166 
seen worse acting from some of those who 
deem the higher characters of tragedy all 
their own. 
On the same night was produced, for 
the first time, a very pleasing ballet, The 
Rossignol, or the Bird in the Bush, which 
brought before us again Mr. and Mrs. 
Noble. We hail their re-appearance. The 
ballet here is nothing without them. No- 
ble’s vigorous and masterly activity needs 
no commendation; and though there are 
more astonishing and more brilliant dancers 
than Mrs. Noble, in-the graces of taste 
and style she has no superior ; and the per- 
fect decorum and propriety preserved in 
every evolution, without detracting from 
the ease and fluency of the motion, imparts 
the chastity of English character to the 
allurements of this exotie accomplishment. 
If we except the afterpiece, or “ new 
traditionary Tale,’ as it is called, The 
Shepherd of Derwent Vale, or the Innocent 
Culprit, which not having seen, we forbear 
to criticize; the only other novelty pre- 
sented has been a tragedy on the ill-se- 
lected story of Massaniello: which having 
been damned on the first night, notwith- 
standing the extraordinary novelty of ora~ 
tions by Mr. Kean on horseback, needs no 
further criticism. 
This is the tragedy, we understand, 
which Mr. Elliston informed the public he 
had “ ordered to be written for the purpose 
of exhibiting the powers of Mr. Kean”— 
Ordered to be written!!! Spirit of the 
immortal Shakspeare, to what degrada- 
tion are thy successors to be subjected ? 
Dost thou wonder at their rayless impo- 
tence! , The manager “ orders a tragedy 
to be written,”’ as le would order a pair of 
shoes! But it is not every cobler who can 
make a shoe to fit the head ; and who but a 
cobler, will work at Mr. Elliston’s order ? 
On the subject of passages struck out by 
the Lord Chamberlain’s critical reader, we 
may hereafter have something to say. 
Mr. Kean had performed, or rather at- 
tempted to perform (31st January) the cha- 
racter of Sir Giles Overreach in Massinger’s 
fine play, 4 New Way to Pay Old Debits, but 
the contention of the factious had scarcely 
permitted a single passage to he heard. 
This, to those who went for the play and 
not the row, was, of course, no small mor- 
tification ; for Sir Giles is not only Kean’s 
very best character (the discarded Jago, 
perhaps, excepted), but altogether an almost 
unparalleled performance. We used to 
think Cooke transcendent in it; but we 
profess that in this character we have 
ever considered Kean as surpassing him. 
Cooke gave to the grasping tyranny 
of this demon in human mould perhaps 
a still more bitter malignity; but Kean 
topped him in the vulgar-souled and 
overbearing arrogance of the part; and 
gave more insinuation and affected suavity 
to the fawning passages, without ever fail- 
Theatrical Review ; and Music. 
ple justice, that we may be said to have’ 
[Mar..}, 
ing to let the real character peep through 
the assumed, The effect, however, of al- 
most the whole of this, was lost on the 
present oceasion ; and, indeed, the atten- 
tion of the performer seemed occasionally 
more directed to pointing such passages at 
the audience as might ¢e// to his own pecu- 
liar situation, than to the vain effort of sus+ 
taining the character assumed. 
On Friday, the 4th February, he some- 
times laboured through, and sometimes even 
slubbered over, the scenes of Macbeth, un- 
der still more humiliating circumstances : 
for, though the tumult was not as great, the 
hostility had assumed a more galling shape ; 
derision, and mock plaudits, and cries of 
“speak up!” and ludicrous applications ; 
—as, forexample, when to the Ghost of 
Banquo, he exclaims “ what man dare, I 
dare ;” a shout of laughter, and cry of 
“ bravo! bravo!’? was accompanied by a 
ridiculous imitation of the crowing of 
cocks ; and when he, with a more touching 
pathos than we ever before observed, as if 
with self-applying feeling, began that fine 
speech, “I am fallen into the sear—the 
yellow leaf,” he was broken in upon by 
another peal of laughter and derision from 
some half-dozen hatted and great-coated 
Corinthians in the boxes, who seemed 
quite as well prepared to play the bully or 
the boxer, as the much more numerous 
party in the pit, who neither by menaces, 
nor apples and oranges, could silence them. 
It will not, therefore, appear surprising, that 
the performer should slur over some pas- 
sages inaudibly, to evade awkward allusions, 
and that he should hurry through others 
with a languid indifference and despair ; 
in short, that, if ever he was the Macbeth 
of Shukspeare, he should not, at any rate, 
have been so on this occasion. He has 
repeated the character since under better 
auspices: but it never was one of his mas- 
ter-pieces. Passages of it, indeed, are bril- 
liant. The gladiatorial scene, especially 
with Wallack for his antagonist, is all that 
can be conceived of that species of acting ; 
his manner of chasing the ghost of Banquo 
(‘‘Hence, horrible shadow,” &c. ) rather from, 
his imagination, as it were, than from his 
presence,—shrinking and retiring from his 
own repelling action, instead of driving the 
phantom with bullying bravado, is as just 
as it is original; and but for his unmeaning 
mannerist pause “ unreal mockery 
—hence!” would be as perfect as it is 
vigorous. His dagger scene, after the mur- 
der, is also very fine. But we never could 
be pleased with his preceding soliloquy. It 
is too elaborately mannerist, and too little 
imaginative. He does not conjure up “ the 
air-drawn dagger” before us. It is evident 
he does not sce it in his own mind’s eye. 
He remembers it only from the book. 
There goes towards a genuine represen- 
tation of the higher characters of Shak- 
speare something more than mere-art and 
energy; something more than start, and 
pause, 
a 
