times shows a happy conception of character; but we hope he will never play Sir Benjamin Backbite again. [A Miss Ives played a little plump chambermaid prettily enough. The Jealous Wife1 was acted at this theatre on Monday. Mr. Meggett played Mr. Oakley but indifferently. He seemed to be at hawk and buzzard between insipid comedy and pompous tragedy. It was not the thing. Mr. Terry's Major Oakley we like very much. Mrs. Glover, who played Mrs. Oakley, is really too big for this little theatre. The stage cannot contain her and her violent airs. Miss Taylor was Miss Russet, and looked like a very nice runaway schoolgirl. Barnard played her lover, and got through the part very well.] New English Opera. Miss Merry has disappointed us again, in not appearing in Rosetta. We may perhaps take our revenge, by not saying a word about her when she does come out. It was certainly a disappointment, though Miss Kelly played the part in her stead, who is a fine sensible girl, and sings not amiss. But there is that opening scene where Rosetta and Lucinda sit and sing with their song-books in their hands among the garden bowers and roses,3 for which we had screwed up our ears to a most critical anticipation of delight, not to be soothed but with the sweetest sounds. To enter into good acting requires an effort; but to hear soft music is a pleasure without any trouble. Besides, we had seen Miss Stephens in Rosetta, and wanted to compare notes. How then, Miss Merry, could you disappoint us? Mr. Horn executed the part of Young Meadows with his usual ability and propriety, both as an actor and a singer. We also think that Mr. Chatterley's Justice Woodcock was a very excellent piece of acting. The smile of recognition with 1 By George Colman, acted August 12. Barnard was Charles. 3 Ibid., I, i. which he turns round to his old flame Rosetta,' in the last scene, told completely. Mrs. Grove's Deborah Woodcock reminded us of Mrs. Sparks's manner of acting it, which we take to be a high compliment. Mr. Incledon appeared for the first time on this stage, as Hawthorn,2 and sung the usual songs with his well-known power and sweetness of voice. He is a true old English singer, and there is nobody who goes through a drinking song, a hunting song, or a sailor's song like him. He makes a very loud and agreeable noise without any meaning. At present he both speaks and sings as if he had a lozenge or a slice of marmalade in his mouth. If he could go to America and leave his voice behind him, it would be a great benefit —to the parent country. THE CASTLE OF ANDALUSIA. New English Opera, September 1, 1816. WE hear nothing of Miss Merry; and there is nothing else at this theatre that we wish to hear. Even Mr. Horn is nothing without her; he stands alone and unsupported; and the ear loses its relish and its power of judging of harmonious sounds, where it has nothing but harshness and discordance to compare them with. We are sorry to include in this censure Miss Kelly, whose attempts to supply the place of Prima Donna of the English Opera, do great credit to her talents, industry, and good-nature, but still they have not given her a voice, which is indispensable to a singer, as singing is to an opera. If the managers think it merely necessary to get some one to go through the different songs in Artaxerxes, Love in a Village, III, iii. 2 Incledon's first appearance at this theatre was on August 13 as Artabanes. The Beggar's Opera, or Love in a Village, they might hire persons to read them through at a cheaper rate; and in either case, we fear they must equally have to hire the audience as well as the actors. Mr. Incledon sung the duet of "All's well," the other night, with Mr. Horn, in The Castle of Andalusia,1 and has repeated it every evening since. Both singers were very much and deservedly applauded in it. Mr. Incledon's voice is certainly a fine one, but its very excellence makes us regret that its modulation is not equal to its depth and compass. His best notes come from him involuntarily, or are often misplaced. The effect of his singing is something like standing near a music-seller's shop, where some idle person is trying the different instruments; the flute, the trumpet, the bass-viol, give forth their sounds of varied strength and sweetness, but without order or connection. One of the novelties of The Castle of Andalusia, as got up at this theatre, was Mr. Herring's Pedrillo; an odd fish 2 certainly, a very outlandish person, and whose acting is altogether incoherent and gross, but with a certain strong relish in it. It is only too much of a good thing. His oil has not salt enough to qualify it. He has a great power of exhibiting the ludicrous and absurd; but by its being either not like, or over-done, the ridicule falls upon himself instead of the character. Indeed he is literally to the comedian, what the caricaturist is to the painter; and his representation of footmen and fine gentlemen, is just such as we see in Gillray's shop-window. The same thing perhaps is not to be borne on the stage, though we laugh at it till we are obliged to hold our sides, in a caricature. We do not see, however, 3 1 By J. O'Keeffe, played August 24 and 29. The duet "All's Well" was introduced from The English Fleet in 1342 by Dibdin and Braham; it was originally sung by Incledon and Braham, December 13, 1803. 2 See the remarks on the same actor, p. 232, ante. 3 James Gillray the caricaturist. His prints were published at 29, St. James's Street, at which address he died June 1, 1815. why this style of acting might not make a distinct species of itself, like the Italian opera buffa, with Scaramouch, Harlequin, and Pantaloon, among whom Mr. Herring would shine like a gold fish in a glass-case. [Haymarket. The new farce in one act, called The Fair Deserter,' succeeds very well here. It preserves the unities of time, place, and action, with the most perfect regularity. The merit of it is confined to the plot, and to the pretended changes of character by the changes of dress, which succeed one another with the rapidity and with something of the ingenuity of a pantomime. Mr. Duruset, a young officer of musical habits, wishes to release Miss MacAlpine from the power of her Guardian, who is determined to marry her the next day. The young lady is kept under lock and key, and the difficulty is to get her out of the house. For this purpose Tokely, servant to Duruset, contrives to make the cook of the family drunk at an alehouse, where he leaves him, and carries off his official paraphernalia, his night-cap, apron, and long knife, in a bundle to his master. The old Guardian (Watkinson) comes out with his lawyer from the house, and Tokely, presenting himself as the drunken cook, is let in. He, however, takes the key of the street door with him, which he shuts to, and as this intercepts the return of the old gentleman to his house, Tokely is forced to get out of the window by a ladder to fetch a blacksmith. He presently returns himself, in the character of the blacksmith, unlocks the door, but on the other's refusing him a guinea for his trouble, locks it again, and walks off in spite of all remonstrances. The Guardian is now compelled to ascend the ladder himself as well as he can: and while he is engaged in this ticklish adventure, the 1 The Fair Deserter, by the author of How to Die for Love, was produced August 24. Duruset was Dashall; Tokely, Trap; Watkinson, Timothy Hartshorn; and Miss MacAlpine, Lydia. young gallant and his mischievous valet return with a couple of sentries, whom Duruset orders to seize the poor old Guardian as a robber, and upon his declaring who and what he is, he is immediately charged by the lover with concealing a deserter in his house, who is presently brought out, and is in fact his ward, disguised in a young officer's uniform which Tokely had given to her for that purpose. Tokely now returns dressed as an officer, and pretending to be the father of the young gentleman, with much blustering and little probability, persuades the Guardian to consent to the match between his (adopted) son and the young lady, who has just been arrested as the deserter, and who, upon this, throwing aside her disguise, the affair is concluded, to the satisfaction of everybody but the old Guardian; and the curtain drops. The bustle of this little piece keeps it alive: there is nothing good either in the writing or the acting of it.] TWO WORDS. [English Opera] September 8, 1816. It was the opinion of Colley Cibber, a tolerable judge of such matters, that in those degenerate days, the metropolis could only support one legitimate theatre, having a legitimate company, and acting legitimate plays. In the present improved state of the drama, which has "gone like a crab backwards," we are nearly of the same opinion, in summer time at least. We critics have been for the last two months like mice in an air-pump, gasping for breath, subsisting on a sort of theatrical half-allowance. We hate coalitions in politics, but we really wish the two little theatres would club their stock of wit and humour into one. We should |