THE THEATRES.
THE great bauble which the Drury Lane manager has been making so, much fuss about—that was to " amaze the very faculties of eyes and ears" of all the grown babies of the town, by its magnitude and splen- dour and the jingle of its bells—turns out to be a trumpery toy of tarnished tinsel, that the public, like a spoiled child surfeited with show and glitter, flung from it in disgust. Fortunately for us, we were not present on the first night of Caractacus, when five acts of heavy declamation, encumbered with the semblance of an underplot, and made more tedious by delays in dragging the dingy pomp across the boards, exhausted the patience of the audience. But the "grand histo- rical spect5cle," though literally hissed off the stage on Monday, was presented the following night in an abridged shape ; a few sounding speeches being retained to connect together the disjointed members of the pageant : and being tolerated by a packed house, it was announced for nightly infliction till further notice. The drama is said to be adapted from the Bonduca of BEsestoxr and FLETcHER : what share the old dramatists have in the dialogue, we have not been at the pains to ascertain ; for we should have been sorry to find them answerable for much of the stuff that was bawled out by Mr. Bumeit and his co-ranters. In fact, it is to be regarded merely as a spectacle ; and if this had been well managed, worse dialogue might have been tolerated. The first grand scene, representing a Druidical temple, with priests preparing for a solemn rite, is charac- teristic, and has an imposing effect. The way in which the painted figures are made to group with the living ones is admirable ; and were the dancing-girls with torches and tie ancient Britons introduced more skilfully, it would convey a vivid idea of the probable real- ity. The scene of the intrenched camp was made ludicrous by a most impotent mimicry of a fight ; iii which the combatants seemed unusually tender of the persons of their antagonists, and the Roman spearmen looked as it' they were tickling the Britons, who gently re- tired to avoid the playfol poke. In front there were two or three pair of fencers who played at "hammer and anvil," and jumped about with great activity ; hut their energy only made the tameness of the other sham-fighters more evident. The grand finale of a Roman triumph was a climax of inefficiency. 6' The ascent to the capital by the Olivia Asyli," as the bills have it, is a double staircase, like that at Exeter Flail ; and the procession enters from the back of the stage, up an in- clined plane so steep, that " Mr. Davis's fine stud of horses " had great difficulty in dragging up the cars, which shook about in so undignified a manner that we began to fear Ceesar would be dethroned and the spoils be scattered about. The "body of Roman cavalry" consisted of some balf.a.dozen : the " victims for sacrifice (from the Zoological Gardens)" might as well have been a couple of calves from Smithfield ; anti an ass might have been substituted for the camel, for the weight of " riches" that he bore. The whole posse are stationed on the stair- case ; the fore.quarters of two elephants are stuck on each side of the wing, their beads bobbing about like mandarins on a mantelpiece ; the car of Ctesar shoots up to a height rather alarming ; and Caractacus and his wife and daughter being freed from their chains, there is a ge- neral shoutilig and braying of trumpets, and burning of blue fire, and the curtain falls. Anti this was modem' excuse for shuttin; up the thea- tre and &Kiehl; the actors of two nights' salary—serving the double purpose of puffing the piece and saving the treasury. We had nigh forgot BALFE'S music sung by the Druids—perhaps it is better to forget it quite; though it answered the purpose of prolonging the scene well enough.
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