Brick me into that wall, there, for a chimney piece, And say, I was one of the Cesars, done by a seal cutter." If he had any prevailing defect, it was an overcrowded precipitation of delivery. Mrs. Stanley's "Estifania" added a new sprig of bay to her chaplet of comick renown. In higher walks of comedy, her "Lady Teazle," and "Violante," had displayed examples of courtly elegance and versatile vivacity, to which no other votary of Thalia had aspired on the American stage; while her "Rosalind" for the playfulness of its wit, claimed the same unprecedented rank, which was assigned to her" Portia," for its graceful and classick elocution. But "Estifania" is an arch, wheedling soubrette, a very rogue at heart, with a tongue of oil and pepper, a chambermaid, with the address of a courtier, and the head of a prime minister, a lady of no origin, but her wit, with no more gowns, than her flaunting mistress had cast off, yet with as many tricks as a roving captain, "in the full meridian of his wisdom," could put on! In this subtle character, the ever shifting compound of contrivance and repartee, Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Abbington have been, at different periods of the last century, eminently successful; and Mrs. Stanley at the present day is, we think, the lawful heir of their honours. To follow her through the part, with a minute description of her diversity of action and peculiarity of conveyance, would be a task of too great an extent for this paper; for the colours of this sarcastick, plotting character are always seen in constant variation, and ever sparkling in a new direction. A few quotations will suffice to illustrate the maturity of her conception, and the point of her manner. "Perez. My Estifania, shall we to dinner, lamb? I know thou stay'st for me. "Estif. (with wheedling fondness) I cannot EAT else. Again, (with unconcerned simplicity :) "Estif. We must yield our house unto her for four days. "Perez. Aye—if easily it would come back? "Estif. I swear, Sir, as easily, as it came on; You give away no house!” Her utterance of the last line conveyed very insidiously and forcibly to the audience, though unperceived by Perez, the latent double meaning of the author. The arch impostor was laughing at the cozened captain through the thin veil of the equivocal sense. In the same scene, .....................ray ye walk by and say nothing; Only salute them; and leave the rest to me. I was born to make ye a MAN!" Perez replies with truth "the witty rogue speaks heartily." The same crafty expression and cajoling leer appeared in the following passage: "Perez. Pray ye take heed unto the furniture, None be embezzled. "Estif. Not a PIN, I warrant ye.” This reply was instant, and was made with the important look of a careful housewife. The subtilty and security of her deception, throughout these two acts, were expressed with fine comick pungency. The whole scene in the fourth act, we have before remarked, was most highly finished. The humour and retort of the dialogue were in constant motion, and addressed with well-aimed activity. We need not go into recital, except in one instance, in which, the effect of the vis comica had a subtlety of operation, which eludes description: "Perez. Why, am I cozened? "Estif. Why, am I abused? "Perez. Thou most vile, base, abominable "Estif. Captain! "Perez. Thou incorrigible "Estif. Captain! "Perez. Do you echo me? "Estif. Yes, Sir, and go before ye too,and round about ye" &c. Her shrewd, biting caution to "Cacofogo," has the features of the same family of sarcasm: "All secrecy she would desire, she told me, How-WISE you are!" We observed a deviation of memory in one speech, which, however, was too promptly supplied to affect the sense or spirit of the scene. The incident of the pistol was very ingeniously managed, and bore its expected proportion of merit to the other parts of the character. With the review of these three personages, the labour of criticism ends in this play. "In angustiis amicus." THE desertion of the Drama by its former friends, during the greater portion of the present season, will never induce us, on perceiving this "rub in its fortunes," to abandon its cause to the caprice of the unlettered, or the folly of the fashionable; nor to commit its destiny to the perversity of party, the altivolancy of tumblers, or the eloquence of ventriloquism. We are deeply impressed with the belief, that the theatre is highly important to society, as a great publick school, in which all classes may assemble, to acquire mutual respect from examples of good breeding, to cultivate morality from the delineations of life, to enliven social humour from the vivacity of fiction, and to imbibe correct ideas of classick reading and of our native tongue from striking instances, however rare, of the force of elocution and purity of pronunciation. That many of these valuable purposes of the Drama have lately been obscured, in the mist of infatuation, even from the view of those, whose refinement ought to have seen and appreciated them, cannot be denied with truth, nor confessed without a blush. But "Wit cannot fall so fast, as folly rises; Witness the Circus; filled at double prices! And shouts, when le Vanqueure drinks lemonade !" The performance of Shakespeare's historical play of Henry fourth, on Wednesday evening, excited critical expectation, and attracted a numerous audience, as well from its numberless beauties, which "custom cannot stale," as from the extraordinary combination of talent in the personation of "Hotspur," and "Falstaff." This play, ever since its first production in 1598, has uniformly been considered as a masterpiece of the dramatick art, in that species of writing, which, from its commixture of tragedy and comedy, requires the most skilful management in the necessary intervolvement of plot, in the preservation of a regular action, in rendering the episodes subservient to the main purpose of the fable, and in exhibiting by a judicious and successive contrast, the most peculiar attitudes and prominent features of the opposite orders of beings, whom it represents. It may be added, that this play, in that perpetual progression of the action, which results from an ingenious congruity in the double plot, is inferiour only to the "Merchant of Venice," which, for this singular beauty of dramatick construction, has stood unrivalled for more, than two centuries. Dryden aimed at the model of this great original, in his "Spanish Fryar;" but no critick has ever allowed his claim to competition. Of the performance of this play we are not at leisure to prepare an elaborate analysis. But although our remarks, from their necessary brevity and general description, may lack of critical estimation, we shall endeavour to pay the debt of courtesy, so decidedly due to "Hotspur" and "Lean Jack." |