THE UPHOLDER OF THE LEGITIMATE DRAMA.
BUNN, the great Upholder of the Legitimate Drama, has given another proof of his determination to promote the object of the patent monopoly, by propping up Tragedy and Comedy on the crutches of Spectacle and Music. SHAKSPEARE is now, as BYRON was the other day, the head stuck on the motley manager's bauble- stick, crowned with a jester's cap and dressed up in tinsel, hung round with jingling bells. Henry the Fourth has been made the framework for the stale pageant of Et.t.isvoN's old coronation procession " new revived." The scene of the enthronement in the Abbey has been puffed off as an anticipatory stage version of the approaching musical festi- val, and the Italian singers (Italian singers and Rossi Ni's operas in Westminster Abbey !) have been engaged to warble an air each, and swell the list of names. The orchestra is advertised as consisting of three hundred performers ! It is hardly surprising, therefore, that only a.fifth of them was seen, though the stage is converted into an orchestra, and the accustomed place of the musicians is "let off to the public." The number of choristers is not stated; judging from the proportion of the band, they must be almost innumerable—hence the modest concealment of their numerical strength.
BuNN's reverend care of the Legitimate Drama, reminds us of the quack who used to rush out at one door of his shop and knock down an unlucky passenger, and then tenderly take his victim in at the other to dress his wounds. Like these ex tempore patients, the Drama is first mauled and half-murdered, and then doctored by the managerial charlatan ; and the crowd shouts to see the wretched patient come hobbling forth, not expecting he would ever survive the process of cure, however he might have got over the injury. BUNN, like a grasping tradesman who has got two shops close together to sell the same wares, finds himself. obliged to close one in order to be able to keep the other open. He has bought out a rival, 'tis true; but lie must either set up an opposition to himself, or be content to share one quantity of profit between two of ex- penses.
Humbug, though nearly omnipotent, is not everlasting. The bubble looks bright so long as it has tenuity to bear the breath of puffery that inflates it. BUNN managed to attract the public for a while, by a constant succession of glittering nothings, like a juggler with his balls; but one by one has burst, and all that remains is the desperate manager blowing the breath out of his body to fill one abortive little bladder, that will scarcely bear to be launched from the pipe-bowl.
Previous page
