the sighing of the forest gale and the vespers of midnight monks. But enough of this. There is considerable interest in the outline of the present play, and the events are ingeniously and impressively connected together, so as to excite and keep alive curiosity, and to produce striking situations. But to this production of external effect, character and probability are repeatedly sacrificed, and the actions which the different persons are made to perform, like stage-puppets, have no adequate motives. For instance, it is quite out of our common calculation of human nature, that Valentio (Mr. Macready) should betray his country to an enemy, because he is jealous of a rival in love; nor is there any thing in the previous character of Valentio to lead us to expect such an extreme violation of common sense and decency. Again, Rinaldo is betrayed to his dishonour, by acting contrary to orders and to his duty as a knight, at the first insidious suggestion of Valentio. The entrance of the Moors through the subterranean passage, and the blowing up of the palace while the court are preparing to give a sort of fête champêtre in the middle of a siege, is not only surprising but ridiculous. Great praise is due to Mr. Young as Aben Hamet, to Mr. Macready as Valentio, and to Mr. Booth as Rinaldo, for the force of their action, and the audibleness of their delivery:-perhaps for something more. Miss Stephens, as Oriana's maid, sang several songs very prettily. THE TOUCH-STONE. Drury Lane, May 11, 1817. MR. KENNEY's new Comedy called The Touchstone; or, The 1 Produced May 3. Mrs. Harlowe was Mrs. Fairweather; Mrs. Alsop, Rebecca Garnish; Holland, Squire Finesse; Oxberry, Croply; Dowton, Probe; and Hughes, Circuit. It possesses much liveliness and pleasantry in the incidents, and the dialogue is neat and pointed. The interest never flags, and is never wound up to a painful pitch. There are several coups de théâtre, which show that Mr. Kenney is an adept in his art, and has the stage and the actors before him while he is writing in his closet. The character of Dinah Croply, which is admirably sustained by Miss Kelly, is the chief attraction of the piece. The author has contrived situations for this pretty little rustic, which bring out the exquisite naïveté and simple pathos of the actress in as great a degree as we ever saw them. Mr. Kenney, we understand, wrote this comedy abroad; and there is a foreign air of homely contentment and natural gaiety about the character of poor Dinah, like the idea we have of Marivaux's Paysanne parvenue.1 She seemed to have fed her chickens and turned her spinning-wheel in France, under more genial and bettertempered skies. Perhaps, however, this may be a mere prejudice in our minds, arising from our having lately seen Miss Kelly in such characters taken from French pieces. Her lover, Harley (Peregrine Paragon), is of undoubted home growth. He is a very romantic, generous, amorous sort of simpleton, while he is poor; and for want of knowing better, thinks himself incorruptible, till temptation falls in his way, and then he turns out a very knave; and only saves his credit in the end by one of those last act repentances which are more pleasing than probable. He is in the first instance a poor country schoolmaster, who is engaged to marry Dinah Croply, the daughter of a neighbouring farmer. They cannot, however, obtain the consent of their landlord and his sister (Holland and Mrs. Harlowe), the one a town coquette, the other a commercial gambler; when just in the nick of time, news is brought that Holland is ruined by the failure of an extravagant speculation, and that a distant relation has left his whole fortune to Harley. The tables are 1 See Marivaux's Le Paysan Parvenu, 1735. now turned. Harley buys the mansion-house, furniture, and gardens, takes possession of them with highly amusing airs of upstart vanity and self-importance; is flattered by the Squire's sister, who discards and is discarded by a broken fortune-hunting lover of the name of Garnish (Wallack), makes proposals of marriage to her, and thinks no more of his old favourite Dinah. Garnish in the mean time finding the pliability of temper of Peregrine Paragon, Esq. and to make up for his disappointment in his own fortune-hunting scheme, sends for his sister (Mrs. Alsop), whom he introduces to the said Peregrine Paragon. The forward pretensions of the two new candidates for his hand, form an amusing contrast with the sanguine hopes and rejected addresses of the old possessor of his heart, and some very ridiculous scenes take place, with one very affecting one, in which Miss Kelly makes a last vain appeal to her lover's fidelity, and her father (Oxberry) watches the result with a mute wonderment and disappointed expectation infinitely natural, and well worth any body's seeing. By-and-by it turns out that the fortune has been left not to Harley, but by a subsequent will to Miss Kelly, who is also a relation of the deceased, when instantly his two accomplished mistresses give over their persecution of him, their two brothers set off to make love to the new heiress, who exposes them both to the ridicule they deserve, and Harley, without knowing of the change of fortune, is moved by a letter he receives from her, to repent just in time to prove himself not altogether unworthy of her hand. Such is the outline of this comedy. Dowton acts the part of a friendly mediator, and spectator in the scene; and Hughes makes a very fit representative of a shuffling, officious, pettifogging attorney. The most unpleasant part of the play was the undisguised mercenary profligacy of the four characters of Wallack, Holland, Mrs. Alsop, and Mrs. Harlowe: and a precious partie carrée they are. The scrapes into which their folly and cunning lead them are, however, very amusing, and their unprincipled selfishness is very deservedly punished at last. [Covent-Garden. We have not room to say much of the new tragedy of The Apostate,' for which we are not sorry, as we should have little good to say of it. The poetry does not rise to the merit of common-place, and the tragic situations are too violent, frequent, and improbable. It is full of a succession of selfinflicted horrors. Miss O'Neill played the heroine of the piece, whose affectation and meddling imbecility occasion all the mischief, and played it shockingly well. Mr. Young's Malec was in his very best and most imposing manner. The best things in The Apostate were the palpable hits at the Inquisition and Ferdinand the Beloved, which were taken loudly and tumultuously by the house, a circumstance which occasioned more horror in that wretched infatuated tool of despotism, the Editor of The New Times,' than all the other horrors of the piece. The dungeons of the Holy Inquisition, whips, racks, and slow fires, kindled by Legitimate hands, excite no horror in his breast; but that a British public still revolt at these things, that that fine word "Legitimacy" has not polluted their souls and poisoned their very senses with the slime and filth of slavery and superstition, this writhes his brain and plants scorpions in his mind, and makes his flesh crawl and shrink in agony from the last expression of manhood and humanity in an English audience, as if a serpent had wound round his heart!] 1 The Apostate, by R. L. Shiel, was produced May 3. Miss O'Neill was Florinda. 2 Doctor (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart seceded from The Times early in 1817, and started a paper called The New Times. It was soon amalgamated with The Day under the title of The Day and New Times, but the title of The New Times was resumed January 1, 1818. Stoddart was brother to Mrs. Hazlitt. THE LIBERTINE. Covent-Garden, May 25, 1817. THE LIBERTINE,' an after-piece, altered from Shadwell's play of that name, and founded on the story of Don Juan, with Mozart's music, was represented here on Tuesday evening. Almost every thing else was against it, but the music triumphed. Still it had but half a triumph, for the songs were not encored; and when an attempt was made by some rash over-weening enthusiasts to encore the enchanting airs of Mozart, that heavy German composer, "that dull Boeotian genius," as he has been called by a lively verbal critic of our times, the English, disdaining this insult offered to our native talents, hissed-in the plenitude of their pampered grossness, and "ignorant impatience" of foreign refinement and elegance, they hissed! We believe that unconscious patriotism has something to do with this as well. as sheer stupidity: they think that a real taste for the Fine Arts, unless they are of British growth and manufacture, is a sign of disaffection to the Government, and that there must be "something rotten in the state of Denmark,” if their ears, as well as their hearts, are not true English. We have heard sailors' songs by little Smith, and Yorkshire songs by Emery, and The Death of Nelson by Mr. Sinclair, encored again and again at Covent-Garden, so as almost "to split the ears of the groundlings," yet the other night they would not hear of encoring Miss Stephens, either in the duet with Duruset, La ci darem, nor in the song appealing for his forgiveness, Batti, Masetto; yet at the Opera they tolerate Madame Fodor in repeating both these songs, because they suppose it to be the etiquette, and would have you believe 1 The Libertine, by Isaac Pocock, was produced May 20. |