THE THEATRES.
BUCKSTONE, who has catered so much to the taste of that portion of the play.going public which doats on the interesting horrors of heart and house breaking, has now turned this delicate penchant to account in the opposite way—remorselessly ridiculing and gravely censuring the source of the tender sympathies he had so movingly excited-.
However, he lays on the lash of satire in such a facetious way, that the
victims themselves roar with ecstatic merriment during the indiction-, save and except those dull intervals when the " preachee" interrupts the " floggee." Love and Murder, or the School for Sympathy, is the title of the lust Becesroisn extravanganza, produced this week at the Haymarket, which can only be called a comedy by way of burlesque, seeing that it is in reality a farce—though as long as it is broad. The members of the Schoolfor Sympathy consist of Mrs. Frigid._ whose passion for contradiction is chilled by the compliant indifference of an iceberg of a husband ; Mrs. General Jumble—a widow with an inexhaustible olla podrida of small-talk, in which "my general" is a principal ingredient ; Lady Teardrop, a hirmoyante sentimentalist; Fletcher Green, a specimen of verd antique ; and Lappet, a wait- ing-maid with a strong taste for dying-speeches. The whole party are assembled at Mrs. Frigid's to enjoy the perusal of a most interesting case of "love and murder ;" and their eestacy is complete when they are told that the murderer himself, having escaped from prison, is actually secreted in the house,—which makes up for their previous dis- appointment at being deprived of the pleasure of hearing sentence passed upon him. The criminal is petted and pitied, comfortably lodged in a summer.house, and dosed with champagne and sympathy; but before be can be got away, Mr. Frigid, whose suspicious are awakened, conceals himself in a neighbouring out-building, of very equivocal character, but, to prevent mistakes, called an ice-house, and detects the culprit. An ecclaircissement ensues; the murdered man, who has all the while been of the paity, throws off his incognito ; and the murderer, stripped of his criminal character, turns out to be a harmless love-sick swain, who has unconsciously made a couple of husbands miserable and compromised the character of his mistress, be- sides jeoparding his own neck, in his desperate attempts to—take her likeness ! Mrs. Frigid and her friends finding they have thrown away their sympathy and champagne upon a fellow who has not so much as an intrigue to answer for, are loud in their disgust and vexa- tion ; and the pseudo-criminal carries off the lady of his love from the very man who had taken on himself the office of lecturing the coterie on their depraved taste,—which is any thing but poetical justice. This slight sketch of the plot conveys a very inadequate notion of its intricacies and monstrous improbabilities ; but the triumph that BUCKSTONE has achieved over sense and reason may be guessed at. The fun was well nigh spoilt, however, by the introduction of some scenes intended to possess a serious interest, and emulating the didactic decorum of grave comedy—an incongruity so preposterous that it can only be explained by supposing BUCKSTONE to have been blinded by his ambition to rival SHERIDAN : the School for Scandat was evidently the model of the Schoolfor Sympathy, great as is the difference between them. There are some capital hits at the morbid curiosity and maudlin distresses that vulgar and weakminded people are so prone to indulge in : the declaration of Mrs. Jumble, that "a man who governs his pas- sions is protected by nature, but he whose passions govern him is a pro- per object for the protection of others," is the climax of the argumentum ad absurdum. Mrs. Gtovea gave it out with prodigious gusto; and Lappet's confession that " the most agreeable fellows are generally the wickedest," was made by Mrs. HUMBY with genuine nu'ivete. Some of the situations are farcically ludicrous, but there is no scope for good acting. FARREN could make nothing of the character of Jab!', (the pretended murdered Mandeville,) though he looked wretched enough for the representative of a triple cuckold ; and BUCKSTONE IIS Frigid could only stare about like a man with a stiff neck, and speak as if his mouth was full of paste—all which was very droll, though we did not see the wit of it. He trembled for the fate of his piece—as well he might, for its progress was like that of a drunken man along the edge of a precipice : it had a very narrow escape.
Poweit's nights of perforinance are announced in the play-bills as
schoolboys note the days before the holydays—" the last night but six of his engagement." At this rate his first appearance should have been thus advertised—" First time of Mr. Poweit's appearance since his return from America, and last night but eleven of his engagement " The advent of a Mr. PHELPS, "of provincial celebrity," in Shyloch, has been predicted so long beforehand, that be must be not merely a "star," but a comet.
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