THE STATE OF THE STAGE.

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sible to separate what was, from what was not his own. Besides the players retrenched, transposed, added, and altered, to please the audience or to suit their own caprices. They either rubbed off much rust, or obliterated many beauties. It was only lately that it had been discovered that Shakespeare was superior to his age, teeming as it did, with dramatic writers; and yet how few, even of that boasted time, have survived, and still fewer of them keep possession of the stage! One of Massinger's, one of Ford's, one of Ben Jonson's, and about half a dozen of Shakespeare's: and of these last, "The two Gentlemen of Verona," and "The Tempest," have been turned into operas. * Shakespeare's comedies are quite out of date: many of them are quite insufferable to read, much worse to see. They are gross food, only fit for an English or German appetite; they are indigestible to the French or Italians, the politest people in the world. The French even contend that we have no theatre. They very properly ridicule our bringing in " enfant au premier acte, barbon au dernier." Byron was a decided friend to the uni

* With all deference to his Lordship's judgment, this is rather to be imputed to the present vitiated public taste, than to any want of merit in Shakespeare. This is the age of quavers, minims and crotchets, and we are a sing-song generation, seeking for amusement with our eyes rather than our minds. Show has banished sense; Shakespeare has yielded to scenery, decorations, and stage-processions; children, dogs, horses, elephants, have all enjoyed pre-eminence in this enlightened age.

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KEMBLE GARRICK.

ties, and maintained that it was absurd to contend that the preservation of them was not essentially necessary. It was difficult, almost impossible to write any thing to please a modern audience. There was a squeamishness that excluded the exhibition of many fine subjects from the stage; a squeamishness, the produce of a lower tone of the moral sense, and foreign to the majestic and confident virtue of the golden age of our country. All is now cant-methodistical cant. Shame flies from the heart, and takes refuge in the lips; or our senses and nerves are much more refined than those of our neighbours.

*

The stage owed much to Kemble for his introduction of classical costume, which was almost wholly unknown before he introduced it, and the propriety was too obvious to be any longer a matter of question. Even Garrick used to perform Othello in a British uniform, and many other characters in prescriptive habits equally ridiculous.

* There is too much truth in these ideas of Lord Byron, but whilst we live in the world, we must conform to the taste of the world to ensure success. Shakespeare swam with the stream of popular feelings, and it carried him triumphantly into harbour. Byron strove against it, and was buried in the waves of oblivion. This failure of success must not be attributed to a deficiency of ability to write for the stage, but to his want of that flexibility which the despotism of public taste demands from every public character that sues for its approbation. It is an arbitrary tax that must be paid without investigating the question of right or wrong;-the vox populi-suprema lex.

MRS. SIDDONS-MISS O'Neil.

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His Coriolanus was inimitable, and he looked and personated the old Roman so well, that even Cato, cold and stiltish as it is, had charms for an English audience. This shews what an actor can do for a play. He pronounced several words affectedly, which should be cautiously avoided on the stage. The Greek derivation is much against his pronunciation of "ache." * Kemble always smelled of the shop; when half seas over he used to speak in blank verse; he never for a moment resigned the mimic sceptre; he was King Richard the Third off as well as on the stage.

Mrs. Siddons was the beau idéal of the tragic muse; Miss O'Neil, Byron would never go to see, for fear of weakening the impression made by the queen of tragedians. When he read Lady Macbeth's part, he had Mrs. Siddons before him, and imagination always supplied her voice, whose

The opposition that was raised against Kemble's pronunciation of the word "aches" as two syllables, " a-ches,” is fresh in the memory of most frequenters of the theatre of the present day. As a public character Kemble should have conformed to the taste of the public, although it is certain that the old English readings would bear him out in his new one. Spenser always uses the word "aches" as two distinct syllables, "a-ches." It is, however singular that Lord Byron, in Kemble's casc, as in the instance of Napoleon Buonaparte, which we have already noted, should have found fault with others for not conforming to the public opinion, which, in his own dramatic career, he wholly refused to be governed by. We see the faults of others, but are totally blind to our own.

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KEAN-MONK LEWIS

tones were superhuman, and power over the heart supernatural.

Kean gave promise of future greatness even from boyhood; he began by performing King Richard the Third. His Sir Giles Overreach is a wonderful performance. The actresses all trembled before him, and he was so much exhausted himself that, after the performance, he fell into fits. The same thing also happened to Miss O'Neil. Dowton, who could not endure Kean, used to say that his Othello reminded him of Obi, or Three-fingered Jack; but whatever his Othello might have been, he was never surpassed by even Garrick himself in Iago.

Lewis was a pleasant companion, always a boy, and fond of the society of younger men than himself. Mrs. Pope once asked who was Lewis's male-love for the season. He possessed a lively imagination, and had a great turn for wonderful narrative and ghost stories, to which he had better have stuck, as his poetry is now almost forgotten. He was not a very successful writer. His "Monk" was attacked on the score of immorality by Matthias, in his " Pursuits of Literature," and it was suppressed in consequence. His "Abellino" was merely a translation. "Pizarro" was an inauspicious name to him, as it reminded him of an unfriendly ruse de théâtre that was played off upon him. It was borrowed by Sheridan, who

SHERIDAN AND MONK LEWIS.

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was not over scrupulous in applying to himself literary, or, indeed, any other kind of property, and who manufactured his play of that title from Lewis's, without an acknowledgment. Bad as Pizarro is, Byron recollected (from having been on Drury Lane Committee, in which situation he consequently became acquainted with the comparative profits of plays), that it brought in more money than any play ever before had produced. He fared rather worse with the Castle Spectre, which met with a prodigious run. Sheridan took care to go halves with him, taking all the profits, and leaving him the credit: nay, he even denied him much of that. Being in company together one day, Lewis offered Sheridan a large bet on some occasion. Sheridan (who was ever ready at a wager, which was all profit, if he won, and, at all events, no loss to him, as he never paid) eagerly asked him to name the sum. "All the profits of my Castle Spectre," said Lewis. "I'll tell you what," replied Sheridan (who seldom found his match at a repartie), "I will bet you a trifling one, which is just the worth of it."

Sheridan was an extraordinary compound of contradictions; a puzzle to his friends and a plague to his foes. The upper part of his face was that of a god;-a forehead most expansive, an eye of peculiar brilliancy and fire; but below he sported the satyr. His character varied with the