206 



Monthly Theatrical Report. 



[FED- 



value of character. Let it, on the other 

 hand, be supposed, taut any provision of 

 law had determined that no rmm under a 

 certain rank of education and morals could 

 be an actor. The whole profession would 

 be instantly raised in public estimation. It 

 is, in truth, not less an act of kindness to the 

 stage, than of justice towards the trans- 

 gressor, that public opinion should be 

 quick to mark, and slow to forgive the irre- 

 gularities of men whom it has the power to 

 punish, without injuring the privacy of so- 

 ciety. If the actor, in the moment of ba- 

 lancing between the indulgence and the 

 h izial, were to be compelled to feel " I 

 shall be not only mulcted by the law, and 

 shunned in private life; but I shall incur a 

 more formidable penalty than both, beg- 

 gary ! 1 shall be driven from the stage.-" 

 It must operate as an additional motive 

 against the crime, and might often turn the 

 scale. 



Kean says that his offence has cost him ten 

 thousand pounds. And if his pounds and 

 his exile have taught him a determination to 

 combine personal propriety with his public 

 talents, the money will not have been too 

 much for the lesson. We desire to be under- 

 stood as saying all this, in no possible hosti- 

 lity to the individual : we took no part in the 

 violence against him. We look upon him 

 as possessing very fine qualities for the 

 drama, great vividness of conception, great 

 strength of expression, a remarkable insight 

 into some of the more subtle workings of 

 character ; and, with whatever defects of 

 voice and figure, an extraordinary power of 

 realizing the noblest imaginations of tra- 

 gedy. 



His first appearance was in Shylock the 

 origin of his reputation. The character is 

 one of the most seizable by an actor of any 

 powers. The outline is of admirable force, 

 and the contrast of the passions is so clear, 

 that perhaps no performer ever failed of ex- 

 citing an interest in the Jew. But it seems 

 to have been made for Keaa. His figure, 

 his physiognomy, his hollow voice, his re- 

 luctant yet animated movements are all 

 modelled by nature in Shylock. 



His performance was received with loud 

 applause by an immense audience, and he 

 has since played Richard with no diminu- 

 tion of his popularity. 



This is the pantomime season, and both 

 the theatres have exerted their energies in 

 the usual way of scenery, machinery, the 

 hazard of rival tumblers, and the jumps and 

 miracles of rival harlequins. Covem Gar- 

 den has exhibited " Mother Shipton," a 

 pleasant extravaganza, with a great deal of 

 good scenery ; and young Grinmldi in full 

 spring, and transformations enough to charm 

 the most intractable audience that ever 

 crowded from school and country during the 

 sight-seeing month of Christmas. But it is 

 Lot enough for Covent Garden to be equal 

 to her neighbour and competitor. Superior 

 since the days of Rich, and dictator to all eyej 



of wonders by land and sea, by machinery 

 and painting, by man and brute, she must 

 more than sustain her hereditary honours, 

 or she is more than conquered. " There is 

 something, 5 ' as the philosophic Francis 

 Moore says, " to be mended, otherwise men 

 and kinj;s must suffer thereby." Covent 

 Garden is a noble theatre, and has some of 

 our very best actors. But Achilles himself 

 died of a shot in the heel from a hand, 

 which if it had lived in our days, would pro- 

 bably have done nothing more warlike than 

 leading a Court Debutante down a cotillon, 

 or at best, shone as the appurtenance of a 

 captain of the Local Militia. Covent Gar- 

 den must not perish through the heel of pan- 

 tomime ; so let h^r beware : let Mr. Farley 

 stimulate his imagination by a voyage to the 

 continent, or a conscientious study of the 

 absurdities of London for the next six 

 months ; or if nature and fancy, even in him, 

 are sinking under the course of time, let him 

 refo dilate his chilled vigour by an infusion 

 of the youthful brains of some auxiliary 

 genius. 



The Drury Lane pantomime, during the 

 last two or three years, has been running 

 neck and neck, iu more senses than one, 

 with Covent Garden. Its present show, the 

 " Man in the Moon,'' is amusing and va- 

 rious ; but even arnusementbecomes trouble- 

 some to every human being but a woman of 

 the first fashion, from twelve to one at night ; 

 and the shortening of the " Man in the 

 Moon " would be among the happiest expe- 

 dients for lengthening his life. The panto- 

 mine begins in nonsense, as we suppose it 

 ought to begin, if experience be the rule. 

 Dog-headed figures, moon-faced monsters, 

 and a whole battalion of hideous Sunnites, 

 with faces of copper and monstrosity, march 

 and re-march without any discoverable object 

 under, or rather in, heaven. But when the 

 fable is broken to pieces by the principal 

 Genii, and Harlequin is extricated from his 

 shell, and Columbine flings off her super- 

 fluous petticoat, and in the glee of her volta- 

 tory soul, whirls about nearly as nature left 

 her ; when the Clown developes his striped 

 physiognomy and his cossack breeches from 

 the solar orb, and Pantaloon, delivered from 

 hisrnagic obesity and his nondescript visage, 

 receives his first kick, and rolls in rapture un- 

 der the heels of Harlequin, then begins the 

 true triumph of the night. Pleasantries, re- 

 peated during the last three centuries, are 

 riot less pleasantries again : the chase of 

 Columbine charms the city sentimentalists in 

 the pit-, and the infinite blows, tricks, and 

 overthrows of the Clown and Pantaloon 

 electrify the galleries into continued ex- 

 plosions of laughter. Some of the scenery 

 is beautiful, as might be expected from 

 Stanfield. And, on the whole, Mr. Barry- 

 more, who is understood to bsthe presiding 

 genius of pantomime here, has done himself 

 great credit, or as the novelists say, has 

 " dyed his laurels green again in the tide of 

 popular applause." 



