could approach, and that she was only inferior to herself in it, because there is not the same opportunity for the display of her inimitable powers, as in some of her other characters.

THE DUKE OF MILAN.

[Drury Lane] March 17, 1816.

We do not think The Duke of Milan1 will become so great a favourite as Sir Giles Overreach, at Drury-Lane Theatre. The first objection to this play is, that it is an arbitrary falsification of history. There is nothing in the life of Sforza, the supposed hero of the piece, to warrant the account of the extravagant actions and tragical end which are here attributed to him, to say nothing of political events. In the second place his resolution to destroy his wife, to whom he is passionately attached, rather than bear the thought of her surviving him, is as much out of the verge of nature and probability, as it is unexpected and revolting from the want of any circumstances of palliation leading to it. It stands out alone, a piece of pure voluntary atrocity, which seems not the dictate of passion but a start of frenzy. From the first abrupt mention of this design to his treacherous accomplice, Francisco, he loses the favour, and no longer excites the sympathy of the audience. Again, Francisco is a person whose actions we are at a loss to explain, till the last act of the piece, when the attempt to account for them from motives originally amiable and generous, only produces a double sense of incongruity, and instead of satisfying the mind, renders it totally incredulous. He endeavours to debauch the wife of his benefactor, he then attempts her death, slanders her foully, and wantonly causes her to be slain by the hand of her husband, and has him poisoned by a deliberate stratagem; and all this to appease a high sense

1 Massinger's The Duke of Milan was revived March 9.

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1

of injured "honour, which felt a stain like a wound," and from the tender overflowings of fraternal affection; his sister having, it appears, been formerly betrothed to, and afterwards deserted by the Duke.

In the original play, the Duke is killed by a poison which is spread by Francisco over the face of the deceased Duchess, whose lips her husband fondly kisses, though cold in death, in the distracted state into which he is plunged by remorse for his rash act. But in the acted play, it is so contrived, that the sister of Francisco personates the murdered Duchess, and poisons the Duke (as it is concerted with her brother) by holding a flower in her hand, which, as he squeezes it, communicates the infection it has received from some juice in which it has been steeped. How he is to press the flower in her hand, in such a manner as not to poison her as well as himself, is left unexplained. The lady, however, does not die, and a reconciliation takes place between her and her former lover. We hate these sickly sentimental endings, without any meaning in them.

The peculiarity of Massinger's vicious characters seems in general to be, that they are totally void of moral sense, and have a gloating pride and disinterested pleasure in their villanies, unchecked by the common feelings of humanity. Francisco, in the present play, holds it out to the last, defies his enemies, and is "proud to die what he was born." At other times, after the poet has carried on one of these hardened, unprincipled characters for a whole play, he is seized with a sudden qualm of conscience, and his villain is visited with a judicial remorse. This is the case with Sir Giles Overreach, whose hand is restrained in the last extremity of his rage by "some widow's curse that hangs upon it," and whose heart is miraculously melted "by orphans' tears. We will not, however, deny that such may be a

" 3

1 BURKE, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Works, ii, 348). 2 Duke of Milan, v, ii, misquoted.

* See pp. 154 and 158 and notes.

true picture of the mixed barbarity and superstition of the age in which Massinger wrote. We have no doubt that his Sir Giles Overreach, which some have thought an incredible exaggeration, was an actual portrait. Traces of such characters are still to be found in some parts of the country, and in classes to which modern refinement and modern education have not penetrated—characters that not only make their own selfishness and violence the sole rule of their actions, but triumph in the superiority which their want of feeling and of principle gives them over their opponents or dependants. In the time of Massinger, philosophy had made no progress in the minds of country gentlemen: nor had the theory of moral sentiments, in the community at large, been fashioned and moulded into shape by systems of ethics continually pouring in upon us from the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen. Persons in the situation, and with the dispositions of Sir Giles, cared not what wrong they did, nor what was thought of it, if they had only the power to maintain it. There is no calculating. the advantages of civilization and letters, in taking off the hard, coarse edge of rusticity, and in softening social life. The vices of refined and cultivated periods are personal vices, such as proceed from too unrestrained a pursuit of pleasure in ourselves, not from a desire to inflict pain on others.

Mr. Kean's Sforza is not his most striking character; on the contrary, it is one of his least impressive, and least successful ones. The mad scene was fine,1 but we have seen him do better. The character is too much at crosspurposes with itself, and before the actor has time to give its full effect to any impulse of passion, it is interrupted and broken off by some caprice or change of object. In Mr. Kean's representation of it, our expectations were often excited, but never thoroughly satisfied, and we were teased with a sense of littleness in every part of it. It entirely wants the breadth, force, and grandeur of his Sir Giles. 1 Duke of Milan, v, ii.

One of the scenes, a view of the court-house at Milan, was most beautiful. Indeed, the splendour of the scenery and dresses frequently took away from the effect of Mr. Kean's countenance.

[Mr. Bartley spoke a new prologue on the occasion, which was well received.]

MISS O'NEILL'S LADY TEAZLE.

[Covent Garden] March 24, 1816.

[MISS O'NEILL-(we beg pardon of the Board of Green Cloth, and are almost afraid that this style of theatrical criticism may not be quite consistent with the principles of subordination and the scale of respectability about to be established in Europe; for we read in The Examiner of last week the following paragraph:-"At Berlin, orders have been given by the Police to leave out the titles of Mr., Mrs., and Miss, prefixed to the names of public actors. The females are to take the name of frau. Accordingly we see the part of Desdemona, in Shakespeare's tragedy of Othello, is given out to be played by frau [woman] Schrok." This is as it should be, and legitimate. But to proceed till further orders in the usual style.)]

2

Miss O'Neill's Lady Teazle at Covent-Garden Theatre appears to us to be a complete failure. It was not comic; it was not elegant; it was not easy; it was not dignified; it was not playful; it was not any thing that it ought to be.

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Although printed as a quotation this is completely rewritten from the previous week's paragraph, the substance only being retained. For instance, "the Police" were not mentioned; actresses were spoken of, not "females"; and the order was said to refer to "play-bills." 2 Sheridan's School for Scandal was played March 16 for Miss O'Neill's first appearance in comedy.

All that can be said of it is, that it was not tragedy. It seemed as if all the force and pathos which she displays in interesting situations had left her, but that not one spark of gaiety, one genuine expression of delight, had come in their stead. It was a piece of laboured heavy still-life. The only thing that had an air of fashion about her was the feather in her hat. It was not merely that she did not succeed as Miss O'Neill; it would have been a falling off in the most commonplace actress who had ever done any thing tolerably. She gave to the character neither the complete finished air of fashionable indifference, which was the way in which Miss Farren played it, if we remember right, nor that mixture of artificial refinement and natural vivacity, which appears to be the true idea of the character (which however is not very well made out), but she seemed to have been thrust by some injudicious caprice of fortune, into a situation for which she was fitted neither by nature nor education. There was a perpetual affectation of the wit and the fine lady, with an evident consciousness of effort, a desire to please without any sense of pleasure. It was no better than awkward mimicry of the part, and more like a drawling imitation of Mrs. C. Kemble's genteel comedy than any thing else we have seen. The concluding penitential speech was an absolute sermon. We neither liked her manner of repeating "Mimmine pimmine," nor of describing the lady who rides round the ring. in Hyde-park, nor of chucking Sir Peter under the chin, which was a great deal too coarse and familiar. There was throughout an equal want of delicacy and spirit, of ease and effect, of nature and art. It was in general flat and insipid, and where any thing more was attempted, it was overcharged and unpleasant.

2

Fawcett's Sir Peter Teazle was better than when we last saw it. He is an actor of much merit, but he has of late got into a strange way of slurring over his parts. Liston's Sir

Miss Farren first played Lady Teazle September 26, 1782. 2 School for Scandal, 11, ii.