1830.] Theatrical Matters. '63 



of Chancery, which even in the Fives' Court designates the depth of 

 calamity ; and every where else carries, like physic, ruin in its chariot 

 wheels, only that, unlike physic, it speedily cures the patient, though it 

 never lets him out of the chamber has no alarms for the manager of a 

 theatre. He rushes on, like Alexander, to secure conquest, though at 

 his first step he plunge over head and ears into a Granicus of office ink, 

 and rise from it only to be buried neck deep in the suffocations of 

 parchment and special pleaders. On he plunges, cries sauve qui pent ; 

 which should be translated " Devil take the foremost," and leaves the 

 world to wonder at his intrepidity. Like Monsieur Chabert the whole 

 is a phenomenon ; except that to breakfast on prussic acid, and dine on 

 corrosive sublimate, are the most trivial ventures, after the entrance into 

 that furnace, the law ; where man is roasted whole, and whose tempera- 

 ture is death to every one, but that profession who are obviously prac- 

 tising for the endurance of heat here and " elsewhere." 



The injunction was applied for, and obtained, or it would not be law.; 

 that law which allows every man to run his chance of ruin. The 

 injunction was applied against, and dissolved the next day, or it would 

 not be law, which allows every man to drink the " glorious uncer- 

 tainty," and to repent of his experiment within the next four-and- 

 twenty hours. 



Kean has gone on since as triumphantly as ever; and Mr. Wallack him- 

 self owns that the speech is not to be respoken, in which he announced 

 the extinction of the actor's faculties. His Richard, his best at all times, 

 and his Othello, always an effective performance, are still followed; 

 and unless he falls in love again with some Aldermanic fair, or puts, like 

 Cassio, an enemy in his mouth to take away his brains, Kean may still 

 be a thriving wooer of the Muse of the lamp and dagger. 



Young plays the lago, for who else can play it? and we question 

 if any actor ever played it better. The man is made for the part ; we 

 mean no sneer at a very estimable and intelligent individual. But 

 Young's sarcastic manner, his mixture of severity and pleasantry, and 

 the very formation of his acute and expressive features, mark him far 

 the man who plays with human foibles, and makes, as it may happen, 

 his mirth or his matter, out of the generous absurdities of mankind. 

 Without his lago the play would be nothing ; but with it, it is unques- 

 tionably among the most attractive and triumphant efforts of the modern 

 stage. 



Miss Phillips's Desdemona should not be forgotten. It is a very 

 sweet, graceful, and feeling performance ; yet there are two things in 

 which Miss Phillips might very greatly improve her energy and her 

 hair-dressing ; they are not very like, but they have each their import- 

 ance. The stage does not often witness a more calamitous coiffure. It 

 gives an air of awkwardness to a very pretty, though rather stiff figure ; 

 it destroys the expression of a very pretty face ; transfers our sorrow for 

 the character to our anxiety for the actress ; and urges us to the unchari- 

 table wish, that instead of slaying or being slain nightly, she should once 

 for all transfer her dagger to the more ignoble office of extinguishing 

 her friseur. 



Lord Normanby, a patriot of the first magnitude, and adoring the 

 English populace, " the illustrious race of the free," and so forth is, 

 like a patriot and a British nobleman, nourishing away with his lady and 

 a mob of patriots and patriotesses, like themselves, in Florence. We 



