be loth to be deprived. Her songs in Mandane lingered on the ear like an involuntary echo to the music—as if the sentiment were blended with and trembled on her voice. This was particularly the case in the two delightful airs, "If o'er the cruel tyrant Love,"1 and "Let not rage thy bosom firing.' In the former of these, the notes faltered and fell from her lips like drops of dew from surcharged flowers. If it is impossible to be a judge of music without understanding it as a science, it is still more impossible to be so without understanding the sentiment it is intended to convey.. Miss Hughes declaimed and acted these two songs, instead of singing them. She lisps, and smiles, and bows, and overdoes her part constantly. We do not think Mandane is at all the heroine she represents her—or, if she is, we do not wish to see her. This lady would do much better at the Opera.

4

5

Mr. Duruset sung "Fair Semira "3 with taste and feeling. We wish, in hearing the song "In infancy our hopes and fears," we could have forgotten Miss Rennell's simple, but sustained and impressive execution of it.-Mr. Taylor played Artabanes, instead of Mr. Incledon.

6

7

[We have not yet seen Mrs. Dobbs nor Mrs. Mardyn.®]

1 Artaxerxes, II, ii.

2 Ibid., III, iii.

3 Ibid., I, i; Mr. Duruset took the title rôle.

4 Ibid., I, i.

5 Miss Rennell played Artaxerxes on the occasion of Miss Stephens's début as Mandane, September 23, 1813. See pp. 23-4, ante.

6 Hazlitt wrote

Arbaces" instead of "Artabanes "; the part of Ar

baces was played by Sinclair, both in 1813 and in 1815.

7 Mrs. Dobbs "from York" made her début at Covent Garden as Letitia Hardy, in The Belle's Stratagem, on September 15.

8 See the succeeding article.

LOVERS' VOWS.

[Drury Lane] October 8, 1815.

LOVERS' Vows1 has been brought forward at Drury-Lane Theatre, and a young lady of the name of Mardyn2 has appeared in the character of Amelia Wildenhaim. Much has been said in her praise, and with a great deal of justice. Her face is handsome, and her figure is good, bordering (but not too much) on embonpoint. There is, also, a full luscious sweetness in her voice, which was in harmony with the sentiments she had to express. The whole of this play, which is of German origin, carries the romantic in sentiment and story to the extreme verge of decency as well as probability. The character of Amelia Wildenhaim is its principal charm. The open, undisguised simplicity of this character is, however, so enthusiastically extravagant, as to excite some little surprise and incredulity on an English stage. The portrait is too naked, but still it is the nakedness. of innocence. She lets us see into the bottom of her heart, but there is nothing there which she need wish to disguise. Mrs. Mardyn did the part very delightfully—with great spirit, truth, and feeling. She, perhaps, gave it a greater maturity of consciousness than it is supposed to possess. Her action is, in general, graceful and easy, but her movements were, at times, too youthful and unrestrained, and too much like waltzing.

3

Mrs. Glover and Mr. Pope did ample justice to the principal moral characters in the drama; and we were perfectly satisfied with Mr. Wallack in Anhalt, the tutor and

1 By Mrs. Inchbald; revived at Drury Lane, September 26. Founded. on Kotzebue's,Child of Love.

2 Mrs. Mardyn "from Dublin." See also p. 221, post.

3 Mrs. Glover was Agatha; Pope, Baron Wildenhaim.

I

lover of Amelia. Some of the situations in this popular play (let the critics say what they will of their extravagance) are very affecting, and we will venture our opinion, that more tears were shed on this one occasion, than there would be at the representation of Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth, for a whole season. This is not the fault of Shakespeare, but neither is it the fault of Kotzebue.

66

1

Mr. Dowton came out for the first time in the character of Shylock, in The Merchant of Venice. Our own expectations were not raised very high on this occasion, and they were not disappointed. All the first part of the character, the habitual malignity of Shylock, his keen sarcasms and general invectives, were fully understood, and given with equal force and discrimination. His manner of turning the bond into a merry jest," and his ironical indifference about it, were an improvement which Mr. Dowton had borrowed from the comic art. But when the character is brought into action, that is, when the passions are let loose, and excited to the highest pitch of malignity, joy, or agony, he failed, not merely from the breaking down of his voice, but from the want of that movement and tide of passion, which overcomes every external disadvantage, and bears down every thing in its course. We think Mr. Dowton was wrong in several of his conceptions in the trial scene and other places, by attempting too many of those significant distinctions, which are only natural and proper when the mind remains in its ordinary state, and in entire possession of its faculties. Passion requires the broadest and fullest manner possible. In fine, Mr. Dowton gave only the prosaic side of the character of Shylock, without the poetical colouring which belongs to it and is the essence of tragic acting. Mr. Lovegrove was admirable in Launcelot Gobbo. The scene between him and Wewitzer, as Old Gobbo, was one of the richest we have seen for a long time. Pope was respectable as Antonio. 1 October 5.

Mr. Penley's Gratiano was more remarkable for an appearance of folly than of gaiety.

[Covent Garden.

The new farce called The Farce Writer has been very successful; we wish we could add deservedly so. It is a happy instance of lively dullness. The wit consists entirely in the locomotion of the actors. It is a very badly written pantomime.]

THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL.

Covent-Garden, October 15, 1815.

WHY can we not always be young, and seeing The School for Scandal? This play used to be one of our great theatrical treats in our early play-going days. What would we not give to see it once more, as it was then acted, and with the same feelings with which we saw it then? Not one of our old favourites is left, except little Simmons," who only served to put us in mind more strongly of what we have lost! Genteel comedy cannot be acted at present. Little Moses, the money-lender, was within a hair's-breadth of being the only person in the piece who had the appearance or manners of a gentleman. There was a retenue in the conduct of his cane and hat, a precision of dress and costume, an idiomatic peculiarity of tone, an exact propriety both in his gestures and sentiments, which reminded us of the good old times when every one belonged to a marked class in society, and maintained himself in his characteristic absurdities by a

1 Produced October 5; attributed to I. Pocock.

2 Played September 27 and October 13. At the earlier date Young was ill and Barrymore took his place at short notice.

3 Samuel Simmons (1777-1819). He made his début at Covent Garden in 1785, and played Moses March 23, 1813..

chevaux-de-frise of prejudices, forms, and ceremonies. Why do our patriots and politicians rave for ever about the restoration of the good old times? Till they can persuade the beaux in Bond-Street to resume their swords and bag-wigs, they will never succeed.

1

When we go to see a comedy of the past age acted on the modern stage, we too almost begin to cast some longing, lingering looks behind," at the departed sword-knots and toupees of the age of Louis XIV. We never saw a play more completely vulgarized in the acting than this. What shall we say of Fawcett, who played Sir Peter Teazle with such formidable breadth of shoulders and strength of lungs? Or to Mrs. Dobbs, who made such a pretty, insipid little rustic of Lady Teazle, showing her teeth like the painted dolls in a peruke-maker's window? Or to Mrs. Gibbs, who converted the delicacy of Mrs. Candour into the coarseness of a barmaid? Or to Mr. Blanchard, whose face looked so red, and his eyes so fierce in Old Crabtree, and who seemed to have mistaken one of his stable-boys for his nephew, Sir Benjamin? Or (not to speak it profanely) to Mr. Young's Joseph Surface? Never was there a less prepossessing hypocrite. Mr. Young, indeed, puts on a long, disagreeable, whining face, but he does not hide the accomplished, plausible villain beneath it. Jack Palmer 2 was the man. No one ever came so near the idea of what the women call "a fine man." With what an air he trod the stage! With what pomp he handed Lady Teazle to a chair! With what elaborate duplicity he knelt to Maria! Mr. Young ought never to condescend to play comedy, nor aspire to play tragedy. Sentimental pantomime is his forte. Charles Kemble made the best Charles Surface we have seen. He acted this difficult character (difficult because it requires a union of so many requisites, a good face and figure, easy manners, evident

1 Allusion to Gray's Elegy, stanza 22.

2 John Palmer (1742-98), called "Plausible Jack,” made his début at Drury Lane in 1762. He was the original Joseph Surface, May 8, 1777.