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NOTES OF THE MONTH. 



"Damning a Piece.'' — Have our readers ever seen a piece 

 "damned?" When the thing is done in proper style it is an amusing 

 scene. Amusing, we mean, to all but the unlucky wight of an author 

 and the almost equally unlucky wight of a manager. "An affair" of 

 this kind occurred a few weeks since in Covent Garden theatre. 

 The doomed piece was called The Fate of War. It was happily 

 named on more than one account. The object of the piece was to 

 exhibit a series of battles, sieges, defences, and retreats, between the 

 British and French troops. The theatre of war was intended by 

 the author to be in Spain ; but it occurred, in a double sense, 

 nearer home. The action was fought within the walls of the thea- 

 tre, and the militants were the actors and the audience. All dis- 

 tinction between the British and the French soldiers was speedily 

 lost on the stage. There these " martial enemies," owing to their igno- 

 rance of military evolutions, mingled together, as if on terms of the 

 warmest friendship. A more " awkward squad" was certainly never 

 exhibited either on the stage or off it. Nothingr could exceed the 

 clumsiness of every movement the " raw" troops made. Their evo- 

 lutions were so utterly ludicrous that the audience scarcely knew 

 whether they should give way to a feeling of indignation at the im- 

 position practised on them by dignifying the exhibition with " the 

 name of acting," or to one of admiration at the cool effrontery with 

 which the " military" persevered in their parts notwithstanding the 

 clumsiness of their execution. The good nature of the audience 

 triumphed for a little ; but it at last gave way, and was succeeded by 

 a storm of hisses, hootings, and yells, which certainly would have 

 been enough to frighten any body of actors from their propriety. 

 The author, we doubt not, nmst have been frightened out of his 

 senses. Poor fellow ! a real fire of musketry could have been 

 nothinsf to what he must have endured ! We were never before so 

 convinced of the advantage of retaining the anonymous in authorship. 

 Had the author of " The Fate of War" been known to (he au- 

 dience, there could have been no difficulty in conjecturing what his 

 " fate '' would have been : he would have fared much worse than 

 any of the soldiers he had exposed to the leadless musketry of the 

 enemy on the stage. He would have been torn to pieces by the 

 infuriated assemblage he had drawn together to see his " regulars 

 and irregulars" go through their evolutions. In his absence, or ra- 

 ther the audier.ee' ignorance of his identity, they made him suffer 

 vicariously in the person of Mr.Wallack, the stage manager. All the 

 responsibility fell on the latter. He was formally called to account, and 

 only escaped the consequences of the audience's indignation by coming 

 forward and declaring that it was contrary to his wishes the piece 

 was produced, and adding that it would never be repeated. The 



