Chapter 4

D.--When pistols or other fire-arms do miss fire; when red fire igniteth not, or igniteth the scenes; when a trap-door refuseth to open, a rope to draw, and the like.

E.--When the author intrusteth his principal part to a new actor, and it falleth out that the same doth grievously offend the audience, who straight insist that he do quit the stage, whereby the ruin of the piece is consummated.

F.--Likewise there be misfortunes that arise from the audience; as, when at a momentous point of the plot there entereth one heated with liquor, and causeth a disturbance, or a woman with a huge bonnet becometh the subject of a discussion as to her right to wear the same, and impede the view of them that be behind; also when there cometh in a ruffian, or more, in a pea-coat, who having been charged by an enemy to work the ruin of the piece, endeavoureth to do the same, by dint of hisses or other unseemly noises, all of which be highly pernicious.

Secondly, of those unfortunate authors who have been successful, there be--

1.--He whose piece, albeit successful, is withdrawn to make room for the Christmas pantomine, Easter piece, or other entertainment equally cherished by the manager, who thereupon groundeth a plea of non-payment.

2.--He who being a creditor of the manager, and the same being unable to meet his obligations, by an ingenious contrivance of the law becometh cleansed thereof, an operation which hath been conceitedly termed "whitewashing."

3.--He that writeth a piece with a friend, and the same claimeth the entire authorship thereof and emolument therefrom.

And there be divers other calamities which we have neither space nor time to enumerate, but which be all incentives to abstain from dramatic writing.

PERDITUS.

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PUNCH'S THEATRE.

JACK KETCH; OR, A LEAF FROM TYBURN TREE.

Modern legislation is chiefly remarkable for its oppressive interference with the elegant amusements of the mob. Bartholomew-fair is abolished; bull-baiting, cock-pits, and duck-hunts are put down by act of Parliament; prize-fighting, by the New Police--even those morally healthful exhibitions, formerly afforded opposite the Debtors' Door of Newgate, for the sake of _example_--that were attended by idlers in hundreds, and thieves in thousands--are fast growing into disuse. The "masses" see no pleasure now: even the hanging-matches are cut off.

Deeply compassionating the effects of so illiberal an innovation, Mr. G. Almar the author to, and Mr. R. Honner the proprietor of, Sadler's Wells Theatre, have produced an exhibition which in a great degree makes up for the infrequent performances at the Old Bailey. Those whose moral sensibilities are refined to the choking point--who can relish stage strangulation in all its interesting varieties better than Shakspere, are now provided with a rich treat. They need not wait for the Recorder's black cap and a black Monday morning--the Sadler's Wells' people hang every night with great success; for, unless one goes early, there is--as is the case wherever hanging takes place--no _standing room_ to be had for love or money.

The play is simply the history of Jack Ketch, a gentleman who flourished at the beginning of the last century, and who, by industry and perseverance, attained to the rank of public executioner; an office he performed with such skill and effect that his successors have, as the bills inform us, inherited "his soubriquet" with his office. He is introduced to the audience as a ropemaker's apprentice, living in the immediate neighbourhood of Execution-Dock, and loving _Barbara Allen_, "a young spinster residing at the Cottage of Content, upon the borders of Epping Forest, supporting herself by the produce of her wheel and the cultivation of her flower-garden." He beguiles his time, while twisting the hemp, by spinning a tedious yarn about this well-to-do spinster; from which we infer _Barbara's_ barbarity, and that he is crossed in love. The soliloquy is interrupted by an elderly man, who enters to remark that he has come out for a little relaxation after a hard morning's work: no wonder, for we soon learn that he is the _Jack Ketch_ of his day, and has, but an hour before, tucked up two brace of pirates. With this pleasing information, and a sharp dialogue on his favourite subject with the hero, he retires.

Here the interest begins; three or four foot-stamps are heard behind; _Jack_ starts--"Ah, that noise," &c.--and on comes the author of the piece, "his first appearance here these five years." He approaches the foot-lights--he turns up his eyes--he thumps his breast--and goes through this exercise three or four times, before the audience understand that they are to applaud. They do so; and the play goes on as if nothing had happened; for this is an episode expressive of a "first appearance these five years." _Gipsy George_ or Mr. G. Almar, whichever you please, having assured _Jack Ketch_ that he is starving and in utter destitution, proceeds to give five shillings for a piece of rope, and walks away, after taking great pains to assure everybody that he is going to hang himself. Before, however, he has had time to make the first coil of a hempen collar, _Jack_ looks off, and descries the stranger in the last agonies of strangulation, amidst the most deafening applause from the audience, whose disgust is indignantly expressed by silence when he exits to cut the man down. Their delight is only revived by the apparition of _Gipsy George_, pale and ghastly, _with the rope round his neck_, and the exclamation that he is "done for." _Barabbas_, the hangman, who re-appears with the rest, is upbraided by _Jack_ for coolly looking on and letting the man hang himself, without raising an alarm. Mr. B. answers, that "it was no business of his." Like Sir Robert Peel and the rest of the profession, it was evidently his maxim not to interfere, unless "regularly called in." The _Gipsy_, so far from dying, recovers sufficiently to make to _Jack_ some important disclosures; but of that mysterious kind peculiar to melodrama, by which nobody is the wiser. They, however, bear reference to _Jack's_ deceased father, a clasp-knife, a certain _Sir Gregory_ of "the gash," and the four gentlemen so recently suspended at Execution-Dock.

The residence of Content and Barbara Allen is a scene, the minute correctness of which it would be wicked to doubt, when the bills so solemnly guarantee that it is copied from the "best authorities." _Barbara_ opens the door, makes a curtsey, produces a purse, and after saying she is going to pay her rent, is, by an ingenious contrivance of the Sadler's Wells' Shakspere, confronted with her landlord, the _Sir Gregory_ before-mentioned. All stage-landlords are villains, who prefer seduction to rent, and he of the "gash" is no exception. The struggle, rescue, and duel, which follow, are got through in no time. The last would certainly have been fatal, had not the assailant's servant come on to announce that "a gentleman wished to speak to him at his own residence." The lover (who is of course the rescuer) deems this a sufficient excuse to let off his antagonist without a scratch; _Barbara_ rewards him with an embrace and a rose, just as another rival intrudes himself in the person of _Mr. John Ketch_. The altercation which now ensues is but slight; for _Jack_, instead of fighting, goes off to Fairlop-fair with another young lady, who seems to come upon the stage for no other purpose than to oblige him. At the fair we find _Jack's_ spirits considerably damped by the prediction of a gipsy, that he will marry a hangman's daughter; but, after the jumping in sacks, which forms a part of the sports, he rescues _Barbara_ from being once more assailed by her landlord. Thereupon another component of the festive scene--our friend the hangman--declares that she is his daughter! "Horror" tableau, and end of Act I.

After establishing a lapse of four years between the acts, the author takes high ground;--we are presented with the summit of Primrose-hill, St. Paul's in the distance, and a gentleman with black clothes, and literary habits, reading in the foreground. This turns out to be "The Laird Lawson," _Barbara's_ favoured lover and benevolent duellist. Though on the top of Cockney Mount, he is suffering under a deep depression of spirits; for he has never seen _Miss Allen_ during four years, come next Fairlop-fair. Having heard this, the audience is, of course, quite prepared for that lady's appearance; and, sure enough, on she comes, accounting for her presence with great adroitness:--having left the city to go to Holloway, she is taking a short cut over Primrose-hill. The lovers go through the mode of recognition never departed from at minor theatres, with the most frantic energy, and have nearly hugged themselves out of breath, when the executioner papa interrupts the blissful scene, without so much as saying how he got there; but "finishers" are mysterious beings. _Barabbas_ denounces the laird; and when his consent is asked for the hand of _Miss Barbara_, tells the lover "he will see him hanged first!"

The moon, a dark stage, and _Jack Ketch_ in the character of a foot-pad, now add to the romance of the drama. Not to leave anything unexplained, the hero declares, that he has cut the walk of life he formerly trod in the rope ditto, and has been induced to take to the road solely by Fate, brandy and (not salt, but) _Barbara!_ By some extraordinary accident, every character in the piece, with two exceptions, have occasion to tread this scene--"Holloway and heath near the village of Holloway" (painted from the best authorities), just exactly in time to be robbed by _Ketch_; who shows himself a perfect master of his business, and a credit to his instructor; for _Gipsy George_ rewards _Jack_ for saving him from hanging, by showing his friend the shortest way to the gallows.

In the following scene, the plot breaks out in a fresh place. The man with the "gash," and _Gipsy George_ are together, going over some youthful reminiscences. It seems that once upon a time there were six pirates; four were those pendents from the gibbet at Execution-Dock one hears so much about at the commencement; the fifth is the speaker, _Gipsy George_; and "you," exclaims that person, striking an attitude, and addressing _Sir Gregory_, "make up the half-dozen!" They all formerly did business in a ship called the "Morning Star," and whenever the ex-pirate number five is in pecuniary distress, he bawls out into the ear of _ci-devant_ pirate number six, the words "Morning Star!" and a purse of hush-money is forked out in a trice. In this manner _Gipsy George_ accumulates, by the end of the piece, a large property; for six or eight purses, all ready filled for each occasion, thus pass into his pockets.

The "best authorities" furnish us, next, with an interior; that of "the Mug, a chocolate house and tavern," where a new plot is hatched against the crown and dignity of the late respected George the First, by a party of Jacobites. These consist of a half-dozen of Hanoverian Whigs, who enter, duly decorated with an equal number of hats of every variety of cock and cockade. The heroine seems to have engaged herself here as waitress, on purpose to meet her persecutor, _Sir Gregory_, and her late lover, _Jack Ketch_. What comes of this rencontre it is impossible to make out, for a general _mélée_ ensues, caused by a discovery of the plot; which is by no means a gunpowder plot; for although a file of soldiers present their arms for several minutes full at the conspirators, not a single musket goes off. Perhaps gunpowder was expensive in the reign of George the First. _Jack Ketch_ ends the act with a dream--an _apropos finale_, for we caught several of our neighbours napping. The scene in which this vision takes place is the crowning result of the painter's researches amongst the "best authorities;" it being no less than "a garret in Grub-street, _in which the great Daniel De Foe composed his romance of Robinson Crusoe!!_"

A fishing-party--whose dulness is relieved by a suicide--opens the last act: one of the anglers having finished a comic song--which from its extreme gravity forms an appropriate dirge to the forthcoming felo-de-se--goes off with his companion to leave the water clear for _Barbara Allen_, who enters, takes an affecting leave of her laird lover, and straightway drowns herself. _Jack Ketch_ is now, by a rapid change of scene, discovered in limbo, and condemned to death; why, we were too stupid to make out. The fatal cart--very likely modelled after "the best authorities"--next occupies the stage, drawn by a real horse, and filled with _Sir Gregory Gash_ (who it seems is going to be hanged) and _Jack Ketch_ not as a prisoner, but as an officer of the crown; for we are to suppose that _Mr. Barabbas_, having retired from the public scaffold to private life, has seceded in favour of _Jack Ketch_, who is saved from the rope himself, on condition of his using it upon the person of _Sir Gregory_ and every succeeding criminal. All the characters come on with the cart, and a _dénouement_ evidently impends. The distracted lover demands of somebody to restore his mistress, which _Gipsy George_ is really so polite as to do; for although the bills expressly inform us she has committed "suicide," and we have actually seen her jump into the river Lea; yet there she is safe and sound!--carefully preserved in an envelope formed partly by the _Gipsy_ himself, and partly by his cloak. She, of course, embraces her lover, and leaves _Jack Ketch_ to embrace his profession with what appetite he may; all, in fact, ends happily, and _Sir Gregory_ goes off to be hanged.

This, then, is the state to which the founders of the Newgate school of dramatic literature, and the march of intellect, have brought us. Nothing short of actual hanging--the most revolting and repulsive of all possible subjects to enter, much less to dwell in any mind not actually savage--must now be provided to meet the refined taste of play-goers. In the present instance, nothing but the actual _spiciness_ of the subject saved the piece from the last sentence of even Sadler's Wells' critical law; for in construction and detail, it is the veriest mass of incoherent rubbish that was ever shot upon the plains of common sense. The sketch we have made is in no one instance exaggerated. Our readers may therefore easily judge whether we speak truly or not.

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PUNCH AT THE NEW STRAND.

When Napoleon first appeared before the grand army after his return from Elba--when Queen Victoria made her _débût_ at the assemblage of her first parliament--when Kean performed "Othello" at Drury Lane immediately after he had caused a certain friend of his to play the same part in the Court of King's Bench--the public mind was terribly agitated, and the public's legs instinctively carried them, on each occasion, to behold those great performers. When--to give these circumstances their highest application,--"Punch," on Thursday last, came out in the regular drama, the excitement was no less intense. Boxes were besieged; the pit was choked up, and the gallery creaked with its celestial encumbrance.

As the curtain drew up, there would have been a death-like silence but for the unparalleled sales that were taking place in apples, oranges, and ginger-beer. Expectation was on tip-toe, as were the persons occupying that department of the theatre called "standing-room." The looked-for moment came; the "drop" ascended, and the spectators beheld _Mr. Dionysius Swivel_, a pint of ale, and Punch's theatre!

"Tragedy," saith the Aristotelian recipe for cooking up a serious drama, "should have the probable, the marvellous, and the pathetic." In the _tableau_ thus presented, the audience beheld the three conditions strictly complied with all at once. "It was highly probable," as _Mr. Swivel_ observed to the source of pipes, 'bacca, and malt--in other words, to the landlady he was addressing--that his master, the showman, was unable to pay the score he had run up; it was marvellous that the proprietor of so popular a puppet as "Punch" should not have even the price of a pint of ale in his treasury; lastly, that circumstance was deeply pathetic; for what so heart-rending as the exhibition of fallen greatness, of broken-down prosperity, of affluence regularly stumped and hard-up! The fact is, that "Punch," his theatre, and _corps dramatique_, are in pawn for eight-and-ninepence!

In the midst of this distress there appears a young gentleman, giving vent to passionate exclamations, while furiously buttoning up a tight surtout. The object of his love is the daughter of the object of his hate. _Mr. Snozzle_, having previously made his bow, overhears him, and being the acting manager of "Punch," and having a variety of plots for rescuing injured lovers from inextricable difficulties on hand, offers one of them to the lover, considerably over cost price; namely, for the puppet-detaining eight-and-ninepence, and a glass of brandy-and-water. The bargain being struck, the scene changes.

To the happiness of being the possessor of "Punch," _Mr. Snozzle_ adds that of having a wonderful wife--a lady of universal talents; who dances in spangled shoes, plays on the tamburine, and sings Whitechapel French like a native. This inestimable creature has already gone round the town on a singing, dancing, and cash-collecting expedition; accompanied by the drum, mouth-organ, and _Swivel_. We now find her enchanting the flinty-hearted father, _Old Fellum_. Having been instrumental, by means of her vocal abilities, in drawing from him a declaration of amorous attachment and half-a-crown, she retires, to bury herself in the arms of her husband, and to eradicate the score, recorded in chalk, at _Mrs. Rummer's_ hotel.

In the meantime _Snozzle_, having sold a plot, proceeds to fulfil the bargain by executing it. He enters with PUNCH'S theatre, to treat _Old Fellum_ with a second exhibition, and his daughter with an elopement; for in the midst of the performance the young lady detects the big drum in the act of "winking at her;" and she soon discovers that PUNCH'S orchestra is no other than her own lover. _Fellum_ is delighted with the show, to which he is attentive enough to allow of the lovers' escaping. He pursues them when it is too late, and having been so precipitate in his exit as to remember to forget to pay for his amusement, _Swivel_ steals a handsome cage, parrot included.

Good gracious! what a scene of confusion and confabulation next takes place! _Fellum's_ first stage in pursuit is the public-house; there he unwittingly persuades _Mrs. Snozzle_ that her spouse is unfaithful--that _he_ it was who "stole away the old man's daughter." _Mrs. Snozzle_ raves, and threatens a divorce; _Snozzle_ himself trembles--he suspects the police are after him for being the receiver of stolen goods, instead of the deceiver of unsuspecting virtue. _Swivel_ dreads being taken up for prigging the parrot; and a frightful catastrophe is only averted by the entrance of the truant lovers, who have performed the comedy of "Matrimony" in a much shorter time than is allowed by the act of Parliament.

Mrs. Keeley played the tamburine, and the part of _Snozzle femme_. This was more than acting; it was nature enriched with humour--character broadly painted without a tinge of caricature. The solemnity of her countenance, while performing with her feet, was a correct copy from the expression of self-approbation--of the wonder-how-I-do-it-so-well--always observable during the dances of the _fair_ sex; her tones when singing were unerringly brought from the street; her spangled dress was assuredly borrowed from Scowton's caravan. As a work of dramatic art, this performance is, of its kind, most complete. Keeley's _Snozzle_ was quiet, rich, and philosophical; and Saunders made a Judy of himself with unparalleled success. _Frank Finch_ got his deserts in the hands of a Mr. Everett; for being a lover, no matter how awkward and ungainly an actor is made to represent him.

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"OH! DAY AND NIGHT, BUT THIS IS WONDROUS STRANGE!"

"We believe, from the first, _Day_ was intended to mount, and wherefore it was made a mystery we know not.--DOINGS AT DONCASTER."--[Sunday Times.]

Poor Coronation well may say, "A mystery I mark; Though jockey'd by the _lightest Day_ They tried to keep me dark."

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