THE THEATRE.
WE have been so long accustomed to consider an hour or two of brave old KEAN as worth a whole army of ordinary actors, that we may be forgiven some disappointment at finding him in a part little above the level of the rest of the cast, and playing it certainly as if no extraordinary exertion was expected in his character or by his audience.
The Surrender of Calais is a play of GEORGE COLMAN'S; and, like all. other imitations of an obsolete style, is a most detestable jumble of ancient phraseology and modern senti- ment. Plays, when they long. outlive their date, and survive, amidst a change of manners, opinions, and almost of language, do it by virtue of their stuff; which is the last thing an imitator is able to reach. GEORGE COLMAN, for instance, could turn his sentences upside down, and make them read Elizabethan ; he . could indulge in long out-of-the-way dialogues, turning upon a . play of words; or he could make a display of ribaldry, and in- stead of introducing gravediggers making merry with skulls, give us a couple of hangmen joking about halters and gibbets : but where is the stuff all the time, for which we have pardoned similar vices in SHAKSPEARE and his contemporaries ? It would be vain to look for it in men of the calibre of the ex-joker and licenser.
But KEAN has often before now made much of little; and when the part sank under him, stood up in the majesty of his own con- ceptions. He made no such attempt on Wednesday night at the Haymarket : he was content to play out the play—and indeed it would have been better had he played it just as it was set down for him. Probably no one on the stage could have performed the part better ; nevertheless, as he neither astonished nor charmed us, we felt we had a right to be disappointed. If we might suppose a fine actor getting up in a dream, and going through a favourite piece in a fit of somnambulism, a right conception would he formed of our evening's entertainment in witnessing the latest effort of our once turbulent tragedian. He spoke low, in the manner of somnam- bulists, as if he were afraid of rousing himself; he trod gently, as if feeling his way ; he had a trick of perpetually winking, as if he were about to wake ; he was deadly pale, as it was his part to be ; and, altogether, looked a fine ghost of a great actor.It was KEAN in the Shades (we mean the Shades below): we fancied him wandering in the Elysian fields in search of GARRICK. It is very true, that there was much propriety in all this: can it be ex- pected of a man who, like Eustache do St. Pierre, has not broken bread for three days, that he should be very buoyant ? or in fact, that he should not appear the faint, powerless, sleep-walking being represented by KEAN ?—So that, after all, the fault probably rests, where we would much rather it did rest, with the author more than the actor. In this respect the coincidence between Mr. KEAN'S cholera and St. Pierre's starvation was lucky. The Surrender of Calais is a penny-loaf tragedy : its pathos con- sists in want of bread—its humour in the rumbling of an empty stomach ; the parts where the audience were meant to laugh, as well as where they were to cry, turned upon hunger. The great point of the tragedy is where St. Pierre, the first citizen of Calais, gets into a corner to eat a little victuals privately : he pulls out a loaf, and opens a clasp-knife, and is on the point of enjoying him- self, when lo ! an old man gets a sight of the provender, and straightway sets up a cry about his hungry daughter. Then comes the tug of pathos—to eat or not to eat, that is the question. KEAN looked volumes at the roll, moistened the crust with a tear, and at length handed it over to the white-headed old beggar ; who, we must say, after he had got possession. made off with an activity to be predicated only of a lamplighter. This is the tragedy of real life. The grand point of comedy is a similar stroke of genius r a burly man-at-arms addresses the citizens on the criticalness of their pose. tion, and congratulates them on the obstinacy of their valour: his oration is to be followed by a shout: the citizens attempt a huzza —such a huzza!—it was like the baa of a dying sheep or the bleat of a forsaken lamb ; whereupon the audience did as it was intended they should—they laughed very heartily at the starving wretches, that had not even a shout left in them. The poor devils then began to compare notes. It was mighty laughable, to be sure— comedy never was so amusing : some had had no food for two, some for three days ; all had starving families : chalk had done its worst on their faces, and the property-man had supplied them with the most capacious of breeches ; they were all perfect " atomies," rivals of the living skeleton—grumbling, shivering, rumbling, and starving—rattling their bones like dice in a box. In short, the farce was delightful to a well-fed audience—it was a rich dessert after a good dinner. Contrast is the soul of wit. We never saw any thing more comic, save the scene between the long and short post-boys in Jonathan in England, when small KEELEY whines out, " We've nut had saw meat all day." The only other exceedingly comic turn, was the hanging matter: that was a joke indeed. The execution of six of the best citizens of Calais after eleven months starvation, is necessarily a light affair, and COLMAN has made a regular broad grin of it. The Jack Ketch of the piece is a mighty funny fellow ; and he enter= tamed us during a long scene with the relish he has for his profes- sion. His principal joke turns upon once having hanged the wrong man ; and his chief pride is in the stability of his gallows, and the satisfaction he gives his customers. His anxiety is that his friends should go off cheerily. The ordinary of an assize town in the North, on examining a new gallows, after spacing it out into equal portions of standing-room, observed with satisfaction, that six could hang comfortably there. Now this is the spirit of COLMAN'S Jack Ketch—a right handy fellow, who twists a halter as if he were tying a true-lover's knot. Our readers will see the sort of entertainment provided for them—hunger and hanging—pleasant spectacles both ! if we add KEAN in his sleep, we have pretty well summed up the charms of the Surrender of Calais. We ought to say, that HARLEY acted the part of La Gloire with a good deal of humour. His preparations for death were very amusing, and quite in the spirit of the piece. He described his execution, along with that of his venerable parent Eustache de St. Pierre, as " only going a little way with his father." The absurdest thing, however, was GATTIE'S part of a French citizen of Calais, who talks broken English to his countrymen. If tke stage were not crowded with similar inconsistenciesokrely a glaring one like this would not be witnessed with apparent unconsciousness. The audience appeared most attracted by political allusions: a few of KEAN'S best sneers on the emptiness of aristocratic dis tinctions, seemed to hit the humour of the house, and were'loudly welcomed.
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