such a mutual understanding, if it did exist, would be most unjust to the profession, and an insult to the public. For at this rate, any manager, by once entering into an agreement with an actor, may keep him dangling on his good pleasure for a year certain, may prevent his getting any other engagement, by saying that they are still in a progress of arrangement, though all arrangement is broken off, may deprive an ingenious and industrious man of his bread, and the public of the advantage of his talents, till the managers, at the expiration of this probationary year of non-performance, once more grant him his Habeas Corpus, and release him from the restrictions and obligations of his non-engagement. The obvious questions for the public to decide are these: Why, having announced Mr. Booth as a prodigy of success after his first appearance in Richard, the managers declined to give Mr. Booth any but a very paltry salary? In this they either deceived the town, or acted with injustice to Mr. Booth, because they thought him in their power. Why, the instant he was engaged at the other theatre at a handsome salary, and on his own terms, and had played there with success, they wanted to have him back, employed threats as it should seem to induce him to return, and gave him a larger salary than he had even obtained at Drury-Lane? Whether, if he had not been engaged at the other theatre, they would have engaged him at their own upon the terms to which they have agreed to entice him back? Whether, in short, in the whole proceeding, they have had any regard either to professional merit, or to public gratification, or to any thing but their own cunning and selfinterest? The questions for Mr. Booth to answer are, Why, after his treatment by the Covent-Garden company, he applied to the Drury-Lane company; and Why, after their liberal behaviour, he deserted back again, on the first overture, to the company that had discarded him? Why he did not act on Saturday night, if he was able: or at any rate, state, to prevent the charge of duplicity, his new engagement with his old benefactors? Whether, if Mr. Booth had not made this new arrangement, he would not have acted in spite of indisposition or weak nerves? Lastly, Whether the real motive which led Mr. Booth to fall in so unadvisedly with the renewed and barefaced proposals of the CoventGarden company, was not the renewed hope dawning in his breast, of still signalizing himself, by dividing the town with Mr. Kean, instead of playing a second part to him, which is all he could ever hope to do on the same theatre? But enough of this disagreeable and disgraceful affair. The only way to make it up with the public would be, as we are convinced, not by attempts at vindication, but by an open apology. Drury-Lane. The new farce of Frightened to Death,' is the most amusing and original piece of invention that we have seen for a long time. The execution might be better, but the idea is good, and as far as we know, perfectly new. Harley (Jack Phantom), in a drunken bout, is beaten by the watch, and brought senseless to the house of his mistress, Mrs. Orger, who, in order to cure him of his frolics, determines to dress him up in an old wrapping-gown like a shroud, and persuade him that he is dead. When he awakes, he at first does not recollect where he is: the first thing he sees is a letter from his friend to his mistress, giving an account of his sad catastrophe, and speaking of the manner in which order is to be taken for his burial. Soon after, his mistress and her maid come in in mourning, lament over his loss, and as has been agreed beforehand, take no notice of Phantom, who in vain presents himself before them, and thus is made to personate his own ghost. The servant, Mumps (Mr. Knight), who is 1 By W. C. Oulton, produced February 27. Mrs. Orger was Emily, and Munden Sir Joshua Greybeard. This, Oulton's latest farce, was founded on his earliest- The Haunted Castle-produced in Dublin in 1784. in the secret, also comes in, and staggers Phantom's belief in his own identity still more, by neither seeing nor hearing him. The same machinery is played off upon him in a different mode by Munden's coming in, and taking him for a ghost. A very laughable dialogue and duet here take place between the Ghost and the Ghost-seer, the latter inquiring of him with great curiosity about his ancestors in the other world, and being desirous to cultivate an acquaintance with the living apparition, in the hope of obtaining some insight into the state of that state "from which no traveller returns." There was a foolish song about "Kisses" at the beginning, which excited some little displeasure, but the whole went off with great and deserved applause. 1 THE DOUBLE GALLANT.2 Drury-Lane, April 13, 1817. 3 CIBBER'S comedy of The Double Gallant has been revived at this theatre with considerable success. Pope did Cibber a great piece of injustice, when he appointed him to receive the crown of dullness. It was mere spleen in Pope; and the provocation to it seems to have been an excess of flippant vivacity in the constitution of Cibber. That Cibber's Birth-day Odes were dull, seems to have been the common fault of the subject, rather than a particular objection to the poet. In his Apology for his own Life," he is one of the 1 A duet: "Can you, tardy lover, stay?" 2 Much of this article is reproduced by Hazlitt in his English Comic Writers, pp. 220-3. 3 The Double Gallant; or, The Sick Lady's Cure was acted March 29, April 8 and 11. 4 The Dunciad, i, 287-326. 5 An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Comedian. 1740. most amusing of coxcombs; happy in conscious vanity, teeming with animal spirits, uniting the self-sufficiency of youth with the garrulity of age; and in his plays he is not less entertaining and agreeably familiar with the audience. His personal character predominates indeed over the inventiveness of his muse; but so far from being dull, he is every where light, fluttering, and airy. We could wish we had a few more such dull fellows; they would contribute to make the world pass away more pleasantly! Cibber, in short, though his name has been handed down to us as a by-word of impudent pretension by the classical pen of his rival, who did not admit of any merit beyond the narrow circle of wit and friendship in which he moved, was a gentleman and a scholar of the old school; a man of wit and pleasantry in conversation; an excellent actor; an admirable dramatic critic; and one of the best comic writers of his age. Instead of being a caput mortuum of literature (always excepting what is always to be excepted, his Birth-day Odes) he had a vast deal of its spirit, and too much of the froth. But the eye of ill-nature or prejudice, which is attracted by the shining points of character in others, generally transposes their good qualities, and absurdly denies them the very excellences which excite its chagrin.-Cibber's Careless Husband is a masterpiece of easy gaiety; and his Double Gallant, though it cannot rank in the first, may take its place in the second class of comedies. It is full of character, bustle, and stage-effect. It belongs to the composite style, and very happily mixes up the comedy of intrigue, such as we see it in Mrs. Centlivre's Spanish plots, with a tolerable share of the wit and sentiment of Congreve and Vanbrugh. As there is a good deal of wit, there is a spice of wickedness in this play, which was the privilege of the good old style of comedy, when vice, perhaps from being less common, was less catching than it is at present. It was formerly a thing more to be wondered at than imitated; and behind the rigid barriers of religion and morality might be exposed freely, without the danger of any serious practical consequences; but now that the safeguards of wholesome prejudices are removed, we seem afraid to trust our eyes or ears with a single situation or expression of a loose tendency, as if the mere mention of licentiousness implied a conscious approbation of it, and the extreme delicacy of our moral sense would be debauched by the bare suggestion of the possibility of vice. The luscious vein of the dialogue in many of the scenes is stopped short in the revived play, though not before we perceive its object "In hidden mazes running, With wanton haste and giddy cunning!” 1 We noticed more than one of these double meanings, which however passed off without any marks of reprobation, for unless they are made pretty broad, the audience, from being accustomed to the cautious purity of the modern drama, are not very expert in deciphering the equivocal allusion. All the characters in The Double Gallant are very well kept up, and they were most of them well supported in the representation. Atall and Lady Dainty are the two most prominent characters in the original comedy, and those into which Cibber has put most of his own nature and genius. They are the essence of active impertinence and sickly affectation. Atall has three intrigues upon his hands at once, and manages them all with the dexterity with which an adept shuffles a pack of cards. His cool impudence is equal to his wonderful vivacity. He jumps, by mere volubility of tongue and limbs, under three several names into three several assignations with three several incognitas, whom he meets at the same house, as they happen to be mutual friends. He would succeed with them all, but that he is detected by them all round, and then he can hardly be said to fail, for 1 Imitated from L'Allegro, lines 141-2: "With wanton heed and giddy cunning, |