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All school days' friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial Gods,

Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion;
Both warbling of one song, both in one key;
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition.

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In turning to Shakespeare to look for this passage, the book opened at the Midsummer Night's Dream, the title of which half gave us back our old feeling; and in reading this one speech twice over, we have completely forgot all the noise we have heard and the sights we have seen. Poetry and the stage do not agree together. The attempt to reconcile them fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The ideal has no place upon the stage, which is a picture without perspective; every thing there is in the foreground. That which is merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately becomes an unmanageable reality. Where all is left to the imagination, every circumstance has an equal chance of being kept in mind, and tells according to the mixed impression of all that has been suggested. But the imagination cannot sufficiently qualify the impressions of the senses. Any offence given to the eye is not to be got rid of by explanation. Thus Bottom's head in the play is a fantastic illusion, produced by magic spells: on the stage it is an ass's head, and nothing more; certainly a very strange costume for a gentleman to appear in. Fancy cannot be represented any

1 Midsummer Night's Dream, III, ii, 195-219.

more than a simile can be painted; and it is as idle to attempt it as to personate Wall or Moonshine. Fairies are not incredible, but fairies six feet high are so. Monsters are not shocking, if they are seen at a proper distance. When ghosts appear in midday, when apparitions stalk along Cheapside, then may the Midsummer Night's Dream be represented at Covent-Garden or at Drury-Lane; for we hear that it is to be brought out there also, and that we have to undergo another crucifixion.

Mrs. Faucit played the part of Titania very well, but for one circumstance—that she is a woman. The only glimpse which we caught of the possibility of acting the imaginary scenes properly, was from the little girl who dances before the fairies (we do not know her name), which seemed to show that the whole might be carried off in the same manner --by a miracle.

Drury-Lane.

THE admirable comedy of A New Way to Pay Old Debts, continues to be acted with increased effect.1 Mr. Kean is received with shouts of applause in Sir Giles Overreach. We have heard two objections to his manner of doing this part, one of which we think right and the other not. When he is asked, "Is he not moved by the orphan's tears, the widow's curse?" he answers-"Yes-as rocks by waves, or the moon by howling wolves." Mr. Kean, in speaking the latter sentence, dashes his voice about with the greatest violence, and howls out his indignation and rage. Now we conceive this is wrong: for he has to express not violence, but firm, inflexible resistance to it--not motion, but rest. The very pause after the word yes, points out the cool deliberate way in which it should be spoken. The other objection is to his manner of pronouncing the word "Lord -Right Honourable Lord," which Mr. Kean uniformly does 1 January 15 and 19.

2 New Way, IV, i, misquoted with more than his usual inaccuracy.

in a drawling tone, with a mixture of fawning servility and sarcastic contempt. This has been thought inconsistent with the part, and with the desire which Sir Giles has to ennoble his family by alliance with a "Lord, a Right Honourable Lord." We think Mr. Kean never showed more genius than in pronouncing this single word, Lord. It is a complete exposure (produced by the violence of the character) of the elementary feelings which make up the common respect excited by mere rank. This is nothing but a cringing to power and opinion, with a view to turn them to our own advantage with the world. Sir Giles is one of those knaves, who "do themselves homage." He makes use of Lord Lovell merely as the stalking-horse of his ambition. In other respects, he has the greatest contempt for him, and the necessity he is under of paying court to him for his own purposes, infuses a double portion of gall and bitterness into the expression of his self-conscious superiority. No; Mr. Kean was perfectly right in this, he spoke the word, "Lord" con amore. His praise of the kiss, "It came twanging off-I like it,' was one of his happiest passages. It would perhaps be as well, if in the concluding scene he would contrive not to frighten the ladies into hysterics. But the whole together is admirable.

"2

LOVE FOR LOVE.

[Drury Lane] January 28, 1816.

CONGREVE'S comedy of Love for Love3 is, in wit and elegance, perhaps inferior to The Way of the World; but it is

1 These words do not occur in the play. Sir Giles says, "This honourable lord " (III, ii.), and "My honourable, nay, right honourable daughter" (IV, i).

2 New Way, III, ii.

3 Revived January 23.

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unquestionably the best acting of all his plays. It abounds in dramatic situation, in incident, in variety of character. Still (such is the power of good writing) we prefer reading it in the closet, to seeing it on the stage. As it was acted the other night at Drury-Lane Theatre, many of the finest traits of character were lost. Though Love for Love is much less a tissue of epigrams than his other plays, the author has not been able to keep his wit completely under. Jeremy1 is almost as witty and learned as his master.—The part which had the greatest effect in the acting was Munden's Foresight. We hardly ever saw a richer or more powerful piece of comic acting. It was done to the life, and indeed somewhat over; but the effect was irresistible. His look was planet-struck, his dress and appearance like one of the signs of the Zodiac taken down. We never saw any thing more bewildered. Parsons, if we remember right, gave more imbecility, more of the doting garrulity of age, to the part, and blundered on with a less determined air of stupidity. Mr. Dowton did not make much of Sir Sampson Legend. He looked well, like a hale, hearty old gentleman, with a close bob-wig, and bronze complexion-but that was all. We were very much amused with Mr. Harley's Tattle. His indifference in the scene where he breaks off his engagement with Miss Prue, was very entertaining. In the scene in which he teaches her how to make love," he was less successful: he delivered his lessons to his fair disciple with the air of a person giving good advice, and did not seem to have a proper sense of his good fortune. "Desire to please, and you will infallibly please," is an old maxim, and Mr. Harley is an instance of the truth of it. This actor is always in the best possible humour with himself and the

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This passage

1 Jeremy Fetch (Barnard) was servant of Valentine Legend. 2 An allusion to Every Man in his Humour, IV, ii. is quoted by Hazlitt in English Comic Writers, p. 93.

3 Parsons played Foresight in December 1769, and December 1786. 4 Love for Love, v, i.

5 lbid., II, i.

audience. He is as happy as if he had jumped into the very part which he liked the best of all others. Mr. Rae, on the contrary, who played Valentine, apparently feels as little. satisfaction as he communicates. He always acts with an air of injured excellence.

Mrs. Mardyn's Miss Prue was not one of her most successful characters. It was a little hard and coarse. It was not fond and yielding enough. Miss Prue is made of the most susceptible materials. She played the hoydening parts best, as where she cries out, "School's up, school's up!"and she knocked off Mr. Bartley's hat with great good-will. Mr. Bartley was Ben; and we confess we think Miss Prue's distaste to him very natural. We cannot make up our minds to like this actor; and yet we have no fault to find with him. For instance, he played the character of Ben very properly; that is, just like “a great sea-porpoise."1 There is an art of qualifying such a part in a manner to carry off its disagreeableness, which Mr. Bartley wants. Mrs. Harlowe's Mrs. Frail was excellent: she appeared to be the identical Mrs. Frail, with all her airs of mincing affectation, and want of principle. The character was seen quite in dishabille. The scene between her and her sister Mrs. Foresight, about the discovery of the pin-" And pray sister where did you find that pin?"—was managed with as much coolness as any thing of this sort that ever happened in real life. Mrs. Orger played Mrs. Foresight with much ease and natural propriety. She in general reposes too much on her person, and does not display all the animation of which the character is susceptible. She is also too much in female parts, what the walking fine gentleman of the stage used to be in male. Mr. Barnard played Jeremy with a smart shrug in his shoulders, and the trusty air of a valet in his situation.

1 Ben is called a 66 great sea calf" (III, i), and a "porpus" (IV, i). 2 "Where did you find this bodkin?" (II, i).

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