BOOK THE THIRD.

CHAP. I.

Season of 1802-3.-John Bannister stage manager.-Mr. Graham and his Board.-Dryer.-Cooke's Hamlet.-Correct Text, how important.-Collins.--S. Kemble in FalstaffLewis suddenly struck with apoplexy.-Delays and Blunders.--Tale of Mystery.--Melo Drame, what.-A House to be sold.-Mrs. Litchfield.--Pope in Kemble's characters.Family Quarrels.-The Jews.--Mrs. Siddons disturbed in Ireland.-Dublin Lying-in Hospital.-Her letter to F. E. Jones-Holcroft's Hear both Sides.-Capt. Caulfield's Hamlet.--Ranger.--Dimond's Hero of the North.—Colman's John Bull.-Its merits.-A Monodrame.-Death of Mr. Richardson.-Singular conduct of Sheridan-Mrs. Pope, the second, dies.-Summer Theatre.--Charles Matthews. Mrs. Wiggins.-Allingham.-Colman's Epilogue to the Maid of Bristol.-Astley's Amphitheatre again burnt.

THE departure of Mr. Kemble from Drury Lane Theatre, with the consequent loss of the other members of his family, threw an almost impenetrable cloud over his future destiny. Every thing seemed to indicate unavoidable ruin. Mrs. Siddons had gone to Ireland. Mr. Charles Kemble still remained, and very awkward it was to remain, in a concern where his duty compelled him to serve a cause, which his family were considered to have deserted. With all his temper and prudence many things must have occasionally reached his ear, not calculated by any delicacy for such a hearer.

My pleasant friend, John Bannister, undertook the stage department, for which he was exceedingly well qualified ; and in some way or other, How can only be accounted for by the Mania, which a theatre excites, and so seldom cures, Mr. Graham the magistrate, seated himself at the head of a board of management; the other four members, I think, interfered but little. Dramatic productions were read and considered by Mr. Graham; and, what was of greater importance to

their authors, his checks upon the house of Hammersley were frequently paid without difficulty.

Among the accessions to this company were Dwyer, who was a very passable Belcour, and Cherry, who, as an actor, was the best substitute for King, and sometimes Dodd, that modern times have seen, until Mr. W. Farren, who probably never saw King, returned him to us "renewed in all his strength, and fresh with life." It gives no common pleasure to pay this passing compliment to the son of my old friend. After long experience in the school of studious and finished acting, I pronounce this gentleman to be really an ARTIST. He sees every thing in a character; he neglects nothing in his preparation of it, internal or external; a few more such men, with their whole minds in the profession, and we might be stopped in the descent of the art, and find it as intelligent as it will always be amusing.

But

On the 27th of September, at the other theatre, Mr. Cooke ventured to perform what he chose to think Hamlet. I am pretty conversant with the text of Shakspeare, original and derived. I know the creeping infusion of Hanmer's particles, and the daring alterations of Warburton's lofty confidence. I also know the almost incredible ignorance of our ancient language, common to all the early commentators. But such a text as Mr. Cooke then spoke in the part of Hamlet, I never yet read, and doubt whether it can be found in print. George Steevens used to talk about the town, Harry Row, the trumpeter's edition of Macbeth, and a delicious thing I see it is, now lying before me. Cooke's Hamlet was the greater effort. His "definement suffered entire perdition-it was not possible to understand him in a mother tongue." "Now this,"stretching beyond poor Cooke, to all actors and to all times,-"is villanous." It is not coxcomry, it is neglectful impudence, or insulting ignorance. To be perfect in the words, is always in the power of humble diligence. I have seen, in this duty of the performer, such a man as Claremont shame an actor of twenty pounds a week. The great actor may here say, "look at the comparative length of our respective characters." I do so; and merely add, that the lower actor, through the season, probably performs TWENTY different parts in tragedy, comedy, opera, and farce, for the great man's one. But the audience should cure this: they would if they were as well acquainted with their authors as the

French are. How Mr. Cooke acted Hamlet is now not worth talking about. It is quite useless to look into the detail of one mass of awkward error,-besides to the natural admirers of ungraceful men, I should expatiate in vain; no "euphrasy or rue" will purge their visual faculty. To the cultivated I have said enough.

Drury Lane this season had no slight acquisition in Collins, from the Southampton Theatre, an actor not unlike that exquisite rustic, Blanchard, of Covent Garden, whose ploughboy will long "whistle o'er the lea," in the ear of the true lover of the art. Stephen Kemble, too, came again to town, and presented in, perhaps, rather more than person, a natural Falstaff. He jested, in a prologue written by himself, with his huge hill of flesh," and Bannister, who delivered it, was often cheered by excessive laughter. But the reader shall judge of the excitement by a few lines.

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"Upon the northern coast by chance we caught him,
And hither in a broad-wheel'd waggon brought him;
For in a chaise the variet ne'er could enter,

And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture."

If he should be deficient in the wit and humour of the part:

"He then to better men will leave his sack,
And go, as ballast, in a collier back,"

The impression upon my mind is that the natural bulk on the stage distresses with an unlucky association of disease; and that the made-up knight is the only agreeable Sir John. Mr. Stephen Kemble was a man of reading, and an actor of vigour and firmness. His voice was loud and overpowering, He was, and sometimes, in course, deficient in modulation. perhaps, best at the Boar's Head, after the robbery-though he was good also at Shrewsbury, displayed the flimsy texture of honour with much discrimination, and claimed the reward of Percy's death in a novel mode, that drew down repeated thunders of applause. His Falstaff brought several excellent houses.

On the 18th of October, while rehearsing the part of Sapling, in a new comedy by Reynolds, called Delays and Blunders, Mr. Lewis, in the last act, suddenly stopped and seemed to be struck by apoplexy. He uttered a sort of shriek, whirled round as if giddy, and dropped upon the stage in a fit. He was first bled in the arm, but without the smallest

"The herb eyebright, and the herb of grace."

effect; Dr. Kennedy, and my poor friend, Wilson, were soon at his side, and by cupping they at length relieved the head, to which there had been noticeable, early in the day, a strong determination of the blood. I do not know a more disagreeable service than attending in winter time, a stage rehearsal; the bleak currents of air that assail you in all directions, are, I believe, extremely injurious; and against this, from the nature of the place, no remedy can be provided.

The first considerable effort of the new management of Drury, was the revival of Kane O'Hara's Midas. Their machinist, by a false stage, took up his celestials in a very magnificent way; and by the help of good singing from Kelly, Sedgwick, and Dignum, and the ladies, Mountain, little Bland, and the still less Tyrer (Mrs. Liston), with Suett in Midas, the piece prospered exceedingly.

Lewis being recovered from his very alarming attack, on the 30th of October, Delays and Blunders appeared for the first time at Covent Garden. The serious incidents were in the true German taste. The murder of a father-in-law-an expected trial for the murder to open the play, and the confinement of a lady on a false accusation of lunacy. But I am quite sure such incidents must have been as uncomfortable to my gay friend as they could have been to any devoted admirer of Farquhar; (no one indeed more so than himself;) and that he cursed his compliance with the rage until the moment of counting his profits. To venture upon any detail, how his comic incidents were combined with all this criminal horror, is quite impossible-he, however, in compliment to his father's profession, invented an honest attorney, and Paul Postpone, in the hands of Fawcett, produced the six and eight-pences in the seasonable number. A sprig of nobility, Lord Orlando de Courcy, was cut away from the piece on the second night, and a wretched epilogue by Mrs. Mattocks, was brayed down by an ass in the gallery, to the infinite delight of the pit and boxes. A few tags, therefore, at the end of the play, were spoken afterwards by six of the characters, and the piece rose nightly in reputation, though not, if I remember, to Reynolds's first rank of praise.

The 13th of November was to be marked with a permanent acquisition in Holcroft's Tale of Mystery. The dumb eloquence of Farley, and the energy of H. Johnstone, operating upon a really interesting French story, with some very speaking music by Dr. Busby rendered this melo-drame one of the most powerful things of its class.

"

As the term el-ram then affectedly burst upon us from the French, and no precise idea seemed attached to the compound,

I shall throw away at worst but a line or two, upon some kind of explanation. The Greek word MEAOE (mélos) is a synonime with membrum; and therefore used to signify carmen, a song of regular parts, or recurring measures: but it is hazardous to interpret a French usage by the aid of our lexicons. As to the melo-drame, therefore, we may be still thankful for the explanation which that acute critic Geoffroy has left "A melo-drame, (says he,) is an opera in prose, which is merely spoken; and in which music discharges the duty of valet de chambre, because her office is simply to announce the actors.'

us.

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On the 17th, the French furnished Mr. Cobb with la maison à vendre, a musical farce, acted at Drury Lane, under the same title, "A House to be Sold :"--and thus the bill of the day, stuck upon the walls of the theatre, was visibly called "a fraud upon the stamp office," a public "advertisement" for sale, that paid no duty. As a not infrequent sequel, crowds of people went in to see the house, but nobody could be found to buy it.

Mrs. Litchfield, on the 19th, broke away, alike from modern comi-tragedy and tragi-comedy, and acted the Widow Brady in a style of the greatest excellence. Her tone was inimitably true, and in spirit, I thought her very near indeed to Mrs. Crawford herself.

Pope, this year, sustained what very few actors would have dared, and came with credit from the attempt. He acted Leon, and Leontes, and the Abbè l'Epèe, after Mr. Kemble, upon the very site of that great man's triumphs. It would be insulting to say that he approached his predecessor; it would be unjust not to mention, that he was greatly and properly applauded.

On the 15th of December, after acting Shylock, S. Kemble, in the dress of Falstaff, took his leave of the town, in a second address written by himself; and ended with the warm wish that the audience, passing over his imperfections, might say, at his departure,

"We could have better spared a better man."

On the 18th of this month, T. Dibdin's comic opera, called Family Quarrels, met with a very stormy reception: Fawcett, in the character of Proteus, becomes a Jew and sells slippers with the "patient shrug" of the peculiar people. It was Saturday, and Brabam sang in the opera, two good reasons for gathering the Hebrews together: a day on which they dare not work seems, at its close, allowably, to terminate in