THE THEATRES.
TRE Adelphi audiences may congratulate themselves on time adoption of our stiggestioe, by which the Bayadeses hive become a most agreeable interlude for time gratification of half-price visiters,—for whom, however, there seems to be a very small amount of room just now ; and the Oriental spectacles, with glittering banners and red fire, copper-com- plexiotted :Brahmins and raging Rajahs, have given place to one of those domestic tragedies of " intense interest," by which the Adolph i has earned the title of time " Porte St. Martin of London."
Louise de Lignerolles, or a LeNson fir Husbands, is an adaptation, by Miss Patios's:, of it French melodrama, amid one of the most exciting of its class : it employs the principal talent of the company ( Mrs. KEELEY excepted), whose full force is shown for the first time in this powerful performance. The morale is not of the highest, certainly ; nor is the "lesson for husbands" much more clear, though stronger means are taken to enforce it, titan was the "lesson for ladies" that Mr. BIXESTONE read in English from a French author at the Hay- market in the early part of the season. French dramatists, in their tragic moods, always call in the aid of the police, as in their comic vein they invoke the military power. The story, in plain words, is a double adultery. The husband of Louise de Lignerolles seduces the wife of the Count de Givrey, though his own wife is a paragon of beauty, spirit, affection, and generosity; and the injured husband has no other fault than being rather grave. :Madame de Lignerolles detects his criminality, when it has reashed that first stage of vice which in the fashionable vocabulary is termed a liaison; and is content with bringing time guilty pair to a sense of their shame, and receiving their solemn vows of repentance and reformation : but these, after the lapse of a year of absence, are broken, without apparent excuse. So much for the offence ; now for the punishment. The Count de Givrey seems to have been intended us an example to prove that an "injured husband" is not necessarily a ridiculous object in the eyes of the woild ; and we therefore expected h:s conduct would be a precedent for ull similar cases in future. At first Inc assumes the haughty and inflexible calmness of an avenger ; instead of demanding front the man who has wronged him the " satisfaction of a gentleman," as it is facetiously termed, he sensibly refuses "to fight with a Villain whom he cat' soul to gaol," and appears resolutely bent on punishing him by process of law. But, alas for the infirmity of human purposes ! this model of dignity acid proptiety first yields to the entreaties of the culpiit's futher-inn.law to let him escape from justice, and next, hearing that his disgsaced wife has gone mad, jumps up, drags out the destroyer, and shuots him on the spot—having given him the "satisfaction " of firing ilk return—and then stands forward pistol in hand with the grand air of a man who has vindicated his ho. nour and done a noble action ; when he might as well have been seen writhing itt time ugoniee of death, mid the lucky villain standing over Lim, for aught that his conduct provided to the contrary. Of the ex- istence of any effectual means of punishing adultery as a crime, in France any more than England, we are not aware ; and the threat of* sending to gaol," seems, therefore, an empty boast, for tbe offender is rich : the only object of this "lesson to husbands," befond showing
that a man thus wronged is not therefore ridiculous, would have been to demonstrate that he has no remedy at all which as a man of sense and spirit he could resort to—in a word, that adultery is an offence that may be committed with impunity. This would have been a useful " lesson to legislators ; " and it might have enforced a twofold moral, if the injured wife, when her false husband threatens to take her child from her, were
to pour forth the bitter reproaches that rise to her lips at this exquisite instance of the tyranny of the dominant sex : as it is, indeed, Louise de Lignerolles might be :nude to utter a prophetic anticipation of the enactment of a better law than even Mr. TALFOURD'S "Custody of Infants Bill."
The acting of this piece is very powerful. Mrs. YATES, as Louise de Lignerolles, depicts the lively contentment of the fond wife and mother before her happiness is blasted; her alarm and sickening ap- prehension when her suspicions are first aroused, and her eager willing.. ness to believe them unfounded ; arid the agony of horror, grief, and indignation, when she discovers the fatal truth with the reality of actual suffering: never has inward torture evinced by outward calmness been more thrillingly expressed—it is fearful to witness. Yaaes, as the Count de Givrey, looks a most formidable avenger : he seems as if all the ener- gies of a matt of action were concentred into one purpose; his deliberate coolness and immoveable stedfastness, (until the last,) and his direct, business-like mole of procedure, only want a more rational plan and steady persistence, to make him the sublimation of a man of the temid : had he carried through a settled scheme of revenge, the effect would have been terrible. J. Wensaeit portrays in a very natural manner the rash, impulsive, selfish young man of gallantry, whose resolution is powerless before his passion ; and the shame and confusion of the base betrayer when first detected and humbled, and his fury and brutal reck- lessness when goaded to desperation. Mrs. Hosev, as the Countess de Givrey, surprised us by the touchieg expression she gave to the repentance and humiliation of the guilty woman. 0. Sol it perso- nates a veteran soitlier, the father of Louise,—mm grave, suspicious uld fellow, who is always corning in and out, following the !scent like a hound; and F. Mannavs, a prince very fond of hunting, who is intro- duced in the first scene for no purpose whatever—unless it be to impress us with a notion of Madame de Isignerolles's high spirit in imponnding two of his higheess's dogs tivit luta entered her park, and her goodness of heart in exacting as their ransom the 'needing of a road on the prince's estate for the benefit of the peasantry.
There is too much thentnery and compliment between the family, and a superfluity of high. flown sentiment put into the mouths of the eau:sley couple: the invocations of the dead mother, and the allusions to her tomb are too strong of Pere le Chaise.
The opening scene, where the Lignerolles family are at breakfast in the garden, and the " bonne" brings in the child to manena, who ,'eel to to instruct her darliug, is very pretty, and by its homely reality assists the tragical effect of the after scenes.
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