13 AUGUST 1842, Page 15

THE THEATRES.

THE English Theatres still continue in the drowsy state in which they have nodded the summer through ; but managers are rubbing their eyes, and show other symptoms of waking up, now that the closing of the Italian Opera and the ending of the Parliamentary session—the draw- ing-in of the days and the driving-off of the fashionable world—have rid them of their most formidable rivals, and left the field open to their exertions. When London is empty of all but a million or two of no- bodies, then is the prosperoup time of the English Theatres ; and both Drury Lane and Covent Garden are likely to begin the season early.

The English Opera has tried the patience of its visiters this week

with a French melodrama of misery and morality, oddly called The Broken Home; turning upon the beautiful incident of a father attempt- ing to seduce the betrothed of his son, whom he had abandoned in in- fancy : the perplexities are resolved by the father blowing out his brains. The burlesque of Blue Beard proved an efficient safety-valve for the escape of suppressed laughter, and went off with explosions of merri- ment: though not comparable in point and elegance with those by PLANCHi, there are some capital hits in it ; which BLAND as Blue Beard and OXBERRY as Shacka back made tell with ludicrous effect.

At the New Strand, Mr. and Mrs. KEELEY have been repeating their favourite methods of keeping the house in a roar ; which, however oft repeated, never fail. The Medical Students, irregular dogs as they are, have not kept their appointment with the public : they have been knocker- wrenching instead, we see by the papers, and narrowly escaped a dance on the tread-mill, which they well deserved. Meanwhile, Mrs. KEELEY has got among the wax dummies of Madame TUSSAUD'S exhibition, and set them walking and talking, by pretending to be a maid-servant frightened at the "dollies," as she calls them. Certainly Queen Eliza- beth, notwithstanding her glass-eyed stare, looked very like Mrs. KEELEY, who was asleep behind the curtain ; while Bonaparte was an odd mixture of Napoleon and Mr. CORRIE, Mrs. Kerr-Ries fellow-servant,- though the Emperor moved and stared like a veritable man of wax. The conversation of these departed Sovereigns is amusing from its in- congruity ; and the admixture of Wax and Wonders is a comical piece of mystification altogether.

At the Haymarket, a new farce by BERNARD, on the likely subject of Locomotion, is announced for Tuesday.