune and established a footing on the stage—exhibiting
a degree of confidence which generally inheres in genius, and which his
ultimate success well justified. Far from being depressed or obscured by
his Edinburgh adventure, his talents had so much unfolded themselves and
been so visibly improved, that his friends Godwin and Holcroft felt
convinced he had
35

not mistaken or overrated his powers; but, on the contrary, possessed
qualifications, which, if diligently and judiciously cultivated, would
raise him to a rank with the most eminent actors then living. The great
bar to his advancement was that diffidence which occasioned his
discomfiture in Edinburgh: but his friends knew enough of the human
heart and powers to be assured that that very diffidence is so
universally the concomitant of sterling merit, that where it
superabounds wise men give credit for much excellence, and bestow their
partiality with a liberal hand; while the want of it is generally
suspected of denoting a great deficiency in merit: and they were right;
for the young person who wants modesty wants every thing. Fraught with
these considerations, those discerning men and steady friends thought
that they would best consult their protegé’s interest by putting
him into training in some obscure company, and took measures to
introduce him into a routine of acting in the country theatres, from
which novitiate they expected he would soon emerge well practised in
stage business, and fully qualified to give out the whole force of his
natural powers on some of the stages of the metropolis.

The country managers, however, seemed to think very differently from
Messrs. Godwin and Holcroft of Mr. Cooper’s capabilities. If they had
not the genius, the discernment, or the “spirits learned in human
dealings” of our hero’s patrons, they had self-sufficiency and obstinacy
in abundance, and what was more unfortunate, they had the power in their
hands; a power which in such persons is rarely softened in its
exercise by liberality or candor. These, notwithstanding the authority
of Godwin and Holcroft’s opinion, considered or affected to consider Mr.
Cooper as a poor juvenile adventurer, who had no one requisite for the
profession. “Their hands, they said, were already full—(of trash
no doubt they were) every character even the lowest was engaged. To show
their deference, however, to the high opinion of the young man’s
friends, they would endeavour to think of something for him to perform.”
36

In conformity to the dictates of this generous spirit, they
vouchsafed him some inferior parts: but every one knows, who knows any
thing at all of theatrical affairs, that the coldness of a manager to a
young performer, creates at least, distrust in the audience—that
the young candidate who is set forward in humiliation, is forbidden to
rise; as he who is thrust into characters far beyond the reach of his
powers will, for a time, get credit for talents which he does not
possess: for discerning and despotic as the multitude think themselves,
they are still the dupes or the submissive slaves of dexterous leaders
in every department of life. By the error, the ignorance, or the
churlishness of the country managers, Mr. Cooper was excluded from any
fair opportunity to redeem the credit he had lost in
Edinburgh—they considered, or affected to consider him as wholly
incompetent to any character of consequence: those which were vouchsafed
him were of so inferior a rank that they denied scope to the exercise of
his yet latent powers; for such a genius as that of Cooper could no more
dilate in a meagre character, than Eclipse or Flying Childers could lay
themselves out at full speed in a city building lot; and it is
reasonable to suppose that, notwithstanding all his fortitude, the
spirits of the youth were depressed, and his faculties chilled by such
humiliating neglect, and such reiterated disappointments. Who is he that
would not, under such circumstances, sink into languor? It cannot be
doubted that dejection every day detracted from his powers, and that by
a kind of irresistible gravitation, he descended like a falling body in
the physical world, with accelerated velocity, till at last he reached
the very bottom of the profession. Reader, behold—and refrain from
regret if you can—behold Cooper,
on whom crowded theatres have since gazed with astonishment and delight,
reduced to the condition of a mere deliverer of letters and messages
upon the stage of a low country theatre. The writer of this cannot help
picturing to himself the feelings of a multitude of great and worthy
personages in Great Britain and India, and particularly the feelings of
37

a sister, the lovely inheritress of her family’s virtues, if they had
known at the time, that which our hero’s manly pride concealed, that the
son of doctor Cooper, whose goodness of heart had often been the refuge
of the distressed, was for months languishing under the chill of public
neglect, and dragging on existence upon a miserable pittance which
scarcely afforded him physical support; or if they had seen him in his
unaccommodated removal from that situation, walking on foot to the
metropolis.

The repulses of a mistaken and unworthy few, and the neglect of a
world very little better, had no other effect upon Mr. Cooper’s friends
Godwin and Holcroft, than to quicken their sensibility and inflame their
ardour to serve him. It is more than probable those mortifications
tended to increase the conviction of the former that his eleve
had made a deplorable choice of profession, but did not at all shake the
opinion which both, and particularly the latter, entertained that he had
great capabilities for the profession. The youth had now waded in so
far, that to go back might be worse than to go forward; Mr. Holcroft
therefore again took him in hand; read Shakspeare with him, and
accompanied their reading with practical commentaries upon the force of
that author’s meaning, marked out to him those parts where the character
was to depend for its interest and impression, on the actor’s exertions;
heard him over and over again repeat the most difficult speeches, and
instructed him how to adapt his action, looks, and utterance to the
passion which the author designed to exhibit, so as to excite
appropriate feelings in the auditor. Though Shakspeare is above all
others the poet of Nature, his meaning frequently eludes the dim or
vulgar mind, and to be intelligibly elicited from the stiffness and
obscurity which sometimes injures his language, requires profound
consideration. For the minute investigation requisite for this purpose
few men were better qualified than Mr. Holcroft—few men much more
equal to the task of bringing forth from the rich mine where they lay
and purify of their dross the talents of Mr. Cooper. With an earnestness
and indefatigable zeal proportioned to
38

the object, and which nothing but the most generous friendship could
impel him to employ, Mr. Holcroft gave those powers to the instruction
of our hero, and with such speedy and felicitous effect, that the young
gentleman was, in the course of a few months, considered by his two
friends as perfectly qualified to appear before a London audience in
some of Shakspeare’s most important characters. Having been for some
time a successful dramatic writer, Mr. H. enjoyed the ear and
confidence of the managers, and arranged with those of Covent Garden for
his pupil’s appearance on that stage. And now the time arrived when his
fortitude was to be rewarded, his sufferings compensated, and his
talents to find their proper levels. His first appearance was in Hamlet,
in which he received unbounded applause. In two or three nights after he
performed the very arduous part of Macbeth to a house so very full as to
occasion an overflow. It is but justice to the Edinburgh and other
provincial managers to observe, that when Mr. Cooper appeared on the
London boards he was greatly improved in his externals. His person had
grown more into masculine bulk and manly shape; his face had become more
marked and expressive, and his voice had swelled into a more full deep
tenor.

The friendship of Mr. Holcroft caused Mr. Cooper to be universally
misjudged. The opposition prints represented him in the most extravagant
terms of eulogy. The government prints ran into the opposite extreme,
and he became at once the idol and the victim of party spirit. Yet such
a reception, by a London audience, was a sufficient pledge of future
success. He was still young, had much to learn in order to reach the
first rank of that profession, and if a real, well-grounded, just fame
had been his object, he ought to have felt that it could only be
attained by perseverance, and by the customary natural gradations. The
London managers offered him an engagement, which, though allowed to have
been liberal, seems not to have come up to his own estimate of his
deserts. Playing two or three
39

or four characters well is a very different thing from sustaining a
whole line of acting, to which long practice and great constitutional
force are as necessary as any other requisite. In this view of the
matter, as well as because managers neither desire nor will be permitted
in England to supersede established favourite servants of the public, it
will not appear surprising that the first rate rank of characters to
which Mr. Cooper aspired, was refused to him by the managers, who
thought that they better consulted the public feeling, their own
interest, and even the young gentleman’s fame and ultimate prosperity,
by placing him in a secondary general line, in which he might improve
himself by playing with and observing the best models, and in regular
gradation make his way to the first, as Kemble, Cooke, and others had
done before him. This however was too unpalatable for his ambition to
swallow. The first he would be, or none. There is not a sentiment of
Julius Cæsar’s that is thought so censurable and unworthy of his great
mind as that which he uttered when, pointing to a small town, he said,
“I would rather be the first man in that village than the second in
Rome.” This has been justly called perverted ambition, and Milton
stamped it with terrible condemnation when he put into the mouth of his
arch fiend the sentiment—“better to reign in hell than serve in
heaven.” The passions of youth extenuate those errors which in ripened
manhood are criminal; and it is not improbable that Mr. Cooper’s own
opinion at this day concurs with ours when we say that his refusal of
the manager’s offer seems to us to have been very injudicious. From
Plautus, with whom we dare say he had long before had an intimacy, he
might have taken this profitable lesson,

Had he not rejected that offer he would long ere this have had
permanent possession of the rank to which he too prematurely aspired.
His refusal was followed by a retreat into the country, where, with the
perseverance of Demosthenes, he laboured
40

in fitting himself for a more successful effort; resolved to force his
way if possible to the high object of his ambition.

During his retirement intimations of his success crossed the
Atlantic. Mr. Tyler, some time since the manager of the New-York
theatre, received the intelligence from a friend in England: “Prepare
yourself for astonishment,” said his correspondent, “that identical Mr.
Cooper who, a few months ago, was playing the very underling
characters at our theatre, and who appeared so extremely incompetent, is
now performing Hamlet with applause in London.” Sometime after this the
agent of the Philadelphia manager in England made proposals to Mr.
Cooper, who exulting in the thoughts of obtaining in America that rank
which he was refused in London, closed with the offer, and soon after
passed over to America. In Philadelphia, however, he found that his
object was not altogether so attainable as he imagined. In no place does
favouritism flourish with much more rank luxuriance than in that
city—in no place do personal prepossessions more frequently
operate to the overthrow of judgment, to the exclusion of merit, and to
the fostering of incapacity. The multitude had their favourites whose
merit touched the highest standard of their conceptions—any thing
beyond that was hid in an intellectual mist. The taste of the many was
formed upon the kind of merit which they so much admired in their
favourites, and little did it relish that of Mr. Cooper. It is
astonishing how constantly fond overweening prejudice deceives itself.
The philosopher who told the powerful despot, his sovereign, that there
was no royal way to mathematics, was believed, because the despot had
common sense—but a headstrong multitude can never be persuaded
that a person can be incompetent to any one thing, if they only
will him to be great in it: and thus it has happened not
infrequently, in all cities as well as Philadelphia, that splendid
talents have stood behind as lackeys, while doleful incapacity has
feasted upon public favour.

The abilities of Mr. Cooper gave great uneasiness, for they every day
forced a passage for themselves to some share of approbation,
41

in the very teeth of favouritism and prejudice. Some there were who
could discern no merit at all in him; some who industriously employed
themselves in depreciating and denying the little which others allowed
him. At last his vigorous struggles made it necessary to call in a
corps de reserve which he little suspected; his private life was
impeached, and the careless, irregular habits of youth—habits, by
the by, in which no youth indulge more than our own, were arrayed
against him. Unjust as this was, it produced the desired effect; for
when his benefit was announced, very few seats were taken in the boxes.
And here we have to record a feature in that gentleman’s character which
marks his honest pride and magnanimity in deep impression. The manager
was bound by his contract to make up to a certain stated amount, the
proceeds of Mr. C.’s benefit. To such an advantage Mr. C.
disdained to have recourse. At the same time his pride shrunk from the
thoughts of playing to empty boxes at his benefit. He resolved to have a
full house, and hit upon an expedient which showed that, young as he
was, he knew something of the human heart, and that, though a stranger,
he had made a very shrewd estimate of the public taste, for which he had
the skill to cater more appropriately and successfully than he could by
merely dishing up a play of Shakspeare’s in his own rough cookery.
Fortunately for his purpose there had lately arrived in Philadelphia an
actor of great weight and merit, a native of India, of whose
immense and popular talents he resolved to avail himself; this was an
elephant, which for the trifling douceur of sixty dollars, that
is, near twice as much as the best actor in the city now gets for one
week’s labour, he prevailed upon to press the boards of the
theatre for that one time only, and be the chief performer and great
attraction of the night. This was what a seaman would call hitting the
public between wind and water: Mr. Cooper therefore poured in a whole
broadside of printed notices, which were put into every hand, and a huge
playbill, which glared at the corner of every street in letters of
elephantine size, informing the public that the distinguished
42

performer already mentioned, had kindly consented to act a principal
part in the entertainment of the evening. No sooner was this announced
than the whole city was in one hubbub of curiosity—one twitter of
delight; and Mr. Cooper had so many friends who were all at once
intent upon giving him their dollar at his benefit, that the house was
crammed, and there was as great an overflow from every part of it as if
the renowned master Betty himself were to have occupied the place of the
elephant.

Very different was Mr. Cooper’s reception at New-York, whither he
went when the theatre of Philadelphia closed for the season. On his very
first appearance he established himself in the public opinion as a first
rate actor. The New-York stage might about that time vie for actors in
number and quality with the best provincial company that ever played in
England. Hodgkinson, Cooper, Fennell, Jefferson, Harwood, Bernard, Mrs.
Morris, and Mrs. Hodgkinson, besides two or three admirable comedians.
Pierre is well adapted to Mr. Cooper’s talents and style of acting, and
he evinced his judgment in selecting it for his first appearance.
Through the whole play the ball was well tossed to him by the other
actors; the consequence was that the impression he made has never been
erased. The opinion entertained of him was more substantially evinced
than by mere applause. There was a unanimous desire that he should leave
the Philadelphia theatre and engage at New-York; but to this it was
objected, that he was bound by his contract with the manager of the
former, to play for a certain time under a penalty of two thousand
dollars; this objection, however, was soon superseded by a subscription
raised among the gentlemen of New-York to pay off that sum if the
manager should be able to enforce it. Thus honourably was Mr. Cooper
planted in the city which he contrived to make his head-quarters till
the beginning of the year 1803, when he passed over to England. During
that period he paid a professional visit to Philadelphia, where he was
so justly appreciated that he had no further occasion for the aid of the
elephant.

43

It happened that Mr. John Kemble the chief actor, and once the acting
manager of Drury Lane theatre, had in the year 1802,
a misunderstanding with the proprietors, in consequence of which he
left it, and visited the continent, leaving the first line of character
very inadequately filled. Intelligence of this secession having reached
America in the latter end of 1802, Mr. Cooper, who was invited, as it is
said, by the proprietors of Drury Lane, to take Mr. Kemble’s place, if
his reception by the town would warrant them in retaining him, crossed
the Atlantic, and once more appeared in London. His success was by no
means equal to the expectations of his New-York friends. Those however
who were better acquainted with the general subject and the state of the
stage in England, who were aware how much actors of the greatest talents
profit by constantly playing with men of equal standing with themselves,
and how much they lose by the want of great models either to emulate or
follow, were far from being so sanguine in their expectations. By the
London audience he was handsomely received, and greeted with the
applause and kindness due to a stranger of respectable powers: but in
efficient benefit to the house and to himself he failed; wherefore,
passing on to Liverpool, he played a few nights in that town with great
applause, then took shipping and returned to America, where he was
received with open arms.

After his departure the theatre of New-York fell into a state of
decline for want of a proper manager and proper company. The deceased
Hodgkinson having been joined in the management of the Charleston
theatre, and brought along with him some of the best performers, it was
resolved by the proprietors of the New-York theatre, to give it upon
encouraging terms to a manager of sufficient qualifications to conduct
the business of it successfully. Hodgkinson was elected to the
management of it almost unanimously; but soon after died of the yellow
fever. Mr. Cooper then undertook it—bought the theatre at a vast
expense—improved and embellished the house, and was amply
remunerated by
44

the immense receipts of the first season; at the end of which he sold
out his property in it to another gentleman, who we believe now owns and
manages it.

No actor ever made so much money in America as Mr. Cooper. By a
skilful distribution of his time and exertions, he takes care never to
stay so long in one place as to satiate the public appetite. Regardless
of the fatigues of travelling, and always supplied with the best cattle,
he flies from city to city over this extended union, like a comet; one
day he is seen at New-York, the very next he performs in Philadelphia.
A few days after, we have an account of his playing at Boston, and
perhaps before a month elapses we again have intelligence of his acting
at Charleston, (S.C.) in each of which places he receives an enormous
salary, and always has a full benefit. Thus if he possesses the gift of
retention as he does that of gaining, he must necessarily become very
rich. There are modes of getting rid of money, however, to which gossip
Fame, we regret to say it, whispers he is much addicted. That he may be
more extravagant than he ought to be, we can suppose without injury to
his moral character. Whether he be so or not is not our business to
discuss—but it is our duty to relate those things which may be set
down as a counterpoise to the blamable disregard of economy of which he
is impeached by many who are perhaps little capable of estimating his
means or his motives. He is one of the most dutiful and generous of sons
to an amiable mother, whose old age he cheers with punctual bounty, and
by the most constant and pious filial reverence and affection.

Mr. Cooper has a sister, or at least had one, a lady of high
personal endowments and great goodness. She was early married to Mr.
Perreau of Calcutta, a gentleman who stands as high in the opinion
of the world as any man in India.

Of the merit of Mr. Cooper as an actor we shall have occasion to
speak in another part of this work.

45

LIFE OF ALLEYN, THE PLAYER.

Mr. Edward Alleyn, who though an
actor, is ranked among “the British Worthies,” was born in London in
1566, and trained at an early period to the stage, for which he was
naturally qualified by a stately port and aspect, corporal agility,
flexible genius, lively temper, retentive memory, and fluent elocution.
Before the year 1592 he seems to have acquired a very considerable
degree of popularity in his profession; he was one of the original
actors in the plays of Shakespeare, and a principal performer in some of
those of Jonson; but it does not now appear what were the characters
which he personated. They were probably the most dignified and majestic,
for to these the portly and graceful figure of his person was well
adapted. At length he became master of a company of players, and the
proprietor of a playhouse called the Fortune, which he erected at his
own expense, near Whitecross-street; and he was also joint proprietor
and master of the Royal Bear-Garden, on the Bank side, in Southwark. By
the profits accruing from these occupations, added to his paternal
inheritance, and to the dowries of his two wives, by whom he had no
children, he amassed a considerable property, which he bestowed in a
manner that has redounded more to his honour than his professional
merit. The wealth thus acquired enabled him to lay the foundation of a
college, for the maintenance of aged people, and the education of
children, at Dulwich in Surrey, which institution, called “The College
of God’s Gift,” subsists at this time in an improved and prosperous
state. The liberal founder, before he was forty-eight years of age,
began this building after the design, and under the direction of Inigo
Jones: and it is presumed that he expended eight or ten thousand pounds
upon the college, chapel, &c. before the buildings and gardens were
finished, which was about the year 1617.

Alleyn had long been regarded by all the great and good people of
England, including the sovereign Elizabeth, with admiration and respect.
This charitable endowment presented
46

him to the world in a new and grander attitude. But still as he was a
player, the vulgar and superstitious were unable to account for this act
which would have done honour to a king or a saint, by any other than
diabolical influence. It was therefore reported, and by the ignorant
multitude was believed, that Mr. Alleyn, “playing a demon with six
others in one of Shakspeare’s plays, was in the midst of the play
surprised by the apparition of the devil, which so worked on his fancy,
that he made a vow, which he performed at this place.” This most
laughable story is handed down seriously in a book written by a person
of the name of Aubrey. Tradition says that it was from Alleyn’s acting
and conversation Shakspeare wrote his admirable instructions to players
which he has put into the mouth of Hamlet.

After the founder had built this college, he met with difficulties in
obtaining a charter for settling his lands in mortmain, that he might
endow it, as he proposed, with 800l. per annum, for the support
and maintenance of one master, one warden, and four fellows, three of
whom were to be ecclesiastics, and the other a skilful organist; also
six poor children, as many women, and twelve poor boys, who were to be
maintained and educated till the age of fourteen or sixteen years, and
then put out to honest trades and callings. The master and warden were
to be unmarried, and always to be of the name of Allen or Alleyn. At
length the opposition of the lord chancellor Bacon was overcome, and
Alleyn’s benefaction obtained the royal license, and he had full power
granted him to establish his foundation, by his majesty’s letters patent
under the great seal, bearing date June 21, 1619. When the college was
finished, the founder and his wife resided in it and conformed in every
respect to the regulations established for the government of his
almoners. Having by his will liberally provided for his widow, and for
founding twenty almshouses, ten in the parish of St. Botolp, without
Bishopgate, in which he was born, and ten in St. Saviour’s parish,
Southwark, and bequeathed several small legacies to his relations and
friends, he appropriated the residue
47

of his property to the use of the college. He died in 1626, in the
sixty-first year of his age, and was buried in the chapel of his own
college. The chapel, master’s apartments, &c. are in the front of
this building, and the lodgings of the other inhabitants, &c. in the
two wings, of which that on the east side was handsomely new built, in
1739, at the expense of the college. They have a small library of books
and a gallery of pictures with that of the founder at full length. The
inscription over the door concludes with these words: abi tu et fac
similiter—go thou and do likewise.

49

INTRODUCTION

TO

THE DRAMATIC CENSOR.

I have always considered those combinations which are formed in the
playhouse as acts of fraud or cruelty: He that applauds him who does not
deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public; He that hisses in
malice or sport is an oppressor and a robber.

Dr. Johnson’s Idler, No. 25.

The establishment of a regular and
permanent work of dramatic criticism, and of censorship upon the public
amusements of this city has often been attempted. The uniform failure of
these efforts renders it natural to apprehend that the proposition now
submitted to the public will incur the charge of presumption, and
perhaps experience, for a time, the coldness and discouragement with
which the majority of mankind are always inclined to treat even laudable
exertions, if they in any degree militate against the dictates of common
prudence, and are not recommended by a certainty of public approbation.
Taking their auspices of the present undertaking from the fate of those
hasty productions on the same subject, which have been brought forth and
expired within the compass of their short season, there are too many,
who, instead of applauding the hazardous boldness of the measure, and
for the sake of its public utility standing forward in its encouragement
and support, will endeavour to damp it by premature censure, ascribe the
undertaking to vanity, or unworthiness, and if it should fail, be ready
to
50

aggravate the disappointment of the projectors with the galling
imputation of temerity, impudence, or overweening self-conceit. The
sympathy which mankind in general think it handsome to feel for
unassuming merit, stumbling in its way through life by incautiously
venturing upon ground untrodden before, will be gladly withheld from
persons who are supposed wilfully to rush forward into error, with the
warning monitions of example before their eyes—who obstinately
persist in an unadvised and hopeless enterprise, in defiance of manifold
and recent experience, and whom the imprudence and misfortunes of others
have been incapable of rendering cautious or discreet.

With encountering these, and many other objections (the offspring of
indistinct conception and cold hearts) the projectors of the present
work lay their account; yet, since nothing honourable or arduous would
ever be accomplished, if hope were to be extinguished by partial defeat,
and a generous enterprise were to be abandoned, because it had before
been tried without success, the work now proposed is undertaken, with
the most firm conviction of its utility and the most unequivocal
confidence of success. Let their difficulties be what they may, however,
the editors are prepared to meet them, not only without fear, but with
satisfaction; since they know that nothing but impossibility will be
refused to undismayed perseverance and unremitting industry, and that in
the work they are entering upon, they labour for the promotion of a
purpose which, whatever the amount of their pecuniary advantage may be,
will entitle them to public respect and to the gratitude of the rising
generation. Before such proud hopes, all the little obstructions they
anticipate—the cavils of the scrupulous, the doubts of the
sceptical, the reluctance of the timid, the resistance of the refractory
and incorrigible, and the sneers, the censures, and the sarcasms of the
curious and the malignant vanish, as the gloomy chills and shades of the
night recede before the glorious luminary of the morning.

51

That the drama is a most powerful moral agent in society has been
admitted by men of learning and wisdom in all ages of its existence.
Whether its effects be, on the whole, injurious or not, will long be a
subject of contest; but be they what they may, it can have very little
influence of any kind beyond that of harmless amusement, on the wise,
the pious, the learned and the experienced. Were those alone to visit
theatres and be exposed to its allurements, the task of the dramatic
censor might without injury be dispensed with: but since it is the
young, the idle, the thoughtless, and the ignorant, on whom the drama
can be supposed to operate as a lesson for conduct, an aid to experience
and a guide through life, and since such persons are generally
unfurnished with ideas and undefended by principles, prompt to receive
first impressions, and easily susceptible of false opinions and
pernicious sentiments, it becomes a matter of great importance to the
commonwealth that this very powerful engine, (acting as it does upon our
youth through the delightful medium of amusement, and by the
instrumentality of every circumstance that can lay hold of the fancy,
and through the senses fascinate the heart) should be kept under the
control of a systematic, a vigilant and a severe, but a just
criticism.

To the formation of that rare compound “a finished man” there belong,
besides the higher requisites of moral character, an infinite number of
minor accomplishments, which are materially affected either for the
better or the worse, by a frequent and studious attendance on dramatic
representations. Manners, which
constitute so important a part of the character of every people, are
considerably fashioned by a constant observation of the pictures of
human life exhibited in the theatre: on the action, the utterance and
the general deportment, the effects of the stage have ever been
materially felt and are unequivocally acknowledged. The most eloquent
men of antiquity, and the most eloquent men in England, have owned
themselves indebted to actors for perfecting them in oratory. Roscius,
52

the actor of Rome, is immortalized by Cicero, and Garrick by lord
Chatham and Edmund Burke. If then the stage has been felt to produce
such weighty effects in the more arduous part of human improvement, how
ponderous in its operation must it not of necessity be, on the other
hand, in the promotion of evil, if it exhibit to the growing generation
corrupt examples and defective models, not only unrestrained and
uncensured, but sanctioned with the applause of an uninstructed and
misjudging multitude. Every plaudit which a vitious play, or a bad actor
receives is a blow to the public morals, and the public taste. Man is an
imitative animal, and insensibly conforms to the models and examples
before him. Young men who excessively admire a favourite actor, will
insensibly imitate him, without scanning the man’s merits or defects;
and without ever reflecting upon the ultimate influence which their
partiality, if it should be misplaced, may have upon their lives,
fortunes and characters, will adopt his manner, his action, his
enunciation, nay, his worst defects, and in short every thing that is
imitable about him.

Those who dissent from us on other propositions, will agree with us
at least in this, that the highest degree of attention ought to be paid
to the morals, the manners, the address and the language of youth; and
that nothing which has a tendency to mislead them, in any of those
essentials, should be submitted to their eyes or ears; but that on the
contrary, every thing should be done, as a great moral philosopher has
instructed us, “to secure them from unjust prejudices, from perverse
opinions, and from incongruous combinations of images.” Let it be kept
in mind that we are not now discussing the question whether the stage be
beneficial to society or not. Though it be a fair subject of inquiry,
and will hereafter engage a share of our attention, we have no use for
it, at present; since be our opinions or those of our readers what they
may, the stage exists, and will continue to exist and attract the
regards of mankind. The true point of consideration, therefore, is, not
how far it is beneficial
53

or how far injurious; but in what way its benefits may be enhanced, and
its mischiefs, if any, be abated. He who should demonstrate that it has
a pernicious tendency, would but the more strongly enforce our
propositions; since he would thereby show the expediency of diminishing
that tendency and of mitigating that evil which the public will forbids
to be entirely prevented.

It is not merely on account of its effects upon the audience, but on
that of the actors themselves, that the theatre calls loudly for a
strict critical regimen. An actor resigned to his own opinion, and
committed to the unrestrained licentious exercise of his own judgment,
if he be not one in a million, sinks into negligence, becomes wilful,
and if, as is nine times in ten the case, he should obtain the casual
applause of a few stupid and injudicious spectators, becomes headstrong,
refractory, and incorrigibly hardened in error. If by means of the
oversight of critical judges, or the false adjudication of applause, an
actor insensibly slides into popularity, he is erected into a standard
of taste, by those who have not seen better; instead of being himself
tested by sound principles of criticism and estimated by comparison,
with the best models, he becomes gradually absolved from submission to
all authority, is held up as a criterion for determining the merit of
other actors, and dubbed the Roscius of his little theatre by a number
of confident pretenders who know just as much about dramatic character
and acting, and on the very same grounds too, as the poor islander of
St. Kilda did of architecture, when he sagaciously concluded that the
great church of Glasgow was excavated out of a rock, because he had
never before seen an edifice made of hewn stone and mortar. Thus not
only a false taste is circulated among the youth at large, but the very
fountain of taste is itself polluted. This is an evil which nothing but
a well-regulated body of competent critical authority can prevent. In
the prosecution of the intended work, an occasion will occur of pointing
out eras during which, even in the great metropolitan seat of the
English
54

drama, the public taste suffered years of vitiation from defective
models being at the head of the stage. Till Garrick, led on by Nature
herself, introduced her school, the theatre presented a stage on which
scarce a vestige of the human character as it really existed, was to be
seen. But pompous monotony of speech held the highest praise, and “Declamation roared while Passion slept.”

Hitherto the theatre of Philadelphia has been too much resigned to
the licentiousness of bold, and blind opinion. Men of letters, with
which the city abounds, and who in every society are the natural
guardians of the public taste and morals, seem to have deserted this
important trust. Applause which ought to be measured out with scrupulous
justice, correctness and precision, has been by admiring ignorance,
poured forth in a torrent roar of uncouth and obstreperous glee
on the buffoon, “the clown that says more than is set down for him,” and
on “the robustious perriwig-pated fellow, who tears a passion all to
rags,” while chaste merit and propriety have often gone unrewarded by a
smile.

If critical judgment were a matter of physical force or numerical
calculation, then indeed the roar of the multitude would be as
conclusive in reason, as it too often is in practical effect; but
criticism is a matter of intellectual estimate; and many acquirements go
to the composition of a well-qualified dramatic critic, to any one of
which, but a small number of the auditors of a play can, in the nature
of things, have the smallest pretensions. If indeed any man under the
assumption of the critic’s name should attempt dogmatically to impose
his dictum as a law upon the public, he would deserve to be
repelled with indignity and rebuke. All the genuine critic will attempt
to do, is to hold out those lights, with which his own study,
experience, and observation have supplied him, in order to enable the
public to discern more clearly what in the play or the actor is worthy
of censure or applause—of rejection or adoption. In the common
operations of human life, every man is compelled by the necessity of his
nature to take succedaneous aid from others.
55

The mechanic in erecting the poorest building, or forming the most
simple machine, is indebted for his means to the practical geometrician,
and instrument maker, and the latter again, to the master of the science
of mathematics. The practical surveyor or navigator finds it his
interest to be governed by rules supplied by those whom study has
furnished with the great elementary principles of science, and is
contented to stand indebted to them for his means of determining, the
area of his land, or the latitude and longitude at sea, without
impugning the rights of those studious men who have given him the
compendious rules and the tables by which he works. It is so with
dramatic criticism. The legitimate source of judgment lies with those
who have by deep study made themselves masters of the first principles
of the science; and from them the people at large, who are too much
otherwise and certainly better employed, to learn those principles, must
be content to take the rules and laws by which they judge. The most
infatuated self-devotee would be ashamed to contest this point, if he
were at all apprised of the various acquirements requisite for forming
an accurate judgment of the business of the theatre, interwoven, as the
dramatic art is, with some of the highest departments of literature, and
the multifarious operations of the human heart. The vainest being who
cajoles himself into the notion that a man either unlettered or
inexperienced can form a just judgment of a play and actors, must at
once be convinced of his error by reflecting that “the drama is an
exhibition of the real state of sublunary nature;” and that “to instruct
life, and for that purpose to copy what passes in it, is the business of
the stage.”6 To understand this well, demands not only some
book-learning, but that experience which, though books improve, they
cannot impart, and which never can be attained by seclusion or solitary
study, but must be derived from intercourse with
56

men in all their forms of conduct, from converse with society, and from
an attentive and accurate examination of that complex miscellany, the
living world. To know the drama we must know men; and “if we would know
men (says Rousseau) it is necessary that we should see them act.” It is
equally necessary too that we should lift the veil which time has thrown
over the past, and see how men have thought and acted through the lapse
of ages upon the uniform principles of human passion, which ever have
been and ever will be the same, and by that means distinguish that which
is natural, innate and permanent in man, from that which is adventitious
and acquired. He whose knowledge of the world is circumscribed within
the narrow limits of one generation or one society can know man only as
he appears in the superficial colouring and peculiar modification of
personal habit, derived from the fashions, the modes, and the capricious
changes of that time, and that society, while the great body of human
nature remains buried from his sight. “The accidental compositions of
heterogeneous modes (says the gigantic critic Johnson) are dissolved by
the chance which combined them, but the uniform simplicity of primitive
qualities neither admits increase nor suffers decay.” And assuredly
there was never an age in which man so masked his nature under modish
innovations as he does in the present.

The works of the ancients, says a great writer, are the mines from
which alone the treasures of true criticism are to be dug up—the
pure sources of that penetration which enables us to distinguish
legitimate excellence from spurious pretensions to it. He, therefore,
who would get at the true principles of dramatic criticism ought to read
the poetry and criticism of the two great ancient languages, and to have
formed some acquaintance with those authors, whether ancient or modern,
who have furnished the world with the great leading principles upon
which dramatic poetry is constructed. Doctor Johnson has informed us
that before the time of Dryden, the structure of dramatic poetry
57

was not generally understood; and what was the consequence? “AUDIENCES,” continues the doctor, “APPLAUDED BY INSTINCT, AND POETS OFTEN PLEASED BY
CHANCE.”7

Without calling in the aid of such high authority, no risk of
contradiction can be incurred by asserting that he must be radically
deficient in the requisites of a dramatic critic, who is not
sufficiently versed in philological literature to discriminate between
the various qualities of diction—to distinguish the language of
the schools from that of the multitude—the polished diction of
refinement from the coarse style of household colloquy—the
splendid, figurative, and impressive combination of terms adapted to
poetry, from those plain and familiar expressions suited to the sobriety
of prose; and finally, to form a just estimate of a poet’s pretensions
to that delicacy in the selection of words which constitutes what is
called beauty in style. Nor is this all, he should be perfectly
competent to form a judgment of the fable and its contrivance, to
determine according to the canons of criticism laid down by the greatest
professors of the art, whether the scheme of a piece be obscured by
unnatural complexity or rendered jejune and uninteresting by extreme
simplicity, and familiarity of design—whether description be
bloated, or overcharged, or imagery misplaced or extravagant; and
lastly, whether the performance be on the whole deficient in, or replete
with moral institution.

The editors are free to confess that while they enumerate the
requisites necessary to a critic, they tremble for their own
incompetency. Labour however shall not be spared—-and they cherish
the most sanguine hopes of supplying their general deficiency by candour
and integrity; being determined while they endeavour with encouragement
and applause to foster the rising genius and growing merit of the stage,
to rescue it from the encroachment of sturdy incapacity, and while they
sit in judgment for the security of the public taste, to be as far as
the canons of dramatic criticism will
58

allow, the strenuous advocates of the valuable man and unassuming
actor—still keeping in sight that impressive truth contained in
the motto: “He that applauds him who does not
deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public; he that hisses in
malice or in sport is an oppressor and a robber.”

The editors have said thus much merely to explain their motives, and
to smooth their way to the discharge of a task, in the performance of
which they will necessarily be exposed to many invidious remarks from
the misconceptions of presumptuous ignorance. Having done so they
fearlessly commit the subject to the public judgment, and proceed to the
execution of their duty.

59

DRAMATIC CENSOR.

The Philadelphia Theatre opened on Monday the 20th of November,
with

“A CURE FOR THE HEART-ACH.”

It has been said by a great moral
philosopher that fashion supplies the place of reason. On superficial
consideration the assertion will appear paradoxical; but there is much
truth in it, and much biting satire too, upon the absurdities of the
world. Fashion could not supply the place of reason, if reason were not
absent; and most irrational and unaccountable indeed are all her
ladyship’s ways. Her capriciousness is proverbial, and her agency is
generally illustrated by comparison with the most unsteady elements of
the physical world. We say “Fashion that fluctuating lady,”
alluding to the ebbing and flowing of the tide—and “Fashion that
weathercock,” implying that she veers about with every puff of wind.
There are some few cases, however, on the other hand, in which she may
be compared to a rock, because she stands immovably fixt to her seat;
supplying, according to the idea of the philosopher abovementioned, the
place of reason, who stands self-exiled forever. It would seem as if
fashion never could take repose but in supreme irrationality. There and
there alone she is firm. Whoever will take the trouble (or rather the
pleasure) to read “Browne’s Vulgar Errors,” will see how much deeper
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root absurd notions strike in “the brain of this foolish compounded clay
man,” than those that belong to sound sense and reason. The insignia of
fashion, therefore, may be considered in relation to the human head, as
the notification on the door of an empty house, signifying that the
family has removed to another tenement. Hence no one of common sense
expects any caprice of that lady to be accounted for on rational
grounds. There is one of her freaks, however, which we have endeavoured
to trace to its source in the wilds of luxuriant absurdity, and have
never been able to succeed. Nay, we venture to affirm that if the most
sagacious man in America were asked, why it was considered a violation
of the laws of fashion for a lady to attend the theatre on the opening
night of a season, he would be puzzled for any other reply than that it
was permanently fashionable, because it was prodigiously absurd. On the
opening of our theatre this season the house was full of MEN. The audience presented one dark tissue of drab
and brown, and black and blue woolen drapery, with here and there a
solitary exception of cheering female attire. Had there been a heavy
fall of snow, the ladies would have been sleighing—had there been
a public ball the darkness of the streets would have been broken by
multitudes of attractive meteors in muslin, either “hanging on the cheek
of night,” or hurried along like gossamer through the air. But fashion
has so ordained it: and a good play and after-piece were well
represented to a house which, from the little intermixture of the lovely
sex, somewhat resembled the auditory of a surgeon’s dissecting
theatre.

Mr. Morton’s comedy “A Cure for the Heart Ach,” is by this time so
well known that to relate the fable of it here, would be uselessly to
encumber the work. Of the quality of this production it would be
difficult for criticism to speak candidly, without adverting to the
present miserable state of dramatic poetry in England, which from the
days of Sam Foote has been gradually descending to its present
deplorable condition. The body of dramatic writers of the
61

last thirty years first corrupted the public taste, and now thrive by
that corruption. By hasty sketches, not of Nature as she appears in all
times and places, but of particular and eccentric manners and
characters, the excressences of overloaded society, they have made a
short cut to the favour of the public, and inundated the stage with a
torrent of ephemeral productions, to the depravation of public taste,
and in defiance of classical criticism: their highest praise that they
do no moral mischief, and that if they possess not the bold outline and
faithful colouring of nature which distinguished the productions of
their mighty predecessors, they are no less exempt from the obscenity
and immoral effects of those authors. As bad writing is infinitely
easier than good, the pens of our living dramatic writers in general
teem with an inconceivable fertility—and the purlieus of London
are beat over in every direction to hunt up game suitable to the genius
of their weak-winged muse; in short, to find out new modifications of
character, attractive not by its consonance to man’s general nature, but
by its eccentricity and departure from the ordinary tracks of human
conduct.

Having thus insulated this class of comedies, and put them apart from
the old stock, to which, with the exception of the Honey Moon, there is
no modern production comparable, criticism may weigh the merits of each
piece as compared with its class, and perhaps find something to praise.
We consider some of the comedies of Mr. Morton, however, as raised high
above the throng. The Cure for the Heart Ach has much in it to commend.
The moral tendency of many parts of it is good, while the incidents are
exceedingly laughable. Old Rapid continually betraying his trade
by stuffing his conversation with the technical terms of the
taylor—his son’s distress at it—the honest rusticity of
Frank Oatland—the baseness, vanity and folly of
Vortex the nabob—the insolence and amorousness of Miss
Vortex his daughter, and the whimsical incidents arising from their
various designs, mistakes, detections and disappointments, form
altogether a melange of pleasantry
62

highly provocative of laughter, yet by no means so low as to reduce the
piece to the rank of farce, which some austere critics in London have
assigned it.

Of the performance generally, we repeat that it was good. Young Rapid
afforded criticism much satisfaction in the person of Mr. Wood, who in
many parts persuaded us that he had seen Mr. Lewis in that character,
and seen him with profit. Mr. Wood’s walk is not unlike that of the
great original in London—a nasal tone of voice too is common to
both. These, if they did not create, certainly increased the resemblance
between those two gentlemen, which, however remote, was yet discernible.
In Sir Hubert Stanley, as in every other character in which we
have seen him, Mr. M‘Kenzie deserved warm applause—he was
dignified, pathetic and interesting. Mr. Francis gave a strong colouring
to Vortex; and to say that Frank Oatland was all that the author could
wish, we need only to state that he fell to the share of Mr. Jefferson.
After all, we are doubtful whether old Rapid was not as well off in the
hands of Mr. Warren as any other character in the play.

We were greatly interested and indeed delighted by Mrs. Wood in Jesse
Oatland. Mrs. Francis was abundantly droll in Mrs. Vortex; and Mrs.
Seymour was entitled to the marks of approbation she received.

November 22.

Pizarro and the Review composed the
bill of fare for this evening. Although in the attack and defence of
Pizarro criticism has worn down the edges of its weapons to very
dulness, we cannot forbear taking this opportunity of recording our
opinions of that extraordinary production.

No play that has appeared during the last century, possesses the
power of agitating the passions, and interesting the feelings in an
equal degree to Pizarro. From a child of the brain of Kotzebue, trained
and corrected by Sheridan,
63

much might be expected. And the piece before us is worthy of the talents
of such men.

In any contest between oppressed and oppressors the
heart takes in an instant, a decided and a warm part. If the crime
of oppression is aggravated by other guilt in the
oppressor, and the object of it is rendered more lovely and
respectable by the most exalted virtues, pity for the one rises to
respect and affection—indignation against the other becomes
exasperated to hatred, to abhorrence, and disgust; without the
intervention of the will, but merely from the spontaneous movements of
the heart, we sympathise, we silently pray for the one—we recoil
from, we execrate the other. We are pressed by our very nature into the
service of virtue; our souls are up in arms against vice and improbity,
and thus we receive lasting impressions, which, when our hearts are not
very corrupt, must forever after have a favourable influence on our
moral conduct.

To elucidate and confirm our opinions on this subject, we beg leave
to ask, what is that play in which there is such a mass of virtue and
simplicity, and such a number of amiable personages, opposed to such a
mass of villany, subtlety, fraudful avarice, and sensual vice, as in
Pizarro? Not one. The lofty moral sentiments of Rolla, his exquisite
feelings and exalted notions as the patriot, the friend, the lover, are
unequalled. He exists out of himself, and lives but for others: for his
country, his king, his friend, and the dearest object of his love, of
whom being bereft by that very friend, he becomes their
brother—their protector—devotes his life to death to save
the man—escaping that, devotes it again to save their offspring.
How much worse, if worse could be, than a satanic soul must that man
have, who could be insensible to such a character! Who is there whose
heart beats in harmony with heroic virtue and humanity, that would not
accept such a death, to have lived such a life? Need we say more then of
Pizarro than to contrast him with such a character. The only gleam of
light that breaks in upon that black Erebus, his heart, is his
conduct
64

to Rolla when the latter throws aside his dagger; and this the poet
(Sheridan) has artfully contrived for the purpose of heightening the
lustre of such virtue, by showing that even that monster could not be
insensible to it.

Let us add that in the true liberal spirit of Christian piety,
tolerance and humanity displayed by Las Casas, a popish Spanish
priest; in the noble indignation, the inflexible fortitude, and the
intrepid patriotism and virtue of Orozimbo; in the valour, the
beneficent wisdom, and the, ardent connubial fidelity and affection of
the young Alonzo, in the tenderness, the simplicity, the conjugal and
maternal virtues of Cora, and in the artless display of vivid patriotism
in the old blind man and his boy—there is, exclusive of Rolla’s
glorious qualities, a mass of excellence sufficient to make the
character of any two plays, and put each out of the reach of competition
with any other that we can immediately think of.

Such as we have described are the emotions which are always produced
by the play now under consideration, when it happens to be properly
represented. Fortunately or unfortunately as it may happen, the play is
so constructed that almost every part in it contributes largely,
according to its kind, to the interest of the piece. Every person of the
oppressed—the Peruvians, even down to the blind man and the
little boy, are made by the poet to produce a large share of the general
effect. For this reason it is a piece which taxes a manager highly,
calling for a variety of excellent talents in the actors. It is not one
of those plays which satisfy the mind and from which we come home
contented, if two or three characters are well done. The play of Pizarro
is a lifeless body when compared with what it ought to be, if all
the high Peruvians at least, are not well performed. In the movement of
a watch every small wheel and every little rivet is as necessary to the
general effect as the mainspring. So Las Casas, Orozimbo, the blind man,
and the blind man’s boy, are as necessary not perhaps to the mean
progress of the fable (but to that effect, that necromantic influence
upon the feelings, that penetrating moral which alone
65

can render a play useful as well as delightful) as is the character of
Rolla.

It may appear a singular avowal, yet being truth we will not withhold
it, that having witnessed the performance of this play many times in
England and America, we have never yet seen it performed to our
perfect satisfaction. Kemble was great in Rolla, but the
feebleness of his voice was severely felt by the audience in the
celebrated speech of the Peruvian to his soldiers. That speech has been
the stumbling block of most actors we have seen. Hodgkinson, who in
other respects was unexceptionable, rather failed in it. Throughout the
whole character, Mr. Wood preserved a very equable tenor of acting. He
had neither the rich beauties nor the striking defects of others. He
evinced considerable judgment, but at times powers were evidently
wanting.

Mr. M‘Kenzie supported Pizarro well, and showed that he possesses
abilities to support it better. It appears to us that this gentleman’s
physical powers are sometimes subdued by an over-scrupulous chasteness.
In his answers to Elvira’s solicitations on behalf of the unhappy
Alonzo, he did not, we think, sufficiently mark all the feeling and
emotions of the tyrant. Pizarro is stung with jealousy as well as rage;
not so much the jealousy of love as of infernal pride; but both rage and
jealousy are mastered by triumphant insolence and contempt. The
utterance therefore of his laconic decisive sentence, “He dies,” should
be marked with a triumphant sneer as well as malice.

Mr. Warren did ample justice to the venerable Las Casas.

Mr. Cone who, though labouring under the disadvantages of a voice
radically, and we fear, incurably monotonous, gives promise of being a
useful actor, displayed considerable spirit in Alonzo. To the praise of
diligence and attention to his business Mr. C. is entitled, and
those rarely fail in any department to insure respectability and
success. Mr. Cone’s personal appearance is very much in his favour.

The only part in the play on which we can justly bestow
unqualified applause was Mr. Jefferson’s Orozimbo. It is
66

seldom that criticism has such a repast, a repast in which there
was no fault but that of the poet in making it too short.

Elvira is not one of the characters in which Mrs. Barret appears to
advantage.

Had Mrs. Wood the requisite talent of singing, we should have been
much pleased with her Cora. Certainly so far as that lady was able to
go, we know no person on this stage who could be substituted in her
place with advantage to the character. But the omission of Cora’s
exquisitely beautiful, wild, and pathetic song, was a great drawback
from the effect of the part.

December 21.—Town and
Country, by Morton—Village Lawyer. Some of the British
critics rank Mr. Morton with the farce-writers of the day, others again
pronounce his comedies to be the best which the age has produced, and
say that they will be selected by posterity from the perishable trash of
the day. We agree with neither, thinking it likely they may remain for a
few years among the stock of acting plays. To say that they will
be admired by posterity is praise as hyperbolical and unjust, as ranking
them in farce is calumnious and untrue.

The comedy before us is a very pleasing production. The plot is well
imagined, and the author has contrived to condense into it more bustle
and incident than can readily be found in a piece of the same length.
Reuben Gleuroy, the hero, is a noble character, possessed of the most
exalted virtues, which are continually brought into active exercise for
the good of his fellow beings. He preaches little and does a great deal,
and displays a generosity and greatness of mind touching, as the world
now goes, upon the chivalrous. But that which makes him more
conspicuously amiable and interesting is that while he takes the most
ardent and active concern in the happiness of mankind, he is himself
reduced by the wickedness of others to a state of misery almost of
distraction, which awakens the most poignant sympathy for his situation.
Deserted, as he imagines, by the object of his dearest affections,
Rosalie Summers, who is supposed to have
67

eloped with a villain of high rank of the name of Plastic, he goes to
London and finds his brother in the last stage of ruin and despair by
gambling, and stops his hand just at the moment he is attempting
suicide. In the end he reforms the brother, discovers his Rosalie, and
finds that she is innocent and faithful; and by a series of those
events, which whether likely or not, modern dramatists without scruple
press into their service, is made perfectly happy. The colouring of this
admirable portrait is not a little heightened in its effect by a tinge
of eccentricity caught from a life of rural retirement in the romantic
mountainous country of Wales. On this character and that of old Mr.
Cosey, a philanthropic, wealthy, and munificent stock-broker, whose
cash, always at the disposal of his friends, enables Reuben to
accomplish his purposes, the author seems to have dwelt con
amore. The comic dialogue of the piece arises chiefly from the
contrasted feelings of Mr. Cosey and Mr. Trot. Cosey admires the city,
and is miserable in Wales, while Trot, a wealthy cotton-spinner,
rejoices at the loss of a large share of his property because it
furnishes him with a pretext for returning to the country and leaving
the abominable city to which he was hurried away by the vanity of
his wife.

Mr. Wood displayed in Reuben, much ability, sound sense, and fine
feeling. No person that we know on the stage discloses in his
performances so little of the mere actor. That indefinable something,
which though obvious to perception cannot be described, but is
understood by the term “plain gentleman,” tinctures all he says and does
upon the stage. Whether this be detrimental to him as a general actor,
we have not yet seen this gentleman often enough to determine: but this
we will say, that while it stands a perpetual security against his being
positively disagreeable in any character he may be obliged to act, it
throws a charm over all those for which he is best fitted by nature.

The amiable, the inimitable Cosey, never was, nor ever can be more
perfectly at home than in the person of Mr. Jefferson. Were the author
to see the performance and to observe the correspondence of the actor’s
physiognomy as
68

well as action and utterance, with the sentiments of the character, he
would from his heart exclaim in the words of Cosey himself, “NOW THIS IS WHAT I CALL COMFORTABLE.”

It would be great injustice not to acknowledge the pleasure we
received from Mr. Francis in the character of Trot, which he conceived
and executed with great humour and spirit.

A Mr. West from the southward made his appearance in the Yorkshire
rustic Hawbuck. His face and person are well adapted to a certain class
of low comedy; his voice still more so. If he will but avoid that bane
of comedians, the effort to raise laughter by spurious humour and low
trick, he will thrive in his department.

In the drawing of the female parts there is nothing sufficiently
striking to call forth the powers of an actress. What was to be done was
sufficiently well done by Mrs. Wood and Mrs. Wilmot. But, were they well
cast? or, should they not change sides?

FARCES FOR THE FIRST WEEK.

November 20. Of age tomorrow.

Every character tolerably well played.

November 22. Wags of Windsor.

Hardinge, an old favourite of the town in Irish characters, appeared
the first time for four years in Looney M‘Twoulter. His return to this
stage was hailed with thunders of applause; and all his songs were
encored.—We have not seen Caleb Quotem better performed in
England, nor so well by a great deal in America as this night by
Jefferson.—Wilmot is a true child of nature and simplicity in all
such characters as John Lump.

November 24. Village Lawyer.

We abhor this farce. Scout, from whom it takes its name, is too
detestable a picture of human meanness and depravity
69

to be fit for farce, the proper effects of which, however nonsensical it
may be, ought to be to enliven and not create disgust. We cannot bear to
see a respectable actor in it. Blisset, a favourite son of Momus,
played the Sheepstealer. Mr. West, whom we have mentioned in Hawbuck,
played Old Snarl with great humour, which his audience, and indeed
himself, seemed heartily to enjoy. In characters of low humour,
particularly crabbed old men, Mr. West would be very pleasing, if he
would aim less at raising gallery laughter by spurious means. And all
that could be done for Mrs. Scout was done by Mrs. Francis.

November 27.

ELLA ROZENBERG.—WOOD DEMON.

Ella Rozenberg, a melo-drame, by Mr.
Kenny, was brought out for the first time at Drury Lane in 1807, and has
ever since maintained its ground in the public opinion. It is extremely
interesting, and though there is nothing new or singular in the plot or
incidents is calculated to lay fast hold on the imagination and
feelings. At the opening of the piece, the scene of which is laid near a
Prussian camp, the heroine Ella Rosenberg reduced by the
disappearance of her husband to a state of poverty, is living under the
protection of captain Storm, a crippled old officer of
invalids, and the friend of her deceased father. Here she has concealed
herself for two years, when she is discovered by colonel
Mountfort, who having conceived a criminal passion for her, had
in order to gratify that passion, purposely provoked her husband to draw
his sword upon him, in consequence of which apprehending the severity of
the military law, the latter had set off to the capital to appeal to the
electoral prince, but was no more heard of. The colonel, who is a
finished master of intrigue, enters Storm’s house in disguise, and
attempts with the help of a band of his soldiers to carry off Ella by
force. In this he is opposed by the good and gallant old officer, who,
sword in hand, beats
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off the soldiers, tears the colonel’s sash from him, and in a rage
tramples it under foot, in consequence of which Storm is made prisoner,
and Ella left unprotected, is borne away by the soldiers. The elector,
who has just returned victorious from the war, appears considering a
petition from old Storm on behalf of Ella, which interests him so much,
that he resolves to visit her incognito. Mountfort, who is a favourite
of the elector’s and has just arrived to congratulate him, is alarmed,
endeavours to dissuade him from going to Ella, and in the meantime to
secure himself from detection orders the immediate trial of Storm, who
is found guilty and sentenced to die. Ella escapes and reaches Storm,
her old protector, just as he is on his way to execution. He does all he
can to keep his fate concealed from her; but it being betrayed, she is
torn from him in a state of distraction and anguish, and being consigned
by her generous protector to the care of a brother officer who commands
the guard, is conducted to a solitary inn by a soldier. The elector
appears at night passing in disguise to visit the cottage of Storm, and
is encountered by Rosenberg, who appears in the most wretched state,
flying from his pursuers, and supplicates him for the means to procure
shelter. Without disclosing who he is, Rosenberg informs the elector
that he (Rosenberg) has been secretly and violently imprisoned. The
elector directs him to the house to which Ella is carried by the
soldiers, and promises to meet him there in the morning and assist him.
Rosenberg reaches the inn whither Ella too is brought in a state of
insensibility, and placed in a separate apartment. Mountfort arrives
alone, and not knowing Rosenberg engages him to guard Ella, while he
goes to seek a conveyance for her. Rosenberg now finds the cause of his
imprisonment—an interesting discovery takes place between him and
Ella—but he is detected by one of his pursuers, and is again in
the hands of his enemies, when the elector enters, and obtaining the
most perfect conviction of the villany of Mountfort, disgraces him,
restores
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the young couple to rank and happiness, and the brave and virtuous old
Storm to life, liberty and joy.

The plot of this melo-drame is wrought up with uncommon skill: the
interest rising by a progressive climax which keeps the heart in a warm
glow of feeling from the first scene to the last. Old Storm is worth a
whole army of what are called heroes, and the elector is a model of
justice and humanity for princes to imitate.

According to the London casting Rosenberg would have fallen to the
share of the first player in the house: but we had no reason to complain
of Mr. Cone. Mr. Warren discharged the high office of elector with
dignity; and Mr. M‘Kenzie was an excellent representative of the old
cut-and-thrust-colonel. Such characters as Ella are always interesting
when played by Mrs. Wood.

The tasteful amateur must have been roused and delighted by the
music, particularly the overture.

Ella Rosenberg was followed by one of the most monstrous productions,
the mind of man ever groaned withal. Never did melancholy madman
labouring under the horrors of an inflammation of the brain—never
did a wretch fevered with gluttony and intemperance, and writhing under
the pressure of the night-mare, dream of more horrible circumstances
than those which Mr. Lewis has offered in this prodigious melo-drame,
for the ENTERTAINMENT of the British
nation. Where will the taste of England stop in its descent? Where will
the impositions on it by bastard genius end? Yet since this monster has
produced a powerful effect, and is managed with such perverted skill as
to excite a strong interest, and since whole audiences condescend to
club tastes with the scarecrow old women of the heath and the mountain,
and to play “look at the bugabow,” with the nurselings of the lap, we
should be sorry to be deficient in curtesy, or when so many good and
wise people drivel not to drivel a little too; we bend therefore with
stiff and
72

painful obedience to our duty, and offer our readers a short summary of
the fable.

To clear the way then, be it in the first place known, that Mr.
Matthew Lewis has found out a new kind of infernal agent—a demon
who delights in human sacrifices, and lives in the woods. Perhaps it is
because we are poorly versed in demonology that we do not recollect to
have heard of this particular infernal before. Be that as it may,
Count Hardyknute of Holstein, having been sent into the world
deformed in person and poor in circumstances, and being resolved to sell
his soul to damnation for the bettering of his body, makes a contract
with the demon, in condition of his being made handsome and powerful, to
sacrifice to him a human victim on a particular day in each year; in
failure of which he is to become the prey of the demon, who is very
handsomely named Sangrida. The count has sacrificed nine victims
before the opening of the piece, and is meditating with himself with
what fat offering he shall next glut the maw of Sangrida, in anniversary
punctuality. Leolyn, a dumb boy, the rightful heir of the
estate and title which Hardyknute had usurped, has been secretly bred up
by Clotilda as her own, but Hardyknute discovers him by the mark
of a bloody arrow on his wrist, and determines to help Sangrida to his
little body. Una, a beautiful young lady, to whom the count
pays his addresses, is selected by the guardian spirit of Holstein to be
the preserver of the intended victim. The time approaches for the
fulfilment of the agreement. By a process of the most horrible kind of
enchantment Una is enabled to remove the boy so as to elude the count,
and gets possession of the key of an enchanted place on which the boy is
chained. She gets him down from it—the clock is seen just near the
stroke of one—she resolves to push the hand
forward—Hardyknute seizes and is about despatching her, when
Leolyn with difficulty mounts to the clock, pushes forward the hand and
it strikes one—the demon appears, seizes the count in his
claws—the earth opens, and the demon carries him down, in the same
manner
73

that an alligator or shark carries down a puppy dog, to devour him in
comfort.

Such is the piece, and such the depravity of a nation’s taste. It is
no wonder that the tasteful, the learned and the judicious, should wage
an open war of wit and satire upon such things. On this subject we refer
our readers to a piece signed Theobaldus
Secundus, which will appear in our next number.

SECOND WEEK.

November 29. Reconciliation, or Fraternal
Discord, with False and
True.

It would be superfluous to say any
thing of a play so well known and so justly admired.

December 1. Abaellino, or the Great
Bandit, with the Lady of the
Rock.

The Great Bandit is one of those
extraordinary productions which distinguish the present dramatic writers
of Germany from those of all ages and all countries. There are but few
topics connected with the stage which deserve more serious discussion
than this of the German drama. A proper investigation of it would
require more room than we can at present spare: but we shall not so far
desert our duty as to decline it when we can devote to it the
deliberation it deserves. A future, and not far distant number will
contain such reflections as occur to us on the subject.

December 2. Road to Ruin—Don
Juan.

Mr. Wood in Harry Dornton was
very successful. It is a line of acting for which he is well calculated.
The character of Goldfinch was better performed by Mr. Jefferson
than it could be in any other person in this theatre. But we received
less pleasure from it than from any other we have seen him play,
Scout excepted.

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FARCES FOR THIS WEEK.

The Wood Demon, though used as an
after-piece, demanded observation of a more serious kind than is due to
farce, and has therefore received it in pages 71 and 72.

The farce of “False and True” is a
wretched thing. To speak Johnsonically it is a congeries of inexplicable
nonsense. An Irishman, who, after having committed the very
probable blunder of going to Naples instead of Dublin, mistakes
Vesuvius for the hill of Hoath, is the most laughable character of the
piece. What could be done for it Hardinge did. A song of his was
spoiled by the neglect of the band, whose conduct deserved reprehension
from the manager.

The Lady of the Rock is the
production of Holcroft. Had he not himself given it to the world as his
own, we should have thought it a libel upon his understanding to ascribe
it to his pen.

No pantomime has ever made so deep
and so universal an impression as Don Juan. The merit of the original
belongs to the celebrated Moliere. Averse on principle to pantomime, we
have often felt ourselves indebted to it for relief from the drowsiness
induced by some modern plays; but that perhaps was more owing to the
badness of the play than the value of the pantomime. Of all pantomimes
Don Juan is the most blamable. It is good in its kind, but the kind
is bad.

THIRD WEEK.

Monday, Dec. 4. SPEED THE PLOUGH—ELLA
ROSENBERG.

The comedy of Speed the Plough is
deservedly reckoned among the best of the modern stock, and considered
as reflecting great credit upon the muse of Mr. Morton. The plot is very
skilfully mixed up, notwithstanding the difficulty that always must attend
carrying on, in connection with each other,
75

two interests of a totally distinct and opposite nature, connecting two
contradictory agencies without either encroaching on the other, and
conducting an alternation of serious and comic scenes to one end,
without making them clash. This Mr. Morton has, to a considerable
degree, successfully accomplished; making that which occasions the
difficulty subservient to one of the most desirable but arduous ends in
dramatic writing, that of concealing the final unravelling or
denouement, as it is called, of the plot.

A striking beauty in this play, and the more striking because seldom
met with, is the fidelity with which some of the characters are drawn
from life; not as it is found in a solitary individual, but as it
appears in a whole numerous class. Such is farmer Ashfield—such is
dame Ashfield. Yet the characters in general are not very impressive,
and there are some inconsistencies in them as well as in the arrangement
of the incidents. A young lady’s suddenly, and at first sight,
falling in love with a peasant boy, though it may have happened, is an
occurrence too singular to be perfectly natural; and as a dramatic
incident, it is a coarseness which cannot well be reconciled to the
characteristic delicacy of such a young lady, even by the ex post
facto discovery that the object of her love was in reality a person
of condition. We do not think that love at first sight, which is in
reality nothing more than Forwardness indulging itself in the airs of
Romance, and Prurience calling in Fate to sanction its indelicacy, ought
to be clothed in such a respectable and captivating dress as our author
has bestowed upon it in this play.

Yet with these defects to counterbalance them, Speed the Plough is
replete with beauties—the dialogue is neat, spirited, and
forcible; and there are many delicate touches of the pathetic, and much
excellent moral sentiment to recommend it.

The best character, beyond all comparison, is that of Farmer
Ashfield. It is a picture of real life, originals of which are found in
multitudes in England—plain, honest, benevolent, and under a
rustic garb, possessing a heart alive to the noblest feelings. No man
that we know in this country
76

possesses such happy requisites for exhibiting the farmer in the true
colours of nature as Mr. Jefferson. In the rustic deportment and
dialect—in the artless effusions of benignity and undisguised
truth—and in those masterly strokes of pathos and simplicity with
which the author has finished this inimitable picture Mr. Jefferson
showed uniform excellence: and as in the humorous parts his comic powers
produced their customary effect on our risibility, so in the serious
overflowings of the farmer’s honest nature the mellow, deep, impressive
tone of the actor’s voice vibrated to the heart, and excited the most
exquisite sensations.

Mr. Wood performed Bob Handy. He was given out in the bills for sir
Philip Blandford; but was, by a casualty, obliged to take the part of
Bob: a change which, on more accounts than one, the audience had no
cause to regret. Nor in our opinion, had either Bob or sir Philip any
cause to lament it. Mr. Wood is at home in light comedy, while Mr.
M‘Kenzie, whose merits seem not to be sufficiently appreciated, is well
calculated for such characters as Philip Blandford.

The judgment of Mr. Warren enables him to perform any character he
undertakes with propriety—but there are some parts in comedy for
which he seems admirably qualified by nature and knowledge of stage
business. We could enumerate several; but this is not the place for
doing so—his representation of sir Abel Handy was uncommonly
humorous and appropriate.

Mr. Cone’s Henry was pleasing. This young actor promises well.
Though, to adopt the cant of the turf, he will never be first, there is
no fear of his being distanced, unless he carries too great weight.

Dame Ashfield in the performance of Mrs. Francis would be admired by
Mrs. Grundy herself; and to express our opinion of Mrs. Wood’s Susan
would be only to repeat what we have already said of her on more
occasions than one.

It gives us infinite regret to be compelled, just as we put our foot
upon the threshold of the critic’s office, to animadvert
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upon some errors and defects in pronunciation, of which we could not
have imagined the persons concerned to be capable. Our purpose is to
persuade the people to encourage the stage upon principles honourable to
it; not as a place of mere barren pastime; but as a school of
improvement. But how shall we be able to bring the public mind to that
habitual respect for the stage without which it must lose all useful
effect, if the actors show themselves unfit for conveying instruction.
Were this to be the case, and were mere pastime the object of theatres,
Astley’s horse-riders, the tumblers and rope-dancers of Sadlers-Wells,
nay, the Punch of a puppet-show, would
be as useful and respectable as Garrick, Barry, Cooke, or Kemble, and
the circus might successfully batter its head against the walls of that
building in Chesnut-street which the sculptor has enriched with the
wooden proxies of Melpomene and Thalia. But criticism will not allow
this. For the sake of the stage it will exert all its might to support
the actors—and for the sake of the stage it will hold them in
admonition. If the established principles of literature be violated by
the actors, the very ground upon which the critic would support them, is
blown up by a mine of their own construction, and not only they must
sink, but the critic must, for the maintenance of a just cause, put his
hand to their heads and give them a lanch. The theatre is a school for elocution
or it is nothing. In Great Britain it has time immemorial been attended
to, not as authority for innovations, but as an organ of conveyance of
the authorised pronunciation, to which the growing youth of the country
were to look for accurate information of what was correct, as settled
and considered by their superiors, that is, by high learned men and
statesmen. If the actors, therefore, run counter to authority, and
thereby endanger the cause which they are presumed to aid, the mischief
is too general and extensive in its operation to be neglected or
endured. There is nothing belonging to the stage which demands such
strict discipline as its orthoepy, because there is
78

none in which it can so immediately and powerfully affect the public. On
this point therefore we are determined to sacrifice nothing to ceremony;
being convinced that debasing the language is essentially as injurious,
though legally not so punishable, as defacing the current coin of a
country.

Without pointing to individuals by name, we request the ladies and
gentlemen of the green-room to consult all the acknowledged authorities
for the pronunciation of the words: true, rude, brute, shrewd, rule, in
which the u is by some of them sounded very improperly; true so
as to rhyme to few, new, &c. rule as if it were
to rhyme to mule, and so on; whereas true ought to be pronounced
as if it were spelled troo, and rhymed to do; rule as if
spelled rool, and so on; and thus they will find them in the
dictionaries of acknowledged authority.

Since we are on the subject we will now advert to some other words
which are often most lamentably mispronounced, not only contrary to the
pronunciation established by all learned men and orators in Great
Britain, but exactly in that way in which skilful actors often pronounce
them in Europe when they wish to mimic the most low and ignorant classes
of society. Of this description is the pronunciation of the word
“sacrifice.” For these words we refer all whom it may concern to the
dictionaries of the best orthoepists, by which they will be instructed
that it is not pronounced say-crifice but sac-rifize. If the former be
really the pronunciation, the old ladies who smoke short pipes in the
chimney corners of English and Irish cottages, are right, and Burke,
Fox, Pitt, Windham, Curran, Grattan, Sheridan, and in short every man
who speaks in a public assembly in England or Ireland, are wrong. We are
not sure whether Mr. Kemble, who, as an excellent critic has observed,
is always seeking for novelty and always running into error, may not
lately have added that patch to his motley garb of new readings; but his
authority is disallowed. Even Garrick, whose claims were of a very
superior kind, when he attempted to render the English language, already
too unstable,
79

more so, by his innovations, was repelled with helpless contempt.

This is a point to which it is the manager’s duty to attend, because
it is not a matter of doubt, nor subject to discretionary opinion. What
must that part of our youth who attend to these things from a laudable
desire for improvement, think, when they hear the same word differently
pronounced in the same scene by different actors. Upon one night
particularly, Mr. M‘Kenzie several times returned the mispronounced
word, pronounced as it should be, with an emphasis which could not be
misunderstood: yet the mispronunciation was persisted in.

Before we drop this subject we must observe that the pronunciation of
the last syllable of the word sacrifice is sometimes as erroneously
pronounced as the first, indeed worse, as the sound given to it
approximates to one which conveys an offensive idea. Properly pronounced
it rhymes to the verbs advise, rise, and not to mice,
spice, &c.

Having brought our critical journal up to the appearance of that
phenomenon of the stage of this new world, Master Payne, we find
ourselves constrained, by the limits of this number, to postpone our
observations upon the plays in which that extraordinary boy, for so many
nights, astonished and delighted crowded houses, and far beyond our
expectations, made good his title to the partiality of every city in
which he has performed.

80

CRITICISM.

THE FOUNDLING OF THE FOREST—A PLAY.

This production which we have
annexed to our first number, not on account of its superior merit, but
because it was the most recently published of any that has yet come to
our hands, will, on the most superficial reading, be discerned to be of
the true German cast. The old trick of grouping the characters at the
end of a scene, and dropping the curtain upon them, by way of leaving it
to the general conception of the audience to guess the rest, as is done
in the Stranger, and all others of that breed, is here twice put in
practice. Those who like such drugs mixed up with a quantum
sufficit of horror, and all the tenterhook interest, hair-breadth
escapes, and incident so forced as to stagger belief, which make up the
hotchpotch romances whether narrative or dramatic of the present day,
will like this. Mr. Dimond has in this piece certainly shown great skill
in working up that kind of materials to the production of stage effect;
since to those who can be interested or affected by the marvellous and
mysterious, and who love to step for amusement out of the precincts of
nature, and the conduct of “the folks of the world” the Foundling of the
Forest will be interesting and affecting. Viewing it with a strict
critical eye, not only the plot is faulty, but the composition is in
many places extremely bad. If the production of original character was
the author’s design, he has succeeded to his heart’s content in that of
Florian, which we believe has never had a prototype in this world. In
this hero who is sometimes as bombastical as ancient Pistol, and
sometimes as ridiculous as a buffoon, the author attempts to be droll,
and

A London critic remarking with just severity upon the strange way in
which the divinity is addressed in this piece,
81

says, “This blot defaces almost all the modern things called dramas or
plays. In the farcical comedies we have low vulgar swearing unworthy
even the refuse of society; while in the comedies larmoyantes
(weeping comedies) and tragedies, we have eternal imprecations of
the deity, indicative only of madness in literature.” To this
observation as well as that which follows from the same critic we
heartily subscribe. “It is interspersed with songs, to one of which we
direct8
the reader, to remind the author of what Pope says:

“Among soi-disant jolly fellows revelling in senseless
ribaldry and inebriety (continues the reviewer) this song might be
deemed very fine; but we shrewdly suspect that if the lines had been
spoken at the theatre instead of being sung, the audience would have
resented the insult.”

It would be injustice not to add that the concluding speech of count
Valmont, and many other parts scattered through the piece, must be
admired as specimens of very fine composition.

MUSIC.

The lovers of poetry and music have lately been highly gratified by
the publication of “A Selection of Irish Melodies, with Symphonies and
Accompaniments, by Sir John Stevenson,
Doctor of Music, and Characteristic Words, by Thomas Moore, Esq. the first number of which was
published in London and Dublin in the month of February of
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the last year, the reviewers spoke with decided approbation. To
the second number, published in April, they are no less favourable.
These melodies have been for some time anxiously expected—it being
pretty generally understood that that fascinating poet, Moore, was
employed in the pursuit of them. He had promised them for sometime. “It
is intended, says the editor, to form a collection of the best Irish
melodies, with characteristic symphonies and accompaniments, and with
words containing as frequently as possible, allusions to the manners and
history of the country;” and in a letter of Mr. Moore’s which appears in
the publication, he says, “I feel very anxious that a work of this kind
should be undertaken. We have too long neglected the only talent for
which our English neighbours ever deign to allow us any credit. While
the composers of the continent have enriched their operas and sonatas
with melodies borrowed from Ireland, very often without even the honesty
of acknowledgment, we have left these treasures in a great degree
unclaimed and fugitive. Thus our airs, like too many of our countrymen,
for want of protection at home, have passed into the service of
foreigners. But we are come I hope to a better period both of politics
and music: and how much they are connected, in Ireland at least, appears
too plainly in the tone of sorrow and depression which characterizes
most of our early songs. The task which you propose to me of adapting
words to these airs, is by no means easy. The poet who would follow the
various sentiments which they express, must feel and understand that
rapid fluctuation of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and
levity which composes the character of my countrymen, and has deeply
tinged their music. Even in their liveliest strains we find some
melancholy note inhere, some minor third or flat seventh which throws
its shade as it passes, and makes even mirth interesting. If Burns had been an Irishman (and I would willingly
give up all our claims upon Ossian for him) his heart would have been
proud of such music, and his genius would have made it immortal.”

83

A London reviewer speaking of the first number, says, “the idea is
excellent, and the twelve vocal airs which this first number of the work
contains, are tastefully arrayed by sir John Stevenson, and happily
provided with language by Mr. Moore.

“We are happy (continues the reviewer) to find that even where Mr.
Moore’s subject is amatory, his poetry is very little in the style of
those baneful effusions which are undergoing so rigorous an examination.
His verse is here fanciful and gentlemanly, full of his subject, and, as
far as our English souls can judge, faithfully expressing it. Nothing
can be more pathetic than “Oh! breathe not his name;” nothing more
brilliant than “Fly not yet, ’tis just the hour;” and nothing more
poetical than “As a beam o’er the face of the waters may glow.” We must
be indulged in quoting one of those effusions of Mr. Moore’s genius; and
we can find none more elegant or natural than the following:

“The airs of the first number are excessively beautiful in
themselves—particularly those of the well known “Gramachree,”
“Plausty Kelly,” and the “Summer is Coming,” and the duets of “The Maid
of the Valley,” and the “Brown Maid,” are very delightful. “The latter
(says the London reviewer) is a perfect specimen of the genius of duet,
each part taking up the other alternately. The publication of these
Irish airs fully discovers the source of Mr. Moore’s musical
compositions.”

Speaking of the second number, the reviewer says it is by no means
inferior to the first either in music or in poetry. The air “Oh! weep
for the hour” (“The Pretty Girl of Derby O!”) is harmonized in a
style of great elegance; and that, and “The Red Fox,” “The Black Joke,”
and “My Lodging is on the Cold Ground,” have particularly pleased us in
their arrangement. The song which Mr. Moore has written to “The Black
Joke,” is both poetical and political, and though the affairs of Spain
have now rendered it, as to that country, an old newspaper, yet
it is still good in the cause of Ireland.”

85

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

The coterie of old ladies in the
British parliament, the chairwoman of which was the late sir
Richard Hill, have failed in all their attempts to tie up the hands of
the people from their old sports. They have declaimed in parliament, and
they have declaimed in print, against all the gymnastic exercises which
time immemorial have been the pride and the pastime of the hardy natives
of the British islands. Never did Robespierre weep such unfeigned tears
over “sweet bleeding humanity,” as those good souls have shed over the
broken heads, and black eyes, and bloody noses of the Bull family, who,
obstinate dogs, will still go on and laugh at their ladyships. Indeed
Bonaparte himself, whose interest it really is, could not more anxiously
desire the abolition of those gymnastic exercises.

The sports of England are horse-racing; fox, hare, and stag-hunting;
coursing with greyhounds; shooting, fishing, bull-baiting, wrestling,
single stick, pugilism, pedestrianism, cricket, &c. These are
practised by all ranks and on national accounts, are encouraged by all
the wise and patriotic men of the country; some few, and those mostly
fanaticks, excepted. To those games they add, in Ireland, the noble
sport of hurling, in which that vigorous race exhibit such prodigies of
strength and activity as induced the celebrated Arthur Young to speak to
this effect in his Tour through Ireland: “In their hurlings, which I
would call the cricket of savages, they perform feats of agility that
would not do discredit to Sadler’s Wells.”

The gymnastic games have been long carried on so systematically that
they make as regular a part of the public intelligence as any that finds
its way into the public papers, and have, like the theatre, their
appropriated periodical publications.9 On this subject we would say much more, as
we mean to present our readers with such things as appear curious or
extraordinary in those publications; but by way of a
86

beginning, and to pave the road for the reception of this part of our
work by the public, we beg leave to offer, not to their hasty perusal,
but their profound consideration, the following defence of pugilism,
written, it is said, by that profound statesman, patriot, and scholar,
William Windham, whose eloquence and wit caused sir R. Hill’s
bull-baiting bill to be laughed out of the House of Commons.

“I lay it down as a principle, that in every state of society, men,
particularly those of the lower ranks, will ever require some means of
venting their passions and redressing personal affronts, independently
of those which the laws of their country might afford them; and that it
is of more benefit to the community that these personal contests should
be under such regulations as place bounds to resentment, than that they
should be left to the unrestrained indulgence of revenge and ferocity.
In most countries on the northern continent of Europe, bodily strength
exclusively decides the contest; hands, feet, teeth, and nails are all
employed, and the strongest gratifies his resentment by biting, kicking,
and trampling upon his prostrate adversary.10 In the south the appeal is
usually to the stiletto, and a colpo dicoltello is so common at
Naples, that there is hardly a lazarone who has not the marks of it on
some parts of his body; not a year passes in which there are not
hundreds of assassinations in this city. Now, observe the different
effects of a different principle: A sailor, some time since, at
Nottingham, lent an aeronaut his assistance in preparing the ascent of
his balloon; when receiving a blow from one of the by-standers while he
held a knife in his hand—“You scoundrel,” exclaims the tar, “you
have taken the advantage by striking me because you knew that, as I held
a knife I could not strike you again.” Under similar circumstances, what
would have been the conduct of a Genoese or a Neapolitan?

87

Boxing, as it is conducted in this country, is a remnant of the
ancient tilt and tournament, conducted on the principles of honour and
equity; a contest of courage, strength, and dexterity, where every
thing like an unfair and ungenerous advantage, is proscribed and
abhorred. It is a custom peculiarly our own, and to which probably we
are not only indebted for the infrequency of murder and assassination,
but also for the victories of Maida, and Trafalgar.

Some persons are willing to allow these effects, provided the
practice was confined to casual contests, and not extended to public
combats and stage fights. These, they say, induce the laborious men to
quit their occupations, and serve as a rendezvous for the disorderly and
the profligate; but is not the same objection to be made to all
amusements in which the lower orders are peculiarly interested, and
where else would men of this description practically learn, that the
gratification of their personal resentments must be limited by the laws
of honour and forbearance? Had Crib struck Gregson after the decision of
the contest in his favour, what would have been the indignant feelings
of the surrounding multitude, and what would he not have experienced
from their resentment? And are these feelings not worth inculcating?
will they not characterise a nation, and are they not the genuine
sources of generosity and honour? If it be admitted, which I think
cannot be denied, that any advantage be derived to society from
individuals in these combats being restrained from giving full scope to
ferocity and revenge, these advantages must be exclusively ascribed to
the custom of public exhibitions. It is from these that all regulations
and restrictions originate—it is from these they are propagated,
and with these they will be extinguished.

“I am not without apprehension, that from abhorrence of what some
call brutal and vulgar pursuits, the noble science of attack and defence
should be in future proscribed at the seminaries of Eton, Winchester,
and Westminster, and that little master should be enjoined by his mama,
in case of an affront, to resort to his master for redress and
protection.
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To the custom, indeed, as it now prevails, the English youth are, in a
great measure indebted for their nobleness and manliness of character.
Two boys quarrel, they agree to box it out—they begin and they end
by shaking hands; the enmity terminates with the contest—And what
is this but a lesson of courage, magnanimity, and forgiveness? the
principles of which are thus indelibly impressed on the mind of the boy,
and must ever after influence the character of the man.

“Away then with this effeminate cant about maintaining order and
decorum, by the suppression of the public exhibitions of manly
exercises. To them the individual Englishman owes his superiority to the
individual of every other country, in courage, strength, and agility:
and as a country is composed of individuals, to what other causes can
England more reasonably impute her proud preeminence among nations which
she now enjoys, and which she will ever maintain till this spirit is
tamed into servility, under the pretence of applying salutary
restrictions to the licentiousness of the people.”

After the foregoing essay, a parallel drawn between English men and
English mastiffs by the celebrated cardinal Ximenes comes not
unappropriately in this place.

The cardinal, who was minister to one of the French monarchs,
observed that the English, like their native mastiffs, lived in a state
of internal hostility. “The cause,” said he, “which creates a canine
uproar, every one knows, is a bone; whence among the English, every
statistical elevation, as well as other causes of contest, is called
A BONE OF CONTENTION. During the time
of profound peace, these island dogs are always growling, snapping at,
and tearing each other; but the moment the barking of foreign dogs is
heard, the contention about bones ceases, the whole species become
friends, and with one heart and mind they join their teeth to defend
their kennels against foreign enemies.”

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The following extraordinary circumstances are selected from the
British sporting intelligence of the last year.

“A herdsman lately met a fox in the
morning, on a mountain in the neighbourhood of Ballycastle (Ireland). On
his approach, the animal did not offer to avoid him, but allowed him to
come close up, when he struck it with a stick and killed it. On
examination the fox was found to be completely destitute of teeth, and
is supposed to have been blind with age.

“A fox lately turned out at
Fisherwick-park, the hunting seat of the marquis of Donnegal, being hard
pressed, forced his way into the window of a farm house, and took
shelter under the bed of the farmer’s wife who had not an hour before
lain in. The feelings of all parties may easier be imagined than
described. The good woman, however, suffered no material injury by
Reynard’s unexpected visit, who was taken and reserved for the sport of
another day.

“On Wednesday last, about six
o’clock, a covey of partridges were seen to pitch in the middle of
the CIRCUS, Bath, supposed to have
taken refuge there, after having escaped from the aim of some distant
gunner. Under the effects of fright and fatigue six were easily caught
by three servants, and strange as it may appear the three servants of
three eminent physicians who reside in that elegant pile. Doctor F.’s
man secured three; doctor P.’s two, and doctor G.’s the other bird.
A consultation afterwards took place respecting the fate of
these poor tremblers, when it was humanely determined that they should
be taken in a basket to some distance, and liberated, which was
accordingly done. A keen sportsman would not approve of this
forbearance; but perhaps none of the doctors had taken out a license to
kill—GAME.

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“A male and female hare were put
together by lord Ribblesdale for one year, when the offspring amounted
to sixty-eight. A pair of rabbits inclosed for the same time
produced above three hundred. The value of rabbits’ wool used annually
in the manufacture of hats in England is two hundred and fifty thousand
pounds.

“A few days ago a hare was observed
lying before a door in Manchester-street, London. The poor animal was
immediately pursued, and in less than a minute the street was crowded:
she succeeded in making her way down through Duke-street, followed by an
immense mob. The novelty of a hunt in such a place caused every person
in the surrounding streets to join in the chase. Notwithstanding her
numerous pursuers she made her way down Oxford-street and into
Stratford-place, where she got into the corner next to the duke of St.
Alban’s house, and remained quietly until she was taken alive by the
duke’s porter in the presence of an immense concourse of spectators.

“On the twenty-ninth of October
last, in the afternoon, a fox was seen crossing the fields of
Camptown in Bedfordshire, followed by a shepherd’s dog. The fox first
made his way into the grounds of the reverend Mr. Davies’s
boarding-school, at Campton, where the boys were at play. Reynard was no
sooner in the midst of this juvenile assembly than a tumultuous uproar
assailed him, from which he fled with all speed through a border
plantation into the road, and crossing to the house of the reverend Mr.
Williamson the minister of the parish, he bolted through the glass into
the library. Here a female servant was cleaning the room, who by the
sudden and unexpected appearance of this new visitor was thrown into
fits. The family running into the apartment found the fox skulking in a
corner, and the poor girl lying extended on the floor. With some
difficulty she was recovered, and master Reynard was bagged for a future
chase. Nobody can tell where the chase commenced, but
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the dog is known to belong to a shepherd at Meppershall, the adjoining
parish to Campton.

“The Cranborne chase pack had one of
the finest runs ever known in the western part of the kingdom. They
unkennelled at Punpernwood, four miles east of Blandford. The fox went
off immediately for “the chase,” and having taken a round in the
West-walk, broke off over Iwern hills, and entered the vale of
Blackmore, leaving the parish of Shooten to the left, making his play
towards Duncliffwood near Shaston; but having been headed, he bent his
course to the river Stow, which he boldly crossed in defiance of the
flood, and after running the vale many miles passed through Piddleswood
towards Okeford, Fitzpaine, but the hounds pressing him hard he was
obliged to return to the cover, where having taken a turn or two he
broke on the opposite side near the town of Shirminster, and crossed the
commons to Mr. Brunes’s seat at Plumber, where he entered a
summer-house, passed through the chimney flue, and entered a drain,
whence being bolted, he was run into and killed at Fifehide Neville,
fourteen miles straight from the place where he was found, after a chase
of two hours and ten minutes.

BACKGAMMON.

“It appears from the glossary to the
Welch Laws that the game of backgammon was invented in Wales, sometime
before the reign of Canute the Great, and that it derived its name from
Back, which in the welch language meant little, and
Cammon, which in the same language signified Bottle.

“A blacksmith of Winchester in
Hampshire, undertook, for a wager, to shoe six horses, and make the
shoes and nails himself complete in seven hours. He accomplished
it in twenty-five minutes less than the time.

“Mr. Brewer of the Crown inn,
Nothingham, undertook for a wager of forty guineas to go with a mare
belonging
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to him in a cart, to Newark and back again, being a distance of forty
miles, in four hours. He performed it in twelve minutes less than
the given time. Considerable bets were laid against the performance. The
mare is under fourteen hands high.

DICK THE HUNTER.

“A poor fellow, half an ideot, has by his
singularity got himself so noticed by the sporting gentlemen at
Newmarket, that his picture has been painted by Mr. Chalon, and
engravings from it have been published. He was intended for a
blacksmith, but being untractable, was allowed to follow his own
inclination. Being always fond of hunting he soon attracted the
attention of the gentlemen of the chase, and never failed joining the
hounds whenever they made their appearance. Dick is such an amazing
swift runner that he keeps in with the hounds for many miles together,
to the surprise of all the gentlemen, who confess him to be a very
useful man among them, as he instantly discovers the track of a fox, and
is very clever at finding a hare sitting, and who therefore support him.
He never goes out without carrying a knife, a fork, a spoon
and a spur, which are all of his own making, a performance that
shows him not to be destitute of ingenuity, as they are not separately
made, but contained in one, and with these he is at once equipped either
for sporting or eating. The spur he uses for pricking himself, which he
fancies enables him to keep up with the hounds. He frequently uses it to
the no small amusement of the spectators. His dress is quite as singular
as his mode of life, for he always wears a long surtout coat,
a hunting-cap, a boot on one leg and a shoe on the foot of the
other—and thus equipped he runs with the speed of a hunting-horse,
clearing with ease all the ditches and fences the riders do.

“One of the best packs of hounds in
England was most completely beat lately by a fox. The latter was turned
out before them near Wold Newton, in Yorkshire, and after
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running rings for sometime, went off for Scarborough, near which place
the hounds were so completely knocked up that he beat them in view, for
the huntsman could not get them a yard further—a number of riders
lost their horses in the cars, and were seen wading up to their necks to
catch them again. The fox ran upwards of twenty miles.

“In the discussions which have
arisen in and out of parliament in England about the abolition of the
Briton’s old favourite sports, it was conceded by all but a few, that
from the custom of boxing, singlestick and backsword playing, wrestling,
&c. arose the good temper which distinguishes that
people—Englishmen being less subject to violent fits of anger than
the people of any other nation in the world. In the compass of eighteen
pages of a work now before us we have details of no less than two grand
matches of singlestick, one Wiltshire against Somersetshire, and the
other Somersetshire against all England, for large purses. In both cases
the champions of Somerset county beat; and what must astonish those who
hear it, the victors (though men in the lowest classes of life in one
case) shared the prize with the vanquished. In the former, Somerset gave
nine broken heads and received seven—in the latter, gave eight and
received six. The Wiltshire men went to Trowbridge in Somersetshire, the
appointed place of meeting, attended by some of the leading gentry of
Wiltshire, and the gentleman who was appointed by them to preside, bore
public testimony to the liberal and kind treatment his countrymen
experienced.

“Any person who has seen the farce of Hob in the Well, performed,
will remember to have seen a specimen of this kind of prize fighting,
for which as well as wrestling, the people of Somersetshire have for
ages been renowned. In Scotland they excel at the backsword—the
Irish too are admirable hands—but neither have the temper of the
English; “Oppression makes a wise man mad;” what should it do then with
a poor peasantry? The tempers of the English have not had that to
irritate them. We will close this subject
94

with a letter from an intelligent Londoner, who was travelling through
Hampshire.

“Passing, sometime since, through
Rapley Dean, Hants, my attention being attracted by a crowd of rustics
on a little green near the road I turned my horse thither, and arrived
in the time when a lame elderly man, who I afterwards found was the
knight marshal of the field, from the middle of a ring made by ropes,
proclaimed, that “a hat worth one guinea was to be played for at
backsword; the breaker of most heads to bear away the hat and honour,”
and inviting the youth there to contend for it. A little after,
a young fellow threw his hat into the ring and followed, when the
lame umpire called out “a challenge,” and proceeded to equip the
challenger for the game. His coat and waiscoat were taken off, his left hand tied
by a handkerchief to his left thigh, and a stick, with basket hilt, put
into his hand; he then walked round the ring till a second hat was
thrown in, and the umpire called out, “the challenge is answered.”

“As soon as prepared, the knights met, measured weapons, shook hands,
walked once round, turned and began the contest. In about a minute, the
umpire called out “About,” when they dropped the points of their weapons
and walked round, and this calling I observed, was repeated as often as
the umpire judged either distressed. After some twenty minutes play,
some blood trickled down the challenger’s head; the umpire called
“Blood;” and declared the other to have won a head.

“When both left the ring another hat was thrown in, and the challenge
again accepted, and played off in the like manner, till the umpire
announced there were four winners of heads, and proceeded to call the
ties, that is, he called on the winners of the first two heads to play
together, and afterwards on the winners of the third and fourth heads;
after which the winners of two heads each played for the hat, and the
proud victor (Morgan) thus to earn it, broke three heads. I was
much struck with the amazing temper
95

with which the game was played: not a particle of ill-will was shown,
two young fellows, who played together forty-five minutes, and in the
course of it gave each other many severe blows, one alone of which would
have satisfied the most unconscionable taylor or man-milliner breathing,
drank frequently together between the bouts, shaking hands as often as
the weight of the blows given seemed to require it of their good-nature.
Indeed it appeared to be a rule with each pair that played, to drink
together after the contest, and a general spirit of harmony seemed to
prevail. This game is certainly of great antiquity, and the only relick
(with the exception of wrestling) of the ancient tournament. The knight
defied with throwing down his hat or gauntlet—the rustic gamester
does the same, and is equally courteous with the knight towards his
opponent: nor were there in this instance village dames or damsels
wanting, to animate the prowess of the youth.

“It has been asserted, that these exhibitions engender a ferocious
spirit; but were I to judge from what I saw, and from the inquiries I
made into the characters of the players at Ropley Dean, from the farmers
on my right and left, I should pronounce quite the contrary; and
think that as long as the sword is used by our cavalry and navy, and as
long as we wish to entertain in the nation a fearless, generous, martial
spirit, we should encourage the like pastimes at our fairs and
revels.”

96

MISCELLANY.

A general sense seems to pervade all the most intelligent men of
Great Britain that a reformation is wanting in almost every department
of life in that country. The corruption of public taste in dramatic
literature and acting, and in most of the fashionable amusements of the
high flyers cries aloud, no less than that of the state, for a
heavy-handed scourge and receives it. Among other things, the
musico-mania is attacked as having reached the highest acmé of
absurdity. The Covent Garden proprietors are very roughly handled, but
not more roughly than they deserve, for hiring Madam Catalani at the
enormous salary of four thousand pounds sterling and a free benefit for
the season, with a provision annexed, which is thought insolent,
degrading, and unjust; no less than that of her French husband putting
what fiddlers he pleases into the orchestra. The public prints are
filled with remonstrances to the people, whose attention is directed to
the storm which was raised on a similar occasion in 1755 and 1756, and
which burst with such tremendous mischief on the head of Garrick. One
writer thus vehemently expresses himself: “Shall a judge of the land be
required to exercise the faculties of his vigorous mind, which have been
cultivated and matured by an expensive education and the most laborious
study; shall he be continually employed in discriminating between right
and wrong, in the adjustment of individual differences, and in protecting the
persons and properties of the honest and peaceable part of his majesty’s
subjects from the assaults of violence and the stratagems of fraud;
shall his sensibility be wounded, and his heart pierced by the painful
necessity to which he is frequently reduced of passing on his fellow-man
those awful sentences which the nature of their crimes, and the voice of
Justice imperiously demand; shall he, in short, be compelled to
discharge the duties of an office which necessarily renders his nights
anxious and restless, and subjects him in the day to the most irksome
fatigue—and shall he, for all this fatigue of body and unremitting
solicitude of mind, receive a salary
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scarcely exceeding half the sum given to an Italian cantatrice for the display of her vocal
powers for a few nights?”

The fact is that the robust and vigorous appetite of the English has
been worn down by the intemperate use of German dramas, and is so
vitiated and enfeebled that it can swallow nothing but hot spiced trash,
or water gruel spoon-meat. Are the French wrong in calling John Bull
stupide barbare when they see him pouring thousands into the laps
of foreign singers—and for what?—why, to sing such songs as
this:

This vile, low, degrading farrago is taken from an opera called the
Russian Impostor, or Siege of Sloremskho.

After such trash it will be delightful to turn to some lines, written
by lord Byron on this general subject of complaint. They are extracted
from an excellent poem entitled “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,
a Satire,” with notes by the author.

A London critic adds the following pertinent observations: “Thus far
our author concerning the stage, to which we add an observation or two
of our own. We certainly think the barrel a curious asylum for a
distressed prince; but when we reflect on what kind of princes and
heroes the modern stage and modern authors exhibit, (the seige of St.
Quintin for instance, by the same author, Mr. Hook) we cannot help
exclaiming (no plagiarism, we hope)

And as a barrel is described by our best lexicographers to be “any
thing hollow,” what vehicle more appropriate could be found? The
ingenious author, was surely a favourite of the barrel, and well
acquainted with the virtues of a cask; although according to sir
Walter Raleigh, “some are so ill-seasoned and conditioned that a great
part of the contents is ever lost and cast away.”

Respecting Mr. Reynolds’s indulgence of himself, in perpetual
repetition of his vocables,18 we should be glad to have it in our power to
affirm that the beef and mutton19 author was the only one who disgraced
himself by such contemptible degradation; but, alas! the pages of our
work have too often exhibited similar complaints against the majority of
our great playwrights—many of these gentlemen being reduced
to silence, without their auxiliary dammes!

We differ widely from our author respecting Mr. T. Sheridan’s
stripping of Bonduca—for we really think it worthy the son
of that poet, who, neglecting his own genius and
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the duties of a regular practitioner, condescends to turn quack, and
bedizen that high German doctor Pizarro, in an English dress!!

Apropos of awaking George Colman!—We beg the noble lord’s
pardon; but we are not in such a violent hurry to disturb this
gentleman; for if, when awake, he should not acquit himself better than
in his last production of the Africans, we think the sounder he sleeps
the more solid will be his reputation. Therefore,

Why our author has coupled John Kemble’s name with that of Garrick we
cannot conceive; but that there appears more rhyme than reason in it, we
can safely aver. We have somewhere heard that “a live ass is better than
a dead lion,” which we quote, not as individually applicable, but as a
general adage; for we disclaim personalities, and well know that
J. K. is an eminent actor, and one whom we have not niggardly
praised. Yet we will not disparage departed excellence for any person
existing; and therefore cannot avoid wishing our young author had seen
Garrick, and bearing in his “mind’s eye” his natural acting of Lear,
Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard, &c.—he might then go and witness the
performances of Mr. Kemble—and judge!

CORRESPONDENCE.

The conductors of the Mirror of
Taste, and Dramatic Censor, have already to make acknowledgments to
correspondents. Scarcely had their intention been promulgated
103

when they were favoured with a letter, which, in less than a week
afterwards was followed by two more, all of them upon the same subject,
though evidently written by different persons. It had before been the
intention of the conductors to call the public attention very soon to
that very point to which these letters are intended to direct them; and
conceiving that a fairer occasion for doing so can hardly occur than
these letters afford them, they hasten to lay the contents of them
before the public.

“To the Conductors of the Dramatic Work to be published by Messrs.
Bradford and Inskeep.

November 27.

“Sirs,

“From what I can learn about your
intended publication I like the idea, and have no doubt it may be of
great use. I have often said that such a thing was much wanting,
for I look upon a playhouse to be a very good thing, often keeping young
men from worse places, and young women from worse employment. But if our
playhouse goes on as it does, it will soon be a worse place to go to
than any I allude to. Last evening I brought my family to see the
play, and I assure you, I often wished we were all away again, the
scandalous talk in the gallery was so bad. The noise was so great that
there was no hearing any thing else. The players’ voices were ten or a
dozen times interrupted so that they could not be heard, and two or
three fellows in the gallery were particularly scandalous. Above all the
rest there was one, a finished vagabond, who spoke smut and roared
it out loud, directing it to the ladies in the boxes. If any of you was
there, gentlemen, you must have noticed it; if not, I can’t write
such filthy words as was spoken the whole evening. My wife begged me to
come away on our little girl’s account who was with us. It is not
the players you ought to criticise, they behave themselves—but it
is those vagabonds that think they have a right to disturb the house
because they
104

pay their half dollar a piece. I think it your duty to take notice
of this, and I beg you will.

A CITIZEN.”

N.B. They in the pit were bad enough, and so was some in the
boxes.

To the Editors of the Mirror, &c.

“Gentlemen,

“As your intended publication is to
come out monthly, I am doubtful whether I should trouble you on the
present occasion; more particularly as you may probably think of the
matter yourselves without a hint from me. Besides, I am not
sure whether it is not the duty of the editors of the daily papers
rather than yours. For my part, I think it is the duty of all
people who regard the credit of the city, or tender the peaceableness
and comfort of society. Our theatre, gentlemen, has sunk to the worst
state imaginable of licentiousness and savage riot. Don’t mistake
me—I don’t mean behind the curtain; but before it. While we hold
ourselves so proudly to the world, what must those foreigners think of
us who visit our theatre. From a place of rational recreation, and
improvement, it has become a mere bear-garden. The play is interrupted,
and all enjoyment, save that of riot and brawling, killed in various
ways. The very boxes themselves are no sanctuary from ruffianish
incivility; while the ears are stunned, and the cheek of Decency
crimsoned with the profaneness, obscenity, and senseless brawl of
barbarians in the gallery, the sight is intercepted, and all comfort
destroyed by the unmannerly and unjust conduct of intruders in the boxes
and pit, who think they have a right to push in and even stand up before
another who has been previously seated, provided they have bodily
strength to make good their violence. I say, gentlemen, this ought
to be stopped. The spirit of the manager at New-York, backed by the
laws, has put an end
105

to it there, so far, that no theatre in Europe precedes it in order and
decency. The same power exists here and ought to be exercised. These
things disgrace the city as well as annoy our audiences, and I think our
daily editors on both sides would evince their regard for the public by
giving a few lines every day to the reform of this evil till it shall be
abated. The proprietors and manager ought to call a meeting, invoke the
aid of the magistrates and the people, and come to some decisive
resolutions on the subject.

Forensis.”

COMMUNICATION.

For the Mirror, &c.

“The manager, or the magistrates, or
somebody is greatly to blame about the playhouse. I brought my
family to the pit to see that great actor, Cooper, play Zanga. We sat in
the pit the whole time the blackguards were throwing down various kinds
of things upon our heads. Scraps of apples, nutshells in handfulls, and
what is worse something I can’t well name—some about me said that
brandy or strong grog was thrown down—it might be so
once;—but it was not exactly that which fell on me and my family.
Since then, I went to see him in Macbeth, and left my wife and
daughter at home for fear; and the fellows above were as bad as
before—and had not I luckily kept my hat on I should once have got
my head broke with a hard heavy hiccory-nut that was thrown with all the
force and spitefulness as if the person wanted to hurt somebody very
severely.”

We agree with our correspondents
that some prompt and effectual remedy ought to be applied to the evils
of which they complain: and we are surprised it has not yet been done,
because every person with whom any of us converses, makes pretty nearly
the same complaint, and expresses the very same wish.

106

In every country there exist multitudes as well disposed as those now
alluded to, to disturb the playhouse, and bring brutal riot within its
walls—but they will not be allowed. Any one who reads Colquhoun’s
account of London and its rabble, will perceive that there are people
enough there ready to do offensive offices for the pure sake of offence
and savageness; but not only the magistrates, but the audience
themselves will not put up with it. The latter generally abate the
nuisance in a summary way—they turn out the offender; and the law
warrants, and if necessary aids them. If our audience suffer these
encroachments what will be the fair conclusion, but that they concur
with the offenders.

It was but a few nights ago, a company (of perhaps ten,) converted
the boxes into a grog shop—brought jug and bottle, and glass, and
tumbler into the front seats, and there caroused, laughing, talking
aloud, and swearing aloud, even during the performance. On the night the
Revenge was performed, even while Mr. Cooper was engaged in a most
interesting scene, a boy, not in mean clothes either, stood up at
the front corner of the gallery, roaring out and speaking as loud as he
could to some one on the opposite side. Yet this, were it not for the
time it happened, was to the surrounding tumult, as a dying sigh to the
roar of a northwester.

It cannot be doubted that in a civilized society like this, some
legal means must exist to put an end to these grievances. There are
other grievances, however, that cannot be so immediately made the
subject of redress by the magistrate, but which, nevertheless, require
correction, and would never occur if every one who can afford to wear
such a coat as gentlemen wear, could imitate the manners of gentlemen as
well as they can ape their dress. By a number of well-coated
persons of this kind, the time immemorial privileges of the theatre are
violated, and its customary rights denied. Provided they think
themselves able to scuffle it out by bodily strength they will indulge
themselves at the expense of
107

others—one of those will sit before a lady and refuse to take off
his hat—another coming late will force his way contrary to all
right and usage, before a person who has an hour before taken his
seat—and if spoken to, utter surly defiance. Against every such
unmannered intruder, the whole audience ought, for the establishment of
the general right and the good old custom, to make common cause, and
thrust him out by force. No doubt there are drawcansirs enough to push
this offence as far as it will go. Let them know that there have been
and still are drawcansirs in England, Ireland and Scotland—that
Dublin particularly was once full of them; but that they were soon
brought to manners by the just resentment of the audience—the
gripe of the constable, and the contempt of every body.