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THE artificial edy, or edy of manners, is quite extin our stage. greve and Farquhar show their heads on seven years only, to be exploded and put down instantly. The times ot bear them. Is it for a few wild speeches, an occasional lise of dialogue? I think not altogether. The business of their dramatic characters will not stand the moral test. We screw every thing up to that. Idle gallantry in a fi, a dream, the passing pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications of profliga a son or ward in real life should startle a parent uardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatiterests left. We see a stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours duration, and of no after sequence, with the severe eyes whispect real vices with their bearings upon two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue (not reducible in life to the point of strict morality) and take it all for truth. We substitute a real for a dramatic person, and judge him accly. We try him in our courts, from which there is no appeal to the dramatis personae!, his peers. We have been spoiled with -- not seal edy but a tyrant far more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded to it, the exclusive and all dev drama of on life; where the moral point is every thing; where, instead of the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage (the phantoms of old edy) we reise ourselves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, enemies, -- the same as in life, -- with an i in what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we ot afford our moral judgment, in its deepest and most vital results, to promise or slumber for a moment. What is there transag, by no modification is made to affect us in any other mahan the same events or characters would do in our relationships of life. We carry our fire-side s to the theatre with us. We do not go thither<samp>.</samp>, like our aors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to firm our experience of it; to make assurance double, and take a bond of fate. We must live our toilsome lives twice over, as it was the mournful privilege of Ulysses to desd twice to the shades. All that ral ground of character, which stood between vid virtue; or whi fact was indifferent to her, where her properly was called iion; that happy breathing-place from the burthen of a perpetual moral questioning -- the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of hunted casuistry -- is broken up and disfranchised, as injurious to the is of society. The privileges of the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally with images, or names, . We bark like foolish dogs at shadows. We dread iion from the sic representation of disorder; and fear a painted pustule. In our ahat our morality should not take cold, we it up in a great bla surtout of precaution against the breeze and sunshine.I fess for myself that (with no great delinqueo answer for) I am glad for a season to take an airing beyond the diocese of the strict sce, -- not to live always in the prects of the law-courts, -- but now and then, for a dream-whim or so, to imagine a world with no meddliri -- to get into recesses, whither the hunter ot follow me -
-----------Secret shades
Of woody Idas inmost grove,
While yet there was no fear of Jove --
I e bay cage and my restraint the fresher and more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more tentedly for having respired the breath of an imaginary freedom. I do not know how it is with others, but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of greves -- nay, why should I not add even of Wycherleys -- edies. I am the gayer at least for it; and I could never ect those sports of a witty fan any shape with a to be drawn from them to imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairy-land. Take one of their characters, male or female (with few exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire; because in a modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong. The standard of police is the measure of political justice. The atmosphere will blight it, it ot live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has no business, from which it must needs fall headlong; as dizzy, and incapable of making a stand, as a Swedenbian bad spirit that has wandered unawares into the sphere of one of his Good Men, els. But in its own world do we feel the creature is so very bad ? -- The Fainalls and the Mirabels, the Dorimants and the Lady Touchwoods, in their own sphere, do not offend my moral sense; in fact they do not appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in, their proper element. They break through no laws, or stious restraints. They know of hey have got out of Christendom into the land -- what shall I call it ? -- of cuckoldry -- the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative se of things, which has no reference whatever to the world that is. No good person be justly offended as a spectator, because no good person suffers oage. Judged morally, every character in these plays -- the few exceptions only are mistakes -- is alike essentially vain and worthless. The great art of greve is especially shown in this, that he has entirely excluded from his ses, -- some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps excepted, -- not only any thing like a faultless character, but any pretensions to goodness ood feelings whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly, or instinctively, the effect is as happy, as the design (if design) was bold. I used to wo the strange power which his Way of the World in particular possesses of iing you all along in the pursuits of characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing -- for you her hate nor love his personages -- and I think it is owing to this very indifference for any, that you ehe whole. He has spread a privation of moral light, I will call it, rather than by the ugly name of palpable darkness, over his creations; and his shadows flit before you without distin or preference. Had he introduced a good character, a single gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgment to actual life and actual duties, the imperti Goshen would have only lighted to the discovery of deformities, whiow are none, because we think them<bdi>?</bdi> none.
Translated into real life, the characters of his, and his friend Wycherleys dramas, are profligates and strumpets, -- the business of their brief existehe undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. No other spring of a, or possible motive of duct, is reised; principles which, universally acted upon, must reduce this frame of things to a chaos. But we do them wrong in so translating them. No such effects are produced in their world. When we are among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We are not to judge them by our usages. No reverend institutions are insulted by their proceedings, -- for they have none among them. No peace of families is violated -- for no family ties exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed is stained, -- for none is supposed to have a being. No deep affes are disquieted, -- no holy wedlock bands are snapped asunder, -- for affes depth and wedded faith are not of the growth of that soil. There is her right n, -- gratitude or its opposite, -- claim or duty, -- paternity or sonship. Of what sequence is it to virtue, or how is she at all ed about it, whether Sir Simon, or Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha; or who is the father of Lord Froths, or Sir Paul Pliants children.
The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as uned at the issues, for life or death, as at a battle of the frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, art against the puppets, and quite as impertily. We dare not plate an Atlantis, a scheme, out of which our bical moral sense is for a little transitory ease excluded. We have not the ce to imagine a state of things for which there is her reward nor punishment. We g to the painful ies of shame and blame. We would indict our very dreams.
Amidst the mortifying circumstatendant upon growing old, it is something to have seen the School for Sdal in its glory. This edy grew out of greve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the seal edy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it should be now acted, though it tinues, at long intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice -- to express it in a word -- the dht acted villany of the part, so different from the pressure of scious actual wiess, -- the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy, -- which made Jack so deservedly a favourite in that character, I must needs clude the present geion of play-goers more virtuous than myself, or more dense. I freely fess that he divided the palm with me with his better brother; that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. Not but there are passages,like that, for instance, where Joseph is made to refuse a pittao a poor relation, ingruities which Sheridan was forced upon by the attempt to joiificial with the seal edy, either of which must destroy the other -- but over these obstrus Jacks manner floated him, so lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked you, than the easy pliance of Charles gave you iy any pleasure; you got over the paltry question as quickly as you could, to get bato the regions of pure edy, where no oral reigns. The highly artificial manner of Palmer in this character teracted every disagreeable impression whiight have received from the trast, supposing them real, betweewo brothers. You did not believe in Joseph with the same faith with which you believed in Charles. The latter leasay, the former a no less pleasant poetical foi<bdo>..</bdo>l to it. The edy, I have said, is ingruous; a mixture of greve with seal inpatibilities: the gaiety upon the whole is buoyant; but it required the mate art of Palmer to recile the discordant elements.
A player with Jacks talents, if we had one now, would not dare to do the part in the same manner. He would instinctively avoid every turn which might tend to unrealise, and so to make the character fasating. He must take his cue from his spectators, who would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly opposed to each other as the death-beds of those geniuses are trasted in the prints, which I am sorry to say have disappeared from the windows of my old friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Pauls Church-yard memory -- (an exhibition as venerable as the adjat cathedral, and almost coeval) of the bad and good man at the hour of death; where the ghastly apprehensions of the former, -- and truly the grim phantom with his reality of a toasting fork is not to be despised, -- so finely trast with the meek plat kissing of the rod, -- taking it in like honey and butter, -- with which the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, Time, who wields his la with the apprehensive finger of a popular young ladies surgeon. What flesh, like loving grass, would not covet to meet half-way the stroke of such a delicate mower ? -- John Palmer was twi actor in this exquisite part. He laying to you all the while that he laying upon Sir Peter and his lady. You had the first intimation of a se before it was on his lips. His altered voice was meant to you, and you were to suppose that his fictitious co-flutterers oage perceived nothing at all of it. What was it to you if that half-reality, the husband, was over-reached by the puppetry -- or the thin thing (Lady Teazles reputation) ersuaded it was dying of a plethory? The fortunes of Othello and Desdemona we<bdo></bdo>re not ed in it. Poor Jack has past from the stage in good time, that he did not live to this e of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle King, too, is gone in good time. His manner would scarce have past current in our day. We must love or hate -- acquit or n -- ensure or pity -- exert our detestable bry of moral judgment upohing. Joseph Surface, to go down now, must be a dht revolting villain -- no promise -- his first appearance must shod give horror -- his specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable faculties of our fathers weled with such hearty greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) could e, or was meant to e of them, must inspire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real ting person of the se -- for the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulteriitimate ends, but his brothers professions of a good heart tre in dht self-satisfaust be loved, and Joseph hated. To balane disagreeable reality with another, Sir Peter Teazle must be no lohe ic idea of a fretful old bachelor bride-groom, whose teasings (while King acted it) were evidently as much played off at you, as they were meant to any body oage, -- he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury -- a person towards whom duties are to be aowledged -- the genuine crim- antagonist of the villanous seducer Joseph. To realise him more, his sufferings under his unfortuch must have the dht pungency of life -- must (or should) make you not mirthful but unfortable, just as the same predit would move you in a neighbour or old friend. The delicious ses which give the play its name a, must affect you in the same serious manner as if you heard the reputation of a dear female friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree, and Sir Benjamin -- those poor shat live but in the sunshine of your mirth -- must be ripened by this hot-bed process of realization into asps or amphisbaenas; and Mrs. dour -- htful! bee a hooded serpent. Oh who that remembers Parsons and Dodd -- the and butterfly of the School for Sdal -- in those two characters; and charming natural Miss Pope, the perfect gentlewoman as distinguished from the fine lady of edy, in this latter part -- would fo the true sic delight -- the escape from life -- the oblivion of sequences -- the holiday barring out of the pedant Refle -- those Saturnalia of two or three brief hours, well won from the world -- to sit instead at one of our modern plays -- to have his coward sce (that forsooth must not be left for a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals -- dulled rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose must be -- and his moral vanity pampered with images of notional justiotional benefice, lives saved without the spectators risk, and fortunes given away that cost the author nothing?
No piece erhaps, ever so pletely cast in all its parts as this managers edy. Miss Farren had succeeded to Mrs. Abingdon in Lady Teazle; and Smith, the inal Charles, had retired, when I first saw it. The rest of the characters, with very slight exceptions, remained. I remember it was then the fashion to cry down John Kemble, who took the part of Charles after Smith; but, I thought, very unjustly. Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with a certain gaiety of person. He brought with him no sombre recolles edy. He had not to expiate the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty declamation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to atone for. His failure in these parts assport to success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he ma, only served to vey the points of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkliences was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered ea succession, and ot by any effort imagine how any of them could be altered for the better. No man could deliver brilliant dialogue -- the dialogue of greve or of Wycherley -- because none uood it -- half so well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for Love, was, to my recolle, faultless. He flagged sometimes iervals ic passion. He would slumber over the level parts of an heroic character. His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and witty dialogue. The relaxiies edy have not been touched by any since him -- the playful court-bred spirit in which he desded to the players in Hamlet -- the sportive relief which he threw into the darker shades of Richard -- disappeared with him. He had his sluggish moods, his torpors -- but they were the halting-stones aing-places of his tragedy -- politic savings, aches of the breath -- husbandry of the lungs, where nature pointed him to be an eist -- rather, I think, than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, less painful thaernal tormenting unappeasable vigilahe "lidless dragon eyes," of present fashioragedy.
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