1825.] 
country feel it necessary to ‘keep aloof from 
the stage.” I 
_, Wey. 29.——After the wearying repetition 
of Der. Freischiitz and his sculls and goblins, 
a. mew..grand- Oriental Drama, called 
“ Hafed the. Gheber,” was presented, and fa- 
vourably received. . It is professedly taken 
from “ The Fireworshippers,” the most 
interesting portion of -Moore’s “ Lalla 
Rookh:’? but, the . dramatist. has so far 
deviated from,the story, as to ensure a 
happy. catastrophe... Treachery is frustrated, 
and. tyranny oyerpowered; and the cham- 
pion of liberty (released, from bonds and 
dungeons, by the. enamoured daughter of 
his remorseless oppressor) asserts the inde- 
pendence of his persecuted race, and is 
crowned at once by victory and love. There 
aré improbabilities enough, of course, in 
the conduct of so romantic an adventure, 
and plenty of ambiguity to be explained, if 
explanations were endurable in so sketchy 
a'thing as a mélo-drame. It is more to 
the‘purpose that the splendour of proces- 
sions, costumes, scenery and decorations, 
the gleam of sabres and the combats of gla- 
diators gave abundant satisfaction to the 
eye 5 andif, Mrs, W. West; in the Princess 
Hinda, was not quite so killing, as hereto- 
fore, inthe youthful beauty of her form, or 
the natural pathos of her voice, the ladies 
were, in-some danger from Mr. Wallack’s 
Hafed, when he: appeared? in all the gor- 
geous, adonizing of Circassian disguise. 
The_piece itself is not the worst of its kind: 
the dialogue has the merit of being too brief 
for weariness ; and it is something, as times 
go, that Harley, in Fadiadine, the cowardly 
male attendant of a Turkish princess, was 
permitted to indulge his native droller 
without quite obliterating the effects of his 
own good humour and whimsical grimace, 
by the protracted dullness of abortive absur- 
dities. It requires some tact, at least, if 
not some talent, even to write nonsense 
endurably ; and of this the author does not 
seem to be entirely destitute.+ 
Dee. 10.— Another afterpiece was brought 
forward, under the name of My Uncle Ga- 
bricl, described in the advertisement as a 
“new operatical farce:” as if the mere 
introduction of three or four songs, adapted 
to old music, would constitute a farce ope- 
ratical. It is a slight, but rather amusing 
erformance in its way; the more so, as it 
is not long. Half, or three-quarters of an 
hour, is duration enough for a mere farce : 
if it trespasses much further, it ought to 
have something better mingled with it— 
some touch of nature or social interest, to 
fiat therisible muscles ; lest the grin de- 
f each a vev pr laugh become 
sh than hilarious, A. strain 
‘'@) There are other and more efficient reagons than 
Alle supposed inaudible dimensions of our theatres, 
Pier conre never toexpect god pla ywritiag—or, 
etd, good acting of plays, again. We may make 
tlieke tlie wubjcets of Hume fulure essay, : 
aft There aré some cyeny who, withitio other talent, 
Page Jor wits. 
New Music and the Drama. 
547 
or two. of sweet and original music may 
answer» the purpose; but, in the: present 
instance, though Mr.J. Parry’s medley over- 
ture was a pleasantly arranged selection, 
and some of the songs were old acquaintance, 
whom we had no objection to meet again 
with new faces, Uncle Gabriel owed little of 
his favourable reception to the music. In 
this, however, Mr. Bedford. (one of the 
transplanted vocalists of the season). shewed 
that, with a good, though not yery deep, or 
very cultivated, bass, he could sing a, jovial 
song with éclat: as, indeed, he ought— 
for his character (a wine-bibbing, do-nothing- 
at-all sort of hanger-on) nephew Scrip, was 
evidently introduced for no other purpose. 
As for Horne, in the half-pay Lieutenant 
Sutton (whose exploits in tricking the old 
stock-broker, Gabriel Omnium, out of his 
niece and her £20,000 fortune, ‘by the as- 
sistance of his bottle companion; Jack 
Ready, alias Peter Profile, lias Ben Blister, 
alias Uncle Gabriel, constitute'the whole of 
the plot)—he had little opportunity of. ad- 
vancing his vocal reputation’; and for Miss 
Povey (the niece, Ziiza), though ‘she’ las 
still two or. three notes of exquisite sweet= 
ness, to ring the changes upon, sheis so far 
from improving as a, songstress, that, if it 
were not for an easy sort of playful pertness 
in her manner, which sometimes approaches 
towards comic acting, she might be in 
danger of idling herself out of public favour. 
Knight, in Toby Tacit, a talkative little 
hen-pecked inn-keeper, indulged his native 
vein of humour; and Mrs. Orger (who 
should never trespass beyond this line. of 
parts), as the equally talkative Mrs. T., 
helped out the laugh. But Harley, with his 
enumerated aliases, was the life of the whole, 
and kept the house in good humour, by his 
own happy art of being always in good 
humour with himself: else we might ob- 
serve that, through all his metamorphoses, 
it is only in costume that he plays the Pro- 
teus ; for, whether Dutch sailor, or English 
nabob, bottle companion or itinerant por- 
trait painter, Harley will still be Harley :— 
twist his face, poke his chin, thrust out his 
unnameable in one direction, and strut with 
bended knee and prancing foot in the other ; 
shake his lips and snap off the ends of his 
words, in alternate semi-bass and piping 
treble, and laugh with one half of his face, 
while he stares and looks bluff with the 
other. But though all this, most assuredly, 
hath no pretence to be called acting, he 
contrives, somehow or other, to make 
it very amusing. 
The faree was preceded by Sheridan’s 
once delightful School for Scandal; but we 
scarcely recognized in it, the vein of high 
comic humour so, conspicuous in the ori- 
ginal acting. Elliston was announced for 
Charles; but an, apology, of ill health was 
made, and Wallack took the part—a change 
in which, there was no loss ; for, though he 
did not, play it to the full delineated height 
of spirited and elegant vivacity, yet he was 
{ y tolerably 
i ~ 
