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THE DRAMA.

THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. Miss Grimani-cum multis aliis. THIS fine comedy, the School for Scandal, has, within the last month, been played at both houses; at Covent Garden, with all the aid of good actors, and full houses; and at Drury Lane, with all the drawbacks of empty benches, and raw, inexperienced performers. The School for Scandal (that School, which knows no vacation in this world!) can never want for scholars, so long as life, and wit, and elegant satire, are permitted to house together. The School for Scandal, indeed, must live! What can be more delightful, more spirited, more airy, than this inimitable comedy, with its rich contrasting characters, and pungent dialogues? In it, life seems to have resolved itself into an essence, and conversation to have lost all its "outward limbs and flourishes," and to have become a spirit only. All the glancing lights and shades of character are caught; all the ingenuities and intricacies of situation are fixed, and made thrice interesting and effective; all the points of a conceit are touched at to perfection. The author has boxed the compass of wit. To remember the personages of this caustic and exquisite play, is to revive the recollections of brave wits and elegant satirists, and to keep the best and the brightest company. There is Charles Surface, the easy, gentlemanly, ruined, airy Charles Surface; with his delightful picture-sale, and his tenderness for "the little ill-looking fellow over the settee!" What a relish is he on the lips of Scandal, with his handsome person, his youth, his graceful halfmelancholy love for Maria, and " his most blest conditions!" Then, as a fine contrast, there is Joseph (what a name!) Joseph, with his cold, calculating, sententious morality, the plotting, avaricious, heartless Joseph, with his luckless amours, and French plate charities. Then, can there be a richer personage than old Sir Peter? falling out of his batchelorship, late in life, as if he had met with an accident; and tumbling, through the fond anxieties of a florid and healthy old age, into all the turmoils and ter

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rors of the marriage state. utterly does he appear to have broken the neck of his happiness over a young giddy wife! What a lecture is his passion! What lessons are couched in his alternate tetchy tendernesses and jealousies! How his hopes seemed to wave in the tossings of Lady Teazle's feathers! How his will seems to turn with her " remarkably elegant turn of the head!" What dear fretful family quarrels is he eternally embroiled in! The fall of the screen appears to be the downfall of his house! And can any thing be better than his varying use of the word "Joseph," before and after the luckless discovery? In the last act, it drags on his lip like a fly in honey! Old Sir Oliver,-Sir Noll,-is round and cozey as his name! You at once see the rich Indian uncle, the Nabob, returning up to his ears in rupees and powder, and glorying in getting into the thick of his relations and generosities! Lady Teazle, with her gallant powers of scandal; her virtue, wavering through thoughtlessness; her charming self-restoration, and her constant inimitable spirit, is an elegant comedy in herself! She is the Divina Commedia, not of Dante, but of womanhood! There is in her a slight touch of the country hoyden, softened down by the graces of polished life, that carries her through her scandal, her domestic broils, and her pleasures, with a vivacity and a spirit perfectly enchauting! In all these characters, all that is perfect in wit and spirit is concentrated, and then by what a circle are these delightful creatures surrounded! They themselves are indeed bright stars; but, oh! how bright satellites attend them! After the Teazles and the Surfaces, come a goodly troop. All the scandal schoolboys and school-girls,-bitter little Crabtree,-Sir Benjamin Backbite, with his puny weakling of an epigram,-honest Master Rowley,Trip, the Servant, with his " post obit on the blue and silver,"-quiet tiny Moses,-Careless, and Sir Harry, two empty, walking, claret-flasks!

and wicked, orderly Mr. Snake.What a company!The ladies too are no less curious. Easy, natural

Mrs. Candour, who gives the medicine of scandal in honey itself; and poor lost Lady Sneerwell, with a heart" bitter as the dregs of Coloquintida!" Maria is, perhaps, a little insipid, but what chance has she in such a biting throng? She is scarcely better off for companions than Polly in the Beggar's Opera!

It is not the place here,-neither have we the time or the space,-to dissert upon the beauties of the most interesting and spirited scenes in this matchless comedy. But we cannot refrain from just hinting at that brilliant scandal meeting, in which Lady Teazle, like the lovely Marcia, "towers above her sex," and at which Sir Peter stands, contemplating the terrible scandal storm, "like one just blasted by a stroke from heaven!" Characters in this cutting scene are conjured up, beaten, snipped, pinched, and cuffed, by the whole party, and finally damned into nothing by a finisher from one of the set. The auction of pictures, and the screen-scene, are never to be surpassed, or we know nothing of perfection! The first, for its gay brilliancies of dialogue; the last, for its highly wrought interest. Perhaps the finest piece of wit in any modern English play is contained in the following snatch of dialogue.

Lady Sneerwell. Ha! ha! ha!-Well said, Sir Peter! But you are a cruel creature, too phlegmatic yourself for a jest, and too peevish to allow wit in others!

Sir Peter Teazle. Ah! Madam! True wit is more nearly allied to good nature than your Ladyship is aware of.

Lady Teazle. True, Sir Peter; I believe they are so near akin that they can never be united !

We have said a great deal more about our admiration of this play than there was any occasion for; but having been led to see the New Drury-lane actress, Miss Grimani, and being called upon in our critical capacity to notice her Lady Teazle, we could not resist the opportunity of indulging in a few reminiscences, common enough perchance, yet pleasanter than a thousand living thoughts of things present or to come. We are loth to speak ill of a lady, but we must, as in duty bound, confess that Miss Grimani is the very worst Lady Teazle it was ever our misfortune to witness. We

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never saw Miss Farren, who received a title for her performance! Miss Duncan (we will not weaken her acting by saying Mrs. Davison) was harsh and broad; but she was at the same time spirited and natural. Others have failed on the side of ardour, eagerness, vigour; but it fell to Miss Grimani's lot alone, to make the joyous, generous, easy, whimsical Lady Teazle, a sententious and sober-solemn lady of sentimental comedy. Miss Grimani appears to be a quiet, and not insensible person; but she is no more calculated to play Lady Teazle than we are to dance the tight-rope at Astley's, or to ride upon four horses at once. She has a slight, yet not altogether ungraceful person; and her features are strongly marked, but neither her person nor her features become Lady Teazle. Her voice is drawling and monotonous. This lady may improve in other characters; and if she should succeed, we will instantly notice her achievements. But, as Lady Teazle, we can, as just judges, hold out to her no hopes.

The other characters in the comedy were badly filled. Elliston made an amusing Charles, allowing for a little gout,-say-indolence,-tenderness, call it what you will; but Mr. Cooper, in Joseph, made us wish that even Mr. Winston had been allowed to read the part. Has this same good gentleman, Mr. Cooper, no feeling of his work, that he dresses, acts, and speaks the part so miserably, so despicably? Why, a common play-struck apprentice would know better than to clothe Joseph Surface in a dress-coat, with a modern vulgar red under-waistcoat. And we would eat our two-and-twenty pens, if even Claremont would indulge in a clownish scratching of his hair (we will not say head) through the refined scenes of the School for Scandal, and in the finished part of Joseph Surface. We might say to Mr. Cooper, what old Hardcastle says, while drilling his raw servants

Take your hand out of your pocket, Sir,-and out of your hair! Munden was admirably dressed in Sir Peter Teazle, in light blue,-the gentlemanly colour of the old school; but he seemed puzzled with his own countenance, for he has made faces so long, that his faces are now really

ready made. Mr. Penley did for Sir Benjamin Backbite: and Harley far cified old Crabtree.

they give of oriental magnificence, and Eastern customs and manners, are at once brilliant and faithful. The dramatists of Drury-lane, however, prefer the tarnished finery, and trimmed imagination of a Mrs. Sheridan or a Dr. Hawkesworth, who must write from reading, and not from experience; and who, therefore, filter down the Arabian Nights for the use of schools and playhouses.

sign of careful forethought and prudent selection: the new tale of enchantment, in its scenery, dialogue, At Covent Garden Theatre things and dresses, seems to speak but of are better ordered. Charles Kemble hasty choice and rapid execution. plays Charles Surface (by the bye, If it be absolutely necessary that we heartily congratulate him on his recourse should be had to Eastern accession to the throne of this thea- romances for the supply of gaudy tre). Young preaches Joseph; Far- dramas, we must think that the Araren realizes Sir Peter Teazle; and bian Nights' Entertainments are agraListon lounges in Sir Benjamin Back-nary in themselves. They are ever new bite. In talking of this play it is ever wondrous! And the pictures natural to think of those who have the best hit off the characters; and we cannot, therefore, but be pleased when we see certain old ladies and gentlemen interlock their slow fingers at the mention of this comedy, and hear them, with a tender elevation of the eyes, "remember" Miss Farren in Lady Teazle, and King in Sir Peter, and Palmer, dear John Palmer, in Joseph Surface, the Joseph; and Smith, (gentleman Smith!) in Charles; and Parsons in Crabtree; and Dodd in Sir Benjamin Backbite; and Miss Pope, natural delightful Pope, in Mrs. Candour! The list, to be sure, is a bright recollection; and though we never saw "a one of them,' we feel, from the famous sounding of their names, that they were no common folk. That they were, indeed, the Teazles, the Backbites, the Surfaces, the Candours! and in the earnest faith of impressive fame, we bow to their superiority, and feel ourselves spelled to confess, that we shall never, never see the play so filled again!

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Almoran and Hamet,

"A new Eastern Tale of Enchantment," as the bills entitle it, was on Easter Monday produced at Drury-lane; but who that knows a tittle of tales of enchantment, can find any novelty in the stale sentimental allegory of Almoran and Hamet, on which the tawdry after-piece of Drury-lane is founded? A more cumbrous load upon the imagination cannot be found; and we sincerely pity those jackalls of the house that cannot, in their search after food for the great Lion-Lessee, stumble upon better meat. Custom calls for some pantomimic display at Easter; and yet, with this well-known necessity staring the manager in the face, the present production bears no marks of long and active preparation; no

The original story of Almoran and Hamet (original forsooth!) is pretty strictly adhered to, though the incidents of it are far from being very strikingly dramatic. Almoran's assumption of Hamet's person was contrived by a change of dress, which, as the actors of the two parts were not, like the legs of Poins and Prince Hal, "both of a bigness," made the trick far from imposing; and, indeed, served but to astonish many good people from Dowgate, Portsoken, and the precincts of Farringdon Without, how the princess Almeida could be bamboozled by a mere piece of gold and green silk. Almoran's departure with the Evil Genius down a square trap-hole was as like one of Dr. Hawkesworth's Eastern inventions as heart could wish; and we never saw such a happy mixture of the moral with the imaginative-the oriental with the downright English! He knelt down in all his spangles, bowed his drum-head of a turban towards the earth, pressed his tinsel heart, and descended into as welldug and square a looking grave as sexton ever picked and trimmed in the church-yard of Cripplegate. Mr. Cooper was really too good for Almoran, and that is saying a bold thing. Those tragic talents which fall short of the mark in Iago, or Richmond, "sticke fiery off indeed" in the noisy villain of a modern oriental afterpiece. He was very great. Mr. Penley, too, was "something more than natural." Ilis tall hand

some person flamed away in crimson satin, and quite satisfied us of the Pit. We never saw him to such advantage. Mr. Powell, in the First Minister of State, kangaroo'd "with his little short fore-puds" much to our admiration. This gentleman is really a very improving actor; and if he thus goes on we know not where he will stop! Why does he not try the theatre at the Australian settle ment? not that we wish to lose him, but we think his peculiarities would recommend him in that land of short arms and confined action. Mr. Bar nard looked melancholy; but he was real Turkish, like the Cheapside rhubarb. Mr. Bromley (who is Mr. Bromley? is it Bromley from Kent?) was surrounded by a pair of magnificent trowsers. Harley, in a foolish Janissary, let off his winks, and went peacocking up and down before the lamps, in his usual facetious manner. He sang a very silly duet with Miss Povey, which the sillier audience encored. Miss Povey, however, has a charming voice which only wants a little decent tutoring. The Princess Almeida completely put out poor little Miss Copeland.

We had heard from some foolish play-going people, and had read in the newspapers, (those evil com munications that corrupt good manners,") of the beautiful scenery of this new Eastern Tale of Enchant ment;" but we were indeed grievous ly disappointed, The Necromantic Temple is one cluster of flaming pillars; in and out of which bounce a set of half-dressed awkward girls, followed by a group of painted and sprawling scene-shifters. The lady, in particular, who presents the magic cup to Almoran, should be very careful on these cold nights to dress herself the moment she quits the stage. The royal Harem allows of a tambourine dance, by Miss Tree, much in the style of those little clock-work tambourine-dancers at the corners of streets the interior of the Mosque "with the grand bridal procession is an old stager, if we are not mistaken. And the Seraglio gardens by moonlight, with a real fountain, the very moral of that which squanders its water in the basin of the Green Park, are mighty common-place. Indeed, we must honestly say, that we never saw a duller piece of dullness,

nor a more tawdry piece of splendour, than this new Tale of Enchantment, since we first smelt the lamp.

COVENT-GARDEN THEATRE.

Cherry und Fair Star; or the

Children of Cyprus.

The favourite fairy tale which the Countess D'Aunois filched so prettily from the story in the Arabian Nights, has been chosen by Mr. Farley for his Easter offering:-And if the most enchanting scenery and dresses can attract an audience, then, we predict, will the pit of this Theatre nightly overflow. All persons that have ever been young, and we know but of one gentleman who has never been in this predicament, will recollect the story of Fair Star-sweet, sweet, Fair Star, "from whose long hair the combed emeralds fell." We shall not, therefore, hazard the tediousness of a twice told tale, but say what little we have to say, upon the scenery and the performers.

The Enchanted Wood and Fairy Vision make good the titles. The distant prospect through an eastern atmosphere is rich beyond all bounds. The Port of Cyprus, with the entry of the Grecian galley, is also admirably managed, and such a Bridal Vessel, with its snow-white sails and golden broidery, might well come missioned from a fairy isle to carry young lovers over a summer sea. The Bower of Illusion, is the looking-glass contriyance, and cleverly managed,-though the confusion it works is not very amusing or interesting. The burning forest is too hot to look at; and much as we generally like woodfires, we must own that there is such a thing as having too much of what is good. The performers did their duty, their fairy duty. Farley was earnest in the Corsair, and Miss Foote interesting in Fair Star. Mrs. Vining made a pretty Prince, and Miss E. Dennett played an Arielsprite with infinite vivacity. But could she not contrive to be dumb? We' hint at this, however, with diffidence. Poor Grimaldi in Topack, a slave, had a very little to do, but he beat it out like gold. He is certainly one of the tip-top actors of Covent Garden Theatre.

The dialogue of the piece-but, however, we hate to find fault.

SOME PASSÁGES IN THE LIFE OF MR. ADAM BLAIR, MINISTER
OF THE GOSPEL AT CROSS-MEIKLE.*

WE certainly should not have noticed this book in our pages, if a few gossiping novel readers, and several periodical publications, had not pronounced it to be a work of pathos and beauty, far exceeding all the Julia De Roubignés, and Charlotteand Werters in the whole romantic world of letters. We have been entreated by several soft readers, to walk, as a short cut to the temple of pure feeling, through some of the passages in Mr. Adam Blair's life;and we have at length yielded to these intreaties, and tried this literary halfpenny hatch leading through the gardens of sensibility and the flowers of morality to the temple itself. The dust (we use the mildest word)—the gloom, the tediousness of these " passages" have been to us so offensive, that we have determined upon running our critical broom through them, to make the way clearer, and the darker turns lighter, for all future travellers in the tender line.

The title of this book would lead all simple hearted Christians into the belief that it treated of struggles of the spirit, that it contained heartsearching admonitions,-fearless and patient controversies,-lonely and pious meditations-reasonings,-exhortations,-prayers! Let such readers put up the little swindler on the shelf again, and return to some old favourite and assured author; for Mr. Adam Blair is not the man for their money. If there be any controversies, they arise between Mr. Adam the minister, and the husband of his "adored Charlotte;" if any meditations exist, they are the meditations of a couple of holy and young Scotch creatures, who make love in a moonlight churchyard, on the tombstone of the deceased and buried Mrs. Blair. If there be any heartsearching admonitions, they are merely uttered by the young clergyman, to reprove the fallen wife for the errors into which he had helped her. In short, the lovers of Tillotson, and

VOL. V.

South, and Taylor, and of those who have breathed consolation to the miserable, and spoken quiet happiness to the good,-must stand aside, and turn a deaf eye to the present discourse. But let the followers of the Rev. Mr. Werter, and the Rev. Mr. De Roubigné, and the Rev. Mr. Lovelace, and the Rev. Mr. Abelard, and, indeed, of all the canting ministers in the sect of sensibility, come around us, while we expound the dark passages of the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, of Cross-meikle! We can promise a genuine love feast to the tenderly devout, at least. And goodly congregation of the maudlin now seeing (in our mind's eye) a flock gaping in their parlour-pews, we will shortly tell the good tale our own way, expounding as we proceed!

Mr. Adam Blair is the minister of Cross-meikle, and appears to be very comfortably settled in life, and in the first passage, with a comely wife and a decent allowance of bairns; in fact, gentleman of his cloth, his children a very moderate allowance for a being four only in number. Mrs: Blair and himself are unlucky in their rearing of them, and three of the little cherubs are carried off with the measles, or some such inelegant but fatal disorder. It occurs to us, that Mrs. Blair is not like most mothers, if the book is to be credited; of the last of these three infants for it states, that "after the death Mrs. Blair dried her tears: "-however, this was her business and not ours; and, perhaps, her subsequent regular death may be some atonement. She dies in the third or fourth page, which is certainly early work; and, indeed, we had fears that the denouement was coming at the wrong end of the book; but we soon found, as we shall explain anon, that the minister had to undergo "severer chastening," or, in other words, that with all the domestic happiness of the Dean and Chapter (the first chapter) all the extacies were to come. mediately after the lady's death, what

* Edinburgh, 1822.

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