1828.] 



Monthly Theatrical Report. 



a box, where the world may see that he is not 

 ashamed to sit and take lessons in French. 

 The idea of suffering a foreign company to 

 make its claims upon the shillings of the 

 English, has, of course, excited a vast deal 

 of patriotic displeasure. But what can be 

 more short-sighted than such displeasure ? 

 All that tends to revive a theatrical taste 

 among the higher ranks is so much gained. 

 The only thing that the theatres have to 

 dread the true source of decay is the de- 

 cay of that theatrical taste among the nation ; 

 and though the higher ranks have long lost 

 the premier pas in matters either of taste or 

 utility, yet they go for something still ; and 

 the general account is not the worse for the 

 accession of even the lazy population of the 

 Red Book. 



If nothing but the French play will bring 

 the peerage from its nine o'clock dinners, let 

 the French play do its work for a season ; and 

 habit may stir even the best blood to move 

 from the table before the third bottle. The 

 British stage will thus gain recruits ; for, bad 

 as it is in its present dearth of matter, there 

 can be no comparison, in the mind of any 

 human being under the rank of marquis, be- 

 tween the actual merits of the English and 

 French stages. Our Gallic neighbours shine 

 in trifles ; and with trifles the English are the 

 greatest bunglers that ever attempted to make 

 fools of themselves. The French luck is 

 always to make much of little ; the English 

 ill-luck, to make little of much. The maxim 

 holds from cookery up to constitutions. The 

 faculty of dressing a dinner out of nothing, 

 or of making a commonwealth that will not 

 last a week's wear, belongs pre-eminently to 

 the ingenious sons of Clovis. 



On their stage (the happiest emblem of 

 the national mind), the triumph is of the 

 same class. Two characters, a single scene, 

 and half a sentiment, make up the materiel 

 of a multitude of those pieces that are the 

 glory of the Parisian stage for whose sight 

 the populace save up their half-francs for a 

 month before, the belles prepare their best 

 weeping faces, and the newspapers cast aside 

 politics, and order new fonts of type. 



But of things of this kind, we can make 

 nothing. Our national awkwardness is in- 

 stantly out at elbows in the suit which the 

 French author wears with such adroitness. 

 Our actors, with the best will in the world, 

 want the perpetual finesse the meaning that 

 exists in a tweak of the finger, or a turn of 

 the eye. The whole vocabulary of nods is an 

 Egyptian dialect to them ; and the whisper, 

 on which the entire of the catastrophe turns, 

 evaporates without catching eye or ear. The 

 difficulties that this dexterity imposes on the 

 respectable race of adaptors, who labour with 

 such restless industry to supply the chasms of 

 the English drama, are pitiable. From three 

 to six melodrames of the Porte St. Martin 

 are the smallest allowance for a single melo- 

 drame of Covent Garden : from six to nine 

 farces of the Varietes are essential to the com- 



position of a single farce, on the usual scale 

 of Drury Lane ; and the consumption of 

 drames of the Theatre Franfais for a single 

 comedy is beyond calculation. Nothing but 

 a patent condensing machine, or hydrostatic 

 press, is equal to the operation ; and some of 

 the most popular and vigorous human con- 

 densors of the present age are sinking into 

 rapid decay under this superhuman fatigue. 

 The truth is, that the English audience re- 

 quire, like the English frame, something 

 solid. They like the entremets of the French 

 taste to fill up the intervals ; but woe be to 

 the manager who covers his table with them ! 

 The people will not be fed with syllabubs ; 

 and our lively neighbours can supply us with 

 nothing else. The manliness and force of 

 character of our genuine English comedy, 

 the natural probability of the plot, and the na- 

 tive spirit, power, and brilliancy of the dia- 

 logue, undoubtedly have no equal on the 

 Continental stage. The French is, like the 

 furniture of a French house, gilded, graceful, 

 and good for any thing but use. The Ger- 

 man is the heavy material rough from the 

 forest, or carved into sullen or grotesque 

 figures, that only make the original heavi- 

 ness still heavier. The Italian is filagree- 

 work shreds of paper and tinsel ; but not to 

 be handled, and scarcely worth being seen. 



As to the Duke of Devonshire's acceding 

 to the French li cense of the Lyceum, we can- 

 not perceive either the injury or even the in- 

 convenience of the grant. It would have 

 been ungracious in the extreme to have 

 refused it, after the civilities with which our 

 actors have been received in Paris ; and, 

 though we undoubtedly set the fashion in this 

 instance, and gave the " politest people of 

 the earth" a lesson of politeness in listening 

 to Laporte's dreadful attempts at the Eng- 

 lish tongue, while the badauds of the " pre- 

 miere ville du monde" were pelting our 

 Imogens and Hamlets with their last far- 

 things, we are not sorry that the lesson is 

 understood, nor that we are called on to shew 

 tLat we can repeat it on occasion. 



The reception of an English company in 

 Paris forms an epoch in dramatic history. 

 We know of no previous instance of the kind, 

 and we see no reason why a friendlier feeling 

 of the two nations may not grow out of an 

 intercourse of the players. A very vivid 

 friendship is not likely to occur under any 

 circumstances ; but playing together is at all 

 times better than fighting ; and, if we could 

 pardon the horrors of French-English on our 

 stage, we may endure Frenchmen talking 

 their own language even within the precincts 

 of London. It is said that we may expect a 

 strong French company ; and we shall thus 

 have the best plays given in the best manner, 

 without the trouble of going two hundred 

 miles to see them. 



But the result of the unchangeable law 

 against novelty, with which we began our re- 

 marks, is that the audience has been 

 wearied with perpetual repetitions. " Ham. 



