Chapter 2

exemplary labour and industry, secure him completely, even in those characters for which he is least fitted, from offending the taste of his auditors, or rendering his performance ridiculous; an assertion we would hazard on the head of very few if any actors in America. This is to put our opinion of him at once at the lowest: yet even that would appear something to any one who could conceive the disgust with which it often falls to our lot to turn from the scene before us.

There is not in the whole catalogue of acting plays a character more disadvantageous to an actor, than that of Alonzo. A compound of imbecility and baseness, yet an object of commiseration: an unmanly, blubbering, lovesick, querulous creature; a soldier, whining, piping and besprent with tears, destitute of any good quality to gain esteem, or any brilliant trait or interesting circumstance to relieve an actor under the weight of representing him. In addition to this, there are so many abrupt variations and different transitions that it requires great talents in an actor to get through it, without incurring a share of the contempt due to the character. Viewing him in this way, we could not help regretting that it should devolve upon a young actor, who could scarcely expect to escape unhurt in it. Our surprise was great, nor was our pleasure less, to find in Mr. Wood's performance, a pleasing marked delineation of the best features of Alonzo, with the worst considerably softened and relieved. Seldom is a character so indebted to the aid of an actor as this to the judgment of Mr. Wood. Dr. Young's muse flags most dolefully in this part, and Mr. Wood did more than could be expected to bear her up. We could not help wishing upon the occasion that Alonzo could have bartered a portion of his judgment for a share of the physical powers of Zanga; both would profit by the exchange.

In the Copper Captain Mr. Wood had a character very favourable to the actor, and well suited to his powers and talents. Michael, however, is one of those vigorous productions of the old comic muse in which a player incurs the danger of overshooting the mark in his efforts not to fall short of it. One in which while the judicious actor luxuriates, and gives a force to his whole comic powers, he finds it difficult to observe very strictly the _ne quid nimis_ of the critic. The correct and chaste judgment of Mr. Wood kept the bridle so firm on his performance of it, that we do not think he once "o'erstepped the modesty of nature."

In his performance of Iago we thought Mr. Wood inferior to himself. How could he or any actor be expected to get through his business under the circumstances of the theatre on that evening. A band of drunken butchers had got into two of the front boxes, and converted them into a grog-shop!

In the prince of Wales in Henry IV. Mr. Wood displayed the versatility of his talents. In the gay, thoughtless, trifling rake, the "madcap" prince, he was spirited, and playful without puerility; in the serious parts, whether as the penitent apologizing son, or the martial hero, he was judicious, impressive, and not deficient in military importance.

Where we see so much merit, merit so entirely his own, we advert to faults with great reluctance. But it is our duty and we must do it. Of the contagious nature of the KEMBLE PLAGUE in acting we cannot adduce a more lamentable proof than that it sometimes taints even this very judicious performer. How has it been endured by the British public, how can it be reconciled to common sense, that players who are supposed to represent human beings, and who assume to speak and act as men in real existence, speak and act in the commerce of the world, should constantly utter the lines set down for them, in such a manner as no rational creature in real life ever yet did utter them, or ever will? Does it give force, interest or dignity to the lines of a speech to take up twice or thrice as much time in speaking them as the most formal, deliberate, or pompous prig of an orator would employ upon them? Why will not actors condescend to speak "_like the folks of this world_," particularly as they pretend to imitate them? We never were at a royal levee--but we have been at the pains to ask several persons who have been, whether any king, or prince, or peer spoke there, as Mr. Kemble or as Mr. Holman, or Mr. Pope after him, speak in Hamlet, Richard, Macbeth, &c. and the uniform answer has been that the great men at court speak just like all gentlemen in private society. As to public orators, we can say that Mr. Kemble and his disciples occupy one third, or at least one fourth more time in delivering any given number of words than ever the stately William Pitt in his most slow and solemn exordiums. Yet this they call speaking naturally--imitating the conduct of men.

We do not allude to proper _pauses_, in the duration of which the actor may be allowed some little license--and an extension of which is frequently a beauty. Thus when _Balthazar_ informs _Romeo_ of _Juliet's_ death, Mr. Cooper maintained a pause of great length with the most felicitous effect. He stood overwhelmed, stupified, and bereft of speech with horror and astonishment, then said

"Is it even so?--then I defy you stars!"

and paused again. Here like a great artist he filled up the picture of which Shakspeare only gave the outlines: but when, afterwards he expostulated with the apothecary, we could see no reason why he should deliver out the lines syllable by syllable like drops of blood reluctantly given from the heart.

Art--thou--so--bare--and--full--of--wretchedness And--fear'st--to--die?

To us the last appeared as ludicrous as the former was beautiful and affecting. But, "in the name of all the gods at once," why this? Though Mr. Wood sometimes falls into this error, a few of the first lines of his Jaffier smacked of it wofully. We should find no apprehension of laying any sum upon it, if the thing could possibly be ascertained, that in pronouncing the words

Not hear me! by my sufferings but you shall! My lord--my lord! I'm not that abject wretch You think me.

he occupied full double the time that Barry did, or even the late Hodgkinson, whose good fortune it was not to have studied, or seen, or drawn one drop of his professional sap from the great root of these abuses. It is said by some of Mr. Kemble's advocates that he speaks in that manner from necessity--that he does it to nurse his voice in the beginning, which else would flag before the end of a long performance. If this were a sufficient excuse for Mr. K. we should not disallow it in the case of any other gentleman who labours under the disadvantage of a weak voice. But we think it is not; it would be infinitely better for the audience to compound with the actor and allow him resting between the speech times. The majestic Spranger Barry when we last saw him was not only so decrepit that he hobbled along the stage, and so bent in the middle that his body formed an angle with his lower limbs, almost as acute as that of a mounted telescope, but was so encumbered by infirmity and high living that upon any violent exertion of the lungs he puffed very painfully; yet even in that state we have heard him speak the part of _Rhadamistus_ in _Zenobia_, with all the fire, rapidity, and animation of youth, his fine person all the time raised erect for the purpose: but as soon as the speech was over, down he sunk again to his angle, and puffed and blowed, while the audience, with emotions mixed up of admiration and grief gazed in a kind of melancholy delight on the finest ruin that ever time made in the works of nature: thunders and shouts of plaudits filled the house; every female was seen gazing upon the wonderful man as if her eyes were nailed upon their axes, and were melting away with floods of tears, while he, from a face of almost divine sweetness, gave back their love and their indulgence with interest. He was allowed to take his own time--not in the speeches, but between them.

Though these remarks are introduced in a part of our criticism dedicated to the performances of Mr. Wood, we by no means would have it understood that it applies exclusively, or even particularly to him. There is no performer on the American stage, perhaps, to whom they less frequently apply; but we have started the subject with him purposely to point out by an instance _a fortiori_ how dangerous it is to a young actor, not to guard against a great imperfection. When he whose sound judgment and industry may reasonably be supposed to secure him from such errors, insensibly falls into them, actors of inferior capacity and less industry will see, or at least ought to see the necessity of standing upon a more vigilant guard.

Since the subject is started we will proceed with it, though perhaps to the exclusion from this number of some other matter originally intended for it. Can those, who, loving the drama, and feeling its beauties with a true classic spirit, wish to see the public taste won over to the tragic muse, hope that it can be accomplished, or can they be surprised that on the contrary, tragedy so often excites merriment when they reflect upon the way dramatic poetry is often delivered upon the stage. Let the first three men who pass by the playhouse door be called in, one of them taken from the highest order of life, a second from the middle order, and the third from the very lowest class--let them hear a tragedy through, or even some parts of a comedy, and let them then give their verdict as on oath, whether what they heard, resembled anything they had ever heard before out of a playhouse, or perchance a madhouse, and they must answer in the negative or perjure themselves.

This was one of the evils which Garrick had the glory of eradicating. Just before him, actors spoke in the ti-tum-ti monotonous sing-song way of the new school. Old Macklin some years ago, assured the writer of this, that except in some few declamatory speeches, or in the ghost of Hamlet, QUIN would not be endured at that time in tragedy: and what said this Quin himself when he was prevailed upon to go to Goodman's Fields to see Garrick for the first time? "I dont know what to say," he replied to one who asked his opinion of the young actor, "but if he be right, _we have all been wrong_." Quin's integrity would not let him deny a truth which his judgment told him in the very teeth of his prejudices.

Absurd and _unnatural_ as this miserable mode of speech is, it is very difficult to be got rid of, when it once becomes habitual to an actor; a memorable instance of which was old MR. WIGNELL of Covent garden, the father of our late manager. He was one of the Quin school, and if now alive and able to act, would once more hitch in very handsomely with the recitativers of the new academy of acting, for, says the author of the Thespian dictionary, "_He possessed the singular talent of imparting stateliness to comic dialogues, and merriment to tragic scenes._" Of this gentleman many anecdotes are recorded, curious in themselves, and well deserving the consideration of young actors.

Upon the revival of the tragedy of Cato in London (Cato by Sheridan) Mr. Wignell was put forward in his old established part of Portius. In the first scene he stepped forward in his accustomed strut and began

The dawn is overcast, the morning low'rs And heavily with clouds brings on the day.

At this moment the audience began to vociferate "prologue, prologue, prologue," when Wignell finding them resolute without moving from the spot, without pausing, or changing his tone of voice, but in all the pomposity of tragedy, went on as if it were part of the play.

"Ladies and gentlemen, there has been no Prologue spoken to this play these twenty years-- The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome."----

This wonderful effusion put the audience in good humour--they laughed incontinently--clapped and shouted _bravo_, and Wignell proceeded with his usual stateliness, self-complacency, and composure.

Mr. Wignell's biographer above mentioned relates the following anecdote. "During a rehearsal of _the suspicious husband_, Mr. Garrick exclaimed "pray Mr. Wignell, why cannot you enter and say, "_Mr. Strictland, sir, your coach is ready_", without all the declamatory pomp of Booth or Quin?"--"Upon my soul, Mr. Garrick," replied poor Wignell, "_I thought I had kept the sentiment down as much as possible._"" When Macklin performed _Macbeth_ Wignell played the _doctor_, and in this serious character provoked loud fits of laughter.

The above facts contain a valuable lesson to actors, some of whom can, no more than Mr. Wignell, _get the sentiment down_, when they have an event of such importance to announce as _the coach being ready_. In serious truth we are persuaded that the fulsome, bombastical ridiculous stateliness of some actors, tends to bring tragedy into disrepute, to deprive it of its high preeminence, and must ultimately disgust the multitude with some of the noblest productions of the human mind.

Two other characters of the tragedies already alluded to, demand from the justice of criticism the most full and unmixed praise. _Falstaff_ in Henry IV. and _Cacafogo_ in Rule a Wife and have a Wife, had in Mr. Warren a most able representative. Having seen several--the select ones of the last five and thirty years--we can truly say, without entering into nice comparisons, that if we were to sit to those two plays a hundred times in America or Great Britain, we could be well contented with just such a Falstaff and just such a Cacafogo as Mr. Warren.

_The Foundling of the Forest._

In our first number we made a few observations on this comedy. They were not very favourable to it; and, notwithstanding its great success in representation, we are not at all disposed to retract any of them, because our opinion of the intrinsic value of the piece is not in the least altered. In representation it is all--in the closet nothing. This arises from the conduct of the plot, which indeed constitutes the whole of its merit. In Europe, as in America, the judgment of every critic is at variance with the decision of the multitude upon it, for while at the Lyceum it has been applauded by "the million," it has been lashed by the judicious, in various respectable publications.

The time has been, nor has it long passed by, when that body in the community who decided the fate of every literary performance, far from being contented with EFFECT upon the stage, condemned it, if it were not produced by an adequate CAUSE in nature. To that body the Farrago of Melodrame, written spectacle, and mysterious agency, would have been objects of ridicule or disapprobation, and the just influence of their opinions upon the public would have driven back the German muse with all her paraphernalia of tempests, castles, dungeons, and murderers, to rave on her native ground: except in their proper place (farce or pantomime) they would not have been tolerated. To write only to the passions, to expose human beings to circumstances that cannot in the natural course of life occur, and release them by means which outrage all probability, and to those ends to urge vice and virtue beyond all possible bounds, and fabricate extreme characters such as have rarely or never existed, characters either better than saints, or worse than devils, for the mere purpose of producing horror and astonishment, and hanging up the feelings of the multitude on the tenterhooks of fearful suspense and painful apprehension--to violate all the rules prescribed by nature and experience, and place heroes and heroines in situations so far out of the course of human conduct, that the poet cannot get them out again by rational, feasible means, but is compelled to leave their fate to the guess of the spectators by picturesque grouping and dropping the curtain. What is this but to reverse the very nature of the drama, "Whose end," says its father Shakspeare, "both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to Nature, to show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the Time his form and pressure."

By such miserable expedients as these, the fascinating effects of the Foundling of the Forest are produced. But in the management of those materials, the author has displayed unparalleled skill. The story in its original outline is certainly interesting, and the plot is not only skilfully developed but artfully contrived as a vehicle for stage effect--for such merely, has the author evidently intended it; his arrangement of the machinery, such as it is, demands warm praise for its perspicuity and just order, and if the alarming and horrific be legitimate objects for a dramatist, Mr. Dimond has succeeded most marvellously.

The sorriest critic, however, knows that horror ought not to be produced on the stage. The boundary that separates terror from horror, is the lawful limit--the line not to be broken--the _Rubicon_ which when the poet passes, he commits treason against the sovereign laws of the drama. The _mighty magician of Udolpho_, as the author of the pursuits of Literature calls Mrs. Radcliff, with powers almost beyond human, infused into the British public a taste for the horrible which has not yet been palled by the nauseous draughts of it, poured forth by her impotent successors. One would think that, like Macbeth, the novel and play reading world had by this time, supped full of horrors; but not so--every season brings forth a new proof that that taste so far from being extinguished, has grown to an appetite canine and ravenous which devours with indiscriminating greediness the elegant cates of the sumptuous, board and the offal of the shambles; provided only that they have sufficient of the German haut-gout of the marvellous and horrible.

"_Plot--plot--plot_," says an enlightened British critic, "have been Mr. Dimond's three studies." But what shall be said of the characters. To any one who frequents the theatre, the characters of Longueville, L'Eclair, Gaspard, Rosabelle, and perhaps more, are quite familiar. They are among the worn out slippers of the modern dramatists. The character of Bertrand is a moral novelty on the stage, and not less unnatural than novel. Unnatural, not because he repents with a remorse truly horrible, but because, while filled with that remorse, he submits to be a murderer and a villian rather than violate an _oath_ he had made to perpetrate any crime Longueville should command. This unfortunate wretch is kept in torments through the whole play, and after having by an act of bold and resolute virtue expiated his crimes and brought about the happy catastrophe of the piece, is left to sneak off unrewarded. As to Florian, though obviously intended for the hero of the tale, he is a strange nondescript, in whose language the author has given buffoonery by way of wit, and bombast by way of dignity. The Count De Valmont is a most interesting personage, and so is the countess Eugenia.

Of the acting we can with truth speak more favourably than of the writing. The characters throughout were well supported; but Mr. Wood in De Valmont and Mr. M'Kenzie in Bertrand were so striking and impressive that the critic's attention was chiefly attracted by them. Mr. Wood's performance was exquisitely fine even on the first night, and every repetition disclosed augmented excellence. In the second scene of the second act, where Bertrand prostrates himself before Eugenia, Mr. M'Kenzie presented in his posture of supplication, such a natural yet terrible, picture of the humiliating effects of guilt and consequent remorse, as could not fail to make an awful impression on the most hardened and unfeeling sinner. In Longueville Mr. Warren was, as he always is, correct and respectable, and Mr. Cone made much more of the ticklish part of Florian than we had a right to expect. In L'Eclair Mr. Jefferson was, as he seldom fails to be, diverting: But on a future occasion we propose saying a few words, by way of friendly expostulation with this powerful actor, who, yielding to the baneful itch for gallery applause, is gradually sullying some of the finest talents, once the chastest, too, upon the stage. In his Rosabelle (Mrs. Wilmot) he might see admirable comic powers, and great histrionic skill, which the public applause of years has not yet misled into the vulgar track--"the pitiful ambition of setting on some quantity of _barren_ spectators to laugh" by buffoonery.

Mrs. Wood maintained her long acknowledged claim upon the respect and approbation of her audience, and gained for the lovely sufferer Eugenia, all the sympathy which the author could have hoped to excite. Always highly interesting, one can't tell why--never incorrect or indifferent--often extremely impressive in characters of a serious cast, we think that comedy is her _forte_. In several parts, some too indeed which verged upon the lower comedy, we have noticed enough to convince us, that by a studious, and as far as might be, exclusive attention to the comic muse, Mrs. W. would soon become one of her most distinguished favourites.

* * * * *

In our next number Mr. COOPER'S second series of performances will be attended to--particularly his _Orsino_, in which it gives us pleasure to observe that we could not discover a fault, but all was uniform excellence. This character we consider as making an era in the history of Mr. Cooper's acting. ALPHONSO is a tragedy which merits frequent repetition.

A

NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS,

A COMEDY,

IN FIVE ACTS.

BY PHILIP MASSINGER, ESQ.

PRINTED FOR BRADFORD AND INSKEEP, NO. 4, SOUTH THIRD-STREET, PHILADELPHIA; INSKEEP AND BRADFORD, NEW-YORK; AND WILLIAM M'ILHENNY, BOSTON, BY SMITH AND M'KENZIE.

1810.

A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

Lord Lovell. Sir Giles Overreach. Justice Greedy. Wellborn. Allworth. Marall. Order. Furnace. Amble. Tapwell. Welldo. Watchall. Vintner. Tailor. Creditors. Lady Allworth. Margaret. Froth. Bridget. Barbara.