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Leader (1850-1860), 31st July 1852, Edition Town of 2, Page 733, Untitled Article

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      fattiest the severed tragedy is represented in all its dreary integrity by solemn terans . Shakspeare especially—Shakspeare undented—textual . Massinger , Beaumont and Fletcher , even rugged John Marston—all that is venerable and artificial . It is the Odeon of the suburbs . The very farces they play are ancient . All the old worn out and long forgotten pieces are dug up to enjoy a second youth , and fieure in the eyes of young Islington as sparkling novelties . It is a downright dramatic curiosity shop . Pantomime is not excluded ; on the contrary , is generally well done . Such Saturnalia-are allowed at Christmas , and sometime * they venture a new tragedymoulded , however , on the antique ; but woe to the man who

      menon , tions puny French authors . Translators avaunt ! The theatre is picturesquely situated , on the hanks of the city canal , shaded agreeably by leafless genealogical trees , and its audience is composed of metropolitan villagers , the unsophisticated inhabitants of the verdant pavement which graces this Bus in Urbe ; a most respectable and above all a most classical audience , seeing and hearing for the first time the divine Shakspeare and his nervous contemporaries ; loving , I may say doating , upon their very obscurities ; indeed , the less it understands , the more is this worthy audience pleased—it is so very respectable . It shies apples now and then does this superior audience , but- they are always classical ones—apples of the

      land that Paris used to , throw at Venus . " The City ( No . 18 ) is the natural son of the Victoria , and inherits its parent ' s tastes . It has the same task to fulfil . It is a sort of Newgate Calendar dramatised—an Apotheosis of the seven deadly sins—a chapel of ease to the Old Bailey . " The Standard ( No . 19 ) is another in the same line , but with additional delights . Foreign voltigeurs , rope-dancers , wonderful dogs , men-monkeys , learned pigs , all that can enchant the eye , improve the mind , and enlarge the understanding . The ambition of the manager is evidently to please the whole human race , and as flies are not to be caught with fishing nets , he displays the alternate * fascina tions of honey , vinegar , fruits , sweetmeats , treacle , everything—except French comedies . "As to the Pavillion ( No . 20 ) , one must actually dine at noon and take posthorses afterwards , in order to get there by half-past six . It is a theatre whose

      merit completely carries you away , far away—indeed the distance it is off secures for it successes beyond those of every other theatre—nearly a mile beyond . The shipping interest is here represented—its play bill ought to be posted at Lloyds . Vessels are nightly wrecked in latitude O . P ., longitude P . S . As you enter you smell the ' distempered sea . ' You sniff the brine of the ' set waters / and feel the dusty spray of the canvas waves . At the Victoria , the sanctity of the domestic hearth is invaded—here the very ocean is laid under contribution , and success is sought amidst the roar of its breakers—success as boundless as the ocean it springs from . The object of the management is to ' hold the mirror up' to sailors . An eternal tide of marine melo-dramas and nautical novelties ebbs and flows in this

      dry Naumachia , where ' life afloat' is depicted by fresh-water seamen before an audience of real tars . I leave you to judge whether the pieces are not likely to be pitched tolerably strong to suit the web-footed connoisseurs who roll in at half-price , who help to whistle the act music , and only applaud a dialogue made up of cabins , cables , and cabooses , booms , binnacles , and backy boxes ; whose nearest notion of attic salt is saltpetre , and whose sides are only to be tickled with points like 2 nkes , quips like quids , and jokes like junk . A visit here is a suffering one undergoes voluntarily once in one's life , like sea-sickness . " Having shown that only four theatres out of twenty-three are likely to care much for French pieces , and having shown that out of 253 French pieces produced in 1851 , only eight were thought worth reproducing in England , Mr . Mathews thon tells the authors why it is so few are available—the main reasons are absurdity and immorality .

      " What do you suppose , for instance , that we could do with a ' Mistress Siddons ?' ( meaning our great tragic actress ) who , represented by the piquante Dejazet , puts on the disguise of a village idiot , and runs about the muddy lanes barefoot , accompanied by a mysterious stranger , who turns out to be ' Sheridan / in order to convince her friends that she is capable of playing the part of the crazy girl which had been cast to her ? " What could we do with a ' Miss Kelly / who , to escape from a lover she never had , abandons her line of comic and melodramatic actress , and accepts an engagement us Prima Donna at the grand Opera at Naples ?—Miss Kelly ! who never got even as far as Calais in all her born days .

      " What use could wo make of a ' Gamin de Londres' a young ragamuffin of a London couchmakcr ' s boy , called Kobhison / frequenting in company with his chum ' JJigrio ' g' a tavern in tho city , * looMng on * ko sea ^ and with * fishing nets hanging from the walls' —who is declared by the ' Lord Mayor' in tho person of his ' oonstable / to bo the ' natural son' of the 'Duko of Melford / a peer of the realm , and ' a * such , ' to bo heir to his title and estates ! !!—who is carried off in the custody of the said ' constable' and bis assistant ' polioenjcns / to bo installed in Ins fa ther ' s magnificent mansion , at the corner of Holy well Street / in the Strand , where hid marriogo with ' Nelly Bligtonu' is broken oil" by the Lord Mayor , and from whence ho iH ordered by the eternal ' constable' and the ' policemens / who threaten him with their staves / to depart for the * University of Oxford' —who then becomes , while waiting for tho title of the Duke of Molfort , ' Sir Robinson , Count of Sheffield' —talks of his ' Steward , who lives in Richard Street' —of his

      friend , tho young Count of Cantwell / ( as if the methodist doctor had ever been ennobled ) uud of his high-born aunt , the proud ' Countess of Hirminghnm '—who < -onsents to please the Queen of England , by marrying ' the daughter of tho great Nelson ' s grandson / a ' commodore who died about a month previously at Malta / ( Nelson ! ! who never even had a son , much less a son ' s granddaughter)—who at tin ) end of the piece is allowed , however , to marry Nelly , tho waitress at the eiiting-houso in the city , thanks again to the kindness of the queen , whose carriage is stopped short in ' Koonig Street / by old mother ' Hligtone / who shouts ' Justice , your Majesty !' and proves on tho instant , in tho middle of tho street , that her late uishiind , the lamented lUigtono , the landlord of the slupbang shop " in ( Iraceelnirch Street , hud ' saved tliv royal Jle . e . L in India ! ! / ' on which the queen , still in tho middle of tho street , promises ' her protection and it thumping dowry to Nelly / eonununds ' Sir Robinson'to marry her on the spot , and the day uller his wedding , liHjmteheH the ox-ragamufnn eoaohinukw ' s boy to represent tho court of St . James's , iih Hritish Ambassador at 1 ' uris F "

      Ho male oh great fun with their versions of English History , and thon glances at Le Songe d ' una Nuit d'J ' JtS : — " Wo hau \ n by finding ' ShokspearV and ' Fulfltftfl * drinking together at a public

      house ! The creator and the created ! The poet and his work jumbled together That ' s not bad by way of a commencement . Falstaff is , moreover , the ' Ranger of Richmond Park ! ' We next find ' Queen Elizabeth' walking about the city with a pocket full of ' blank forms / signed by the high-sheriff , by virtue of which she disposes of the lives and liberties of her subjects—even to the extent of having them hanged without judge or jury ! The immaculate queen is avowedly in love with the poet , whom she meets accidentally at the public-house in the city , where she lias gone masked , in company with one of her maids of honour , ' Miss Olivia / in the hope of finding him . Elizabeth then addresses William thus : ' Thy native place is ' Stratford '; ' to which the ' Divine Williams' replies ( without caring to correct tended

      her error ) ' Yes , I remember , in the days of my early youth , having my flocks in those vast solitudes—on the dizzy heights of those craggy mountains , enthroned amidst the silent majesty of nature . * ( The dreary solitudes , the mountain peaks , and silent wildernesses of the smiling county of Warwick !) Shakspeare is shortly afterwards carried out dead drunk , and conveyed , by the high sheriff's orders ( filled up by the queen ' s own'hand on the public-house table ) , to Richmond Park , and there deposited . Elizabeth , draped in a white veil , appears to him in the moonlight in the character of his guardian genius , lectures him on his irregularities , and next day sends for him to Whitehall , and encourages him by saying , ' Come , come , William ! Come , come , my poet ! To work !—and thus snatches ' Sir Williams' from the abyss of debauchery in which his high intellect was about to

      perish . " All this I can only repeat , though ingenious and fanciful in the extreme , is forbidden fruit as far as we are concerned . " One more extract and we have done : — " Give us good well-considered , pleasant works , free from dirt and indeeency , and we shall infallibly buy largely ; provided always , as the lawyers say , that you do not put too high a price upon them . You must bear in mind that we have to pay our authors as much , per act , for good adaptations from the French as f or origiual productions . Literal , word-for-word translations , are of no use whatever , and have

      never , nor will they ever , have much success on the English stage . The taste of the two countries is so essentially different , that it requires a very skilful hand to adapt , expand , retrench , and arrange even the most available foreign dramasespecially as it is a well known circumstance that the details which produce the most effect in Pains are frequently those which produce the least in London . Up to the present time , we have been in the habit of changing , cutting , adding , and altering whatever we have thought necessary to success , without the fear of the law before our eyes ; but shall we be able to do so in future , even after paying the French authors ? Perhaps you will be kind enough to inform me , when I have

      placed before you the difficulty I foresee . "I will take , as an illustration , one of your pieces , called ' Un Enfant de Paris , from whence we , not long ago , adapted a very successful drama for the Lyceum . Do you think we should have dared offer this to our audience exactly as it stood ? Certainly not . A countess saves the life and honour of a young man of tho lower orders , who breaks into her house for the purpose of robbing her of her diamonds , and who , out of gratitude for her forbearance , devotes himself to her service . So far , all is well enough . But it soon becomes too plain that the young man ' s devotion springs as much from love as from gratitude , and tins we don't like . We don't relish the idea of a low fellow , with dirty hands , and black nibs to them , languishing sentimentally about tho person of a woman of rank and refinement . There is no reason why he shouldn't , it is true , and it may be as right as possible ; but right or wrong , we don't like it . Nor do we fancy any better the notion of a t ! allerwould ris

      count ' threatening his lovely wife with a sick ( The very g y e en masse , and pelt him off the stage . ) Nor the drunken revelry of a set of roues and courtesans , who forco their way into tho countess ' s apartments at the instigation of her husband , and insult her so grossly and brutally that , at last , to escape them , she precipitates herself from a rock into the sea ; from whence tho sentimental young house-breaker fishes her up again , out of love and gratitude . Nor the dramatic denouement of the encroaching tide , which sends a couple of remorseless waves so very apropos , to swallow up tho principal characters , and bring the drama to an untimely end . All these things , so distasteful to our feelings , were altered or suppressed , without which the piece would unquestionably have failed . And what harm did it do to the French author ? None at all . lie was not known in tho business , his name was not even printed on the play-hill , and , consequently , his reputation could not suffer by the liberties taken with his work . It could not matter to him in any way .

      " Hut under tho new law it will matter very much , for his reputation will thon be nfc stake . Wo bIihII have to buy the right of translating his piece ; his name will be publicly attached to it as tho author ; ho will become responsible for what he has writton ; and will insist upon having his play represented not that of an English author . And when they talk of garbling his work , and altering the very things that produced the greatest el loot in Paris , he will cry , ' Stop , gentlemen , touch me at your peril ! Let my burglar , with the dirty hands , doat upon my great lady ; let my count beat his wife with a stick ; let my drunken bucks and courtesans bully my countess till she gives three cheers and jumps overboard ; and let my high tide come in ami wash away my dramatis persona ; or you shall not have my play . 1 have just sold it to a charming young man , who has undertaken to translate it without altering a line . ' "

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      JtKMINiKOICNCKS OV TJ 1 OUCMIT AND ITJUJNCJ . Reminiscences of Thought and ' . Feeting . My the Author of " Vi . silin ^ my Kclalions . I'irUwlnfjr . Trri" ! strange composite nature of this volume in not inapMy chai'Het . erized by its title . It is a gathering up of old reflections , recent readings , and that sort of intermittent philosophy in which women indulge , untrained as they aro to any continuous development of their thoughts ; and these desultory pages at last wander into a somewhat , continuous autobiography , curious , as all autobiography ever will be , and especially curious to tho religious world . Of tho autobiography itself wo will say no word . It has pleased the authoress to remove the veil of privacy , and , by so doing , to invite comment ; and yet , on the real inward character of any human being , comment is a delicate matter , therefore we prefer silence in thia case , lost our judgment uppuur harsh , and that JiaishncHa misapprehension .

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      Jtoy 31 , W 68 . ] THE LEADER . 733

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), July 31, 1852, page 733, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1945/page/17/