CHAP. XII. Winter Season of 1798-9.-Mr. Kemble opens with the Stranger.-Emery comes from York.-Kotzebue.-Lovers' Vows. -Ramah Droog.-Novelties.-Reynolds returns to Covent Garden.-Laugh when You Can.-Aurelio and Miranda.The Author's account of it.-Kemble most kind as well as excellent.-Holman, Votary of Wealth.-Feudal Times.Mr. Morris.-- Kotzebue's Birth Day.--Mr. Kemble in Montval.-Pizarro, done by Sheridan himself.-The strange Prologue. Sheridan's feelings during its performance.— Kemble in Rolla.-Mrs. Jordan.-Mrs. Siddons.-Elvira considered. Success of the play.-Political Feelings.—Mr. Pitt.-Play printed.--Colman's.--Novelties there.--Fête at Frogmore.-Reflections. I HAVE already informed the reader that the winter season of 1798-9 opened with the Stranger. The common notion was, that the last words uttered by poor Palmer were parts of a passage commencing with an apostrophe to the Deity, and that the agony attending their delivery had destroyed the actor. The house was therefore in considerable alarm till the real Stranger had got over words that had proved so fatal. And some degree of surprise buzzed along the seats when Mr. Kemble, in the proper tone of resignation, uttered the calm address to Francis, in the first scene of the third act: Stranger. "Have you forgotten what the old man said this morning? From the Bath or the York companies, most of our great actors have proceeded. There is little mystery in this: the demand for excellence usually finds it or creates it. We had Mrs. Siddons from Bath; Mr. Kemble from York. By this I mean to say, that Bath and York were the scenes of their greatest popularity-their theatric homes. From York we had received an excellent actor in Fawcett, and were to owe another, more limited, but equally perfect, in Emery. He had found in the rustics of Morton, inatter remarkably suited to his talents; and in truth he was destined to exhibit the entire range of his ability in that author's comedies-from Frank Oatlands to his Bobby Tike, exhausts nearly the whole soul of the countryman, and the art of Emery. His Caliban was a brute, it is true, and, what he should not have been, a Yorkshire one; but there was no poetry in his conception of the character. It has been always roared down the throats of the vulgar; but Caliban is not a vulgar creation. It is of "imagination all compact." We had now begun the long line of Kotzebue's dramas, and the passion always found about them ensured their success, if even respectably acted. Mrs. Inchbald brought out Lovers Vows, at Covent Garden, on the 11th of October. Frederick was supported by Pope, and the Agatha and Amelia by the Mrs. Johnson from America, and Mrs. Johnstone, the wife of Henry Johnstone, a lady of very considerable talent in melo dramas. With any other merits or demerits the world has sufficiently amused itself, to be tired, I hope, by this time of the subject. My old friend Taylor, who has written more prologues in less time than any bard that ever did live, on the occasion of Lovers' Vows supplied one of his best. The allusion to all our Spectres is very happy and pointed "The monstrous charms of terrible delight." Mr. Palmer, of the Temple, sent on Munden, the rhyming Butler of the play, with an epilogue of about seventy rambling, but sufficiently ludicrous verses. The glorious victory of the Nile was in course to be dramatised, and T. Dibdin launched a pantomimic entertainment of song, dance, and dialogue, at Covent Garden on the 25th of October. Cumberland, catching at something between Cowley and Dryden, supplied a prologue, spoken with great animation by H. Johnstone. At the same theatre, on the 12th of November, Cobb, with some of his India knowledge, brought us entertainment from the Malabar coast; and his comic opera of Ramah Droog flourished like an adventure of Bandannoes and Pullicat Romals. The females of this piece are all of them unknown to fame, but their names look astonishing in stage history. Mrs. Mills and Mrs. Chapman, with the six Misses Mitchell, Waters, Sims, Gray, Wheatley, and Walcup, and I hope, in the language of that great stage manager, Peter Quince, "here is an opera fitted." It had one charm * of great value about it: namely, that Richards painted a series of scenes from the exquisite designs of Daniel, made, as every body knows, by him in India. At Drury Lane, Prince Hoare translated and adapted the French piece of Camille, or le Souterrain, and with some clever scenery, and music by Dussek, a man of science and invention, it was successful under the title of the Captive of Spilburg. Dussek, sitting in society at the piano forte, and improvising upon the progress and succession of the PASSIONS, was an object of perfect astonishment, and never to be forgotten. Mr. Cumberland followed on the 5th of December, with a comedy, called A Word for Nature; it was but a word. It had the slightest of all his plots, nothing whatever of character, and the interest was never the subject of the smallest doubt or alarm through the whole five acts. At Covent Garden, Dibdin, with a most diverting farce, called the Jew and the Doctor, preceded the return of Reynolds on the 8th of December to his head quarters. His title was a lesson equal to any in Cornaro's treatise, Laugh when you Can. Here he had all his tried friends; Lewis lighter than air in Gossamer, and Fawcett in Sambo, and a Bonus in Munden;-Holman, the Popes, the Mattocks, the Gibbs, and in Emily, Miss Mansell. Madame Genlis's Souterrain was to have the honours of both our houses, and Cobb's Albert and Adelaide, the rival of the Captive of Spilburg, was done at Covent Garden on the 11th. It was a useful AFTER-piece, and, as every thing unfortunately now was, splendidly got up. Steibelt and Atwood between them furnished the music. We now half lived upon the Germans and the French; and our native drama was estimated as a very secondary business indeed by managers, who turned their authors to foreign plays, foreign spectacles, foreign romances-to every thing foreign to English habits, feelings, and character. I had hitherto never written a part for a man, entitled by his friendship as well as talent to every attention from me. The masterly presentment of Ambrosio in the Monk, by Mr. Lewis, though not original,* struck me forcibly in the perusal, and I worked, as I thought, rather successfully upon the sub * Without travelling farther back, Ambrosio and his temptations may be found under the names of Father Henrick and Miranda, in the novel called the Fair Jilt, written by Mrs. Aphra Behn. Mr. Kemble's recollection of her writings, and of this particular story, made him assign the name of Miranda to my heroine; and might lead him to suggest the high birth of the friar as a ground for dispensing him from his vows, and ultimately uniting him to Miranda, ject, in a sort of Colman Drama of three acts. I showed it to Mr. Kemble, and he at once decided that he would act the Monk. "But," he said, "why three acts! Why innovate upon established usage?--a play should be in five acts, for this sound reason among others, that it affords four pauses; and consequently the RELIEF which is necessary to the attention. In a full piece you must occupy the usual three hours, and you create a heaviness by compelling the audience to listen to an uninterrupted business, or act, one hour long. Don't tell me that there may not be matter enough in your subject for five acts; because then I ask how you expect to be endured, if you make business only sufficient for three acts occupy the time of five ?" To all this I really had no good reply, and consequently made none at all. He himself suggested some additional interest, and Aurelio and Miranda went, through Wroughton, to Mr. Sheridan himself. He read it with great kindness, and wrote his opinion in the margin of every scene. Of many parts he expressed decided admiration-he gave me but little additional trouble. The play was accepted, and Mr. Siddons by letter informed me "that though Miranda was not quite so important in the piece as Mrs. Siddons was accustomed to be, yet that it was such a part as they should never refuse, and that she should act it for me." All therefore looked successfully; the greatest dramatic genius admired my work, and the greatest theatric talent had resolved to act it. But it was weak in its structure; the two last acts were entirely an hors d'œuvre ; and, what was worse than all, a storm of indignation was excited, that so immoral a work as the Monk should be resorted to for the purposes of an exhibition, however moral in its tendency. There were not wanting an accident or two to help on the work of prejudice; yet the play survived all opposition for seven nights, greatly applauded in its best scenes, but in my own judgment unfitted for a longer existence. It was first acted on the 29th of December, 1798. Yet let me say, that all I had ever conceived of either the dignity or sanctity of the monacal order, was as nothing compared with the awful grace with which the whole figure of Kemble became invested.-The nearest resemblance that picture affords is to be found in a FORM, that it would be irreverence to name upon such an occasion as the present; but the expression of the head, and the folds of the drapery, seemed to be studied in the transfiguration of Raphael. That noble gentleman, the late Duke of Leeds, came to me in the Green Room, and begged to present me to the duchess in her box, though he candidly avowed that his religious feelings hardly allowed him to tolerate the powerful effects, which he saw produced upon the stage. But it was not only on the first night that Mr. Kemble displayed for me his highest powersprevention as to the subject-failure in some weaker parts-violent clamour--all on this occasion were unheeded by him, and he exerted himself to the last, for his friend, the author, as if his own reputation were at stake, and somehow involved with the success of the play. "For ALL our thanks." I may mention that when, after the play, Mr. Kemble had put on his lay habiliments, and we were both admitted into Mrs. Siddons's dressing-room, our friend, the late Dr. Charles Burney, came in, and told us in a few words, that "the subject was fatal, and we should not do." I was myself decidedly of his opinion. Hol.nan, on the 5th of January, 1799, presented the town with a comedy, called the Votary of Wealth. It is a satire against the irregular attainment of riches-where the passion renders the being who entertains it false in every thing, and the dearest of his friends is as certainly the prey of his rapacity, as the indifferent children of the earth." Mr. Holman, as usual, distinguished himself by some scenes powerfully written; but, in the general structure of the fable, he reminded one greatly of his two comic associates; and, indeed, they frequently wrote in conjunction. With all this the public had no concern; their entertainment was in the merit of the work, and there was certainly much interest in the Votary of Wealth. It is a singularity, but of the comic writers to whom I have alluded. the strong interest in their plays is hardly ever female-in this, looking to the sympathy of an audience, they would be in error, but that the comparative talents of the sexes in the Covent Garden company rendered their choice an affair of discretion. It is so dangerous to attack! The even-handed justice of time usually makes to itself a sport, as well as a duty, to have the Engineer hoisted with his own petard." So Mr. Colman, who had assailed Kemble as the translator of Lodoiska, now, I suppose, blushed to scribble over Feudal Times, in which Lodoiska itself was imitated, and the Castle Spectre and Blue Beard invited into his Banquet Gallery. Here was a mine sprung in the close of the piece with great effect. On the subject of this eternal stage practice, let me say, to the credit of their sappers and miners, that it invariably succeeds; and the conflagration of the fortress only |