1829.] Theatrical Matters. 193 



fijl. But in the Haymarket, or in any other theatre of no more unnatural 

 dimensions. Miss E. Tree must find her powers completely at home, and her 

 popularity completely secure. 



Fawcett, it is said, is about to quit Covent Garden, and even quit the 

 stage. Vi'hy he should do either we are not acquainted. If he have felt the 

 toils ofgovernmenttoo much for him, he has only to give up the sceptre. But 

 he is still as good an actor as he ever was; he is better than any one in his 

 own line, and rough as he is, Fawcett would be a loss. 



The condition of both the great theatres during the last season, has been 

 disastrous enough. At the meeting for the annual report to the creditors of 

 Drury Lane, a remission of l,800l. was made to the manager on the ground of 

 ill luck. The improvident bargain by which he was to stand the damages for 

 Farren's retreat from Covent Garden might have had its effect. But the ma- 

 nager protested against the surmise, and contended that the true evil was in 

 the contempt of all theatrical privileges exhibited by the minor theatres, in 

 playing whatever they liked, in taking away popular plays and performers, 

 and hi exhibiting them at rates which beggar the principal theatres. We do 

 not agree with the manager in all this, for we hate monopoly, and are fully 

 satisfied that the winter theatres would not lose their audiences, if they de- 

 served to keep them. But what have those theatres produced during the 

 year ? Nothing. Has there been any one new performance worth the bills 

 that placarded it, except such as were taken wholesale from the French, and 

 which, in all fairness, every minor theatre had as good a right to take as they. 

 Has there been a single original work of any value ? Not one. And the rea- 

 son is plain. The means by which men of a higher order than the mere work- 

 men of theatrical writing can be attracted, are not used. The productiveness 

 of theatrical writing keeps no equality with that of every other specie:; of 

 popular literature. What writer, who can obtain from 500/. to 1,000/. by a 

 novel, wUl run the risks that attach to all theatrical writing, for the paltry 

 sums, the slowly paid sums, or the sums liable to a hundred miserable draw- 

 backs, if paid at all, that the present management of theatre look upon as 

 prodigious liberality .'' We by no means desire to see those men plunging 

 into rash expense. But we will tell them that they plunge into more than the 

 expense of authorship, and in a much worse way. They give a couple of 

 thousand pounds for some affair of tinsel and trombones, some Easter foolery, 

 which does not repay them five shillings per cent. Let them offer one of 

 those thousands for the best comedy that will be presented to them during the 

 next six months; and the results will set them to rights, as to the idleness of 

 supposing that dramatic ability is dead in England. They will probably 

 receive a vast quantity of dullness ; but they will find that there is applica- 

 ble and vigorous abilty in the land. But what man of popular powers will 

 devote himself to stage writing without feeling that it is placed by the public 

 on an equal rank with any other department of literature, and that its emolu- 

 ments justify him in devoting himself to it ? It is difficult, unquestionably the 

 most difficult, of all kinds of writing. A good comedy exercises the imder- 

 standing in an overwhelming degree, and the old difficulties are increased by 

 the undoubted increase in public refinement, the decay of the love of carica- 

 ture, and the departure of all external distinctions of professional and public 

 life. It requires a happiness of language, a dexterity of wit, and a knowledge 

 of the odd currents and eccentricities of human thought, which not one man 

 in a million ever possesses. The produce being rare, the emolument ought ^^ 

 be high. 



A great tragedy has been in every age acknowledged to be the first and 

 most brilliant labour of poetic genius. The famous tragedians of Greece were 

 but three, and those are the brightest stars to this hour in the constellation of 

 Greek glory. The age of Louis XIV. is forgotten in the age of Corneille and 

 Racine. The crowning splendour of the age of Elizabeth is the name of 

 Shakspeare. And shall it be thought that the powers which may be gifted to 

 raise the future tragedy of England to the height of this immortal rivalry, 

 are to be awoke by the paltry compact which degrades alike the giver and 

 M.M. New ,SVn>.9.^Voi,. VIIL No. 44. 2 C 



