THE THEATRE.

" THE BEGGAR'S OPERA " : 100TH PERFORMANCE.

ON September 1st the production of The Beggar's Opera at the Lyric, Hammersmith, reached its 100th performance. I trust that all other dramatic critics performed (as did the present

writer) the solemn ceremony of the throwing up of the hat —and that bowlers, toppers, felt hats, and check caps vied

with another in aspiring flight on that day. The fact of these 100 performances is, when we consider it as a sequel to the run of Abraham Lincoln, a real triumph for most of the theories that the critics have been proffering to averted

managerial heads any time these ten years. Of course I know very well how Essence of Manager is going to answer me : " Yes, 100 performances ; what price Chu Chin Chow with 1,900 ? "

But I am ready for him. I have thought it out. " Do you realize," I am going to reply, " that Chu Chin. Chow is about

fourteen times as costly a production as The Beggar's Opera ?

Think of the amount of gold that has to be poured down that pump to make it draw. Camels have to be fed ; jewel caves

have to be renexed. Consider the yards of stuff that are em- ployed to cover or display the enormous charms of the chorus. Consider the orchestra, consider the limes, consider the scenery specially adapted at vast expense for nipping off the noses of the actors, and consider the two or three complete renewals of dresses and scenery. Consider the rent of His Majesty's Theatre. Then, turn your mind to the simplicity of The

Beggar's Opera. There is one set throughout which is adapted by slight but significant changes for its various parts. The caste is small, and I have no doubt they are not in the least more rapacious in the matter of salaries because of their very much greater efficiency. The Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, is a cheap theatre, and Mr. Lovat Fraser the most ingeniously economical of artists in costume and decor." This is what I shall say.

Now, it must not be thought that I am decrying Chu Chin Chow. I liked parts of it very much when I saw it years ago, and I perfectly well understand why people go to see it so constantly, but no one would deny the greater appeal to the intelligence of Mr. Playfair's production, and I do want to point out to my friends the managers that it may very well be as lucrative to produce a good thing cheaply as to produce a very silly thing gorgeously.

One point about The Beggar's Opera will be significant to those who have experience in producing—its continued aesthetic success when two of the principal parts were taken by understudies. Mr. Clive Carey took Mr. Ranalow's part as Macheath, and at the same time in the absence of Mr. Austin, the original Peachum, his part was taken by Mr. Wynn, who had played Lockit, and his part, again, by Mr. Rawson. The play did not suffer in the least, and the acting seemed as satis- factory as ever. But I should like to say something on the general principle of understudies as the point is admirably illustrated in the cases of Mr. Carey and Mr. Ranalow. Mr. Ranalow makes Macheath look like Sir Robert Walpole, and behave not like a young gallant but like a mature man of pleasure. He was a practised rather than a dashing lover, and depended for his charm upon a manner and gesture which was rounded and satisfying like his voice. Mr. Clive Carey is a younger, slimmer and more agile man. He dances and pirouettes to admiration. His voice is lighter, his person more supple, but neither his acting nor his voice hadMr. Ranalow'sresonance. But do you think he definitely made Macheath into a Prince Charming, dashing-lover part ? No, he wore the same wig, the same dignified coat, and his face was made up to look tanned and set as did Mr. Ranalow's. The effect was as of divided counsel. He found it impossible in his acting not to be a young man, and the mature pose which one had willingly accepted in the case of Mr. Ranalow became gratuitous and puzzling. Why should not the understudy, if he bears no physical resemblance to his principal, strike out a line for himself ? It would have been a delight to see Mr. Carey let himself go as a gilded youth—young scapegrace, devil-may-care Macheath.

One more word upon the acting. I have now seen The Beggar's Opera several times, and nothing perhaps strikes me more on getting to know the play than the great histrionic talent of Miss Elsie French—Mrs. Peachum. Her acting of that high-spirited old harridan is quite admirable. So great is her

sense of dramatic fitness that, though surely young and charming, she is willing to have a red nose and act up to it. So great is her power of sell-restraint that she never, on the other hand, lets the red nose run away with her to that bottomless pit which

awaits those who exaggerate a " character part." As for Polly, she is the true successor of the charming, the arch, the innocent Miss Fenton. Now that the success of Mr. Playfair's revival is assured, I have dared at last to read again about

Lavinia Fenton, Pope, Swift, Congreve, and Dr. Johnson. Earlier a word breathed of an illustrious past might—I had a superstitious fear—have frightened off the public. But the public are now well settled in their enjoyment of the first musical comedy, and Smelfungus can do his worst.

May I then remind the reader of two passages from The Lives of the Poets and the Dunciad with which he is certainly already familiar, but which exhibit admirably the characters of both the critics and piece ?

Gay, Johnson says, had been disappointed in the matter of a Court appointment, but this may be supposed " to have been driven away by the unexampled success of The Beggar's Opera. This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama,

was first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury Lane,

and rejected ; it being then carried to Rich, had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay rich, and Rich gay."

Pope gives the following account of the origins of the piece :-

" Dr. Swift had been observing once to Mr. Gay what an odd, pretty sort of a thing a Newgate Pastoral might make. Gay was inclined to try at such a thing for some time, but afterwards thought it would be better to write a comedy on the same plan. This was what gave rise to' the Beggar's Opera. He began on it, and when first he mentioned it to Swift, the Doctor did not much like the project. As he carried it on, he showed what he wrote to both of us, and we now and then gave a correction or a word or two of advice, but it was wholly of his own writing When it was done, neither of us thought it would succeed. We showed it to Congreve, who, after reading it over, said it would either take greatly or be damned confoundedly. We were all, at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event, till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say : It will do—it must do ! I see it in the eyes of them.' This was a good while before the first act was over, and so gave us ease soon, for that Duke (besides his own good taste) has a particular knack, as any one now living, in discovering the taste of the publick. He was quite right in this, as usual ; the good nature of the audience appeared stronger and stronger every act, and ended in a clamour of applause."

In Pope's notes to the Dunciad it is recorded that The Beggar's Opera was " a piece of satire which hit all tastes and degrees of men, from those of the highest quality to the very rabble.

. . . The vast success of it was unprecedented, and almost incredible. What is related of the wonderful effects of the ancient music or tragedy hardly came up to it : Sophocles and Euripides were less followed and famous."

"Besides being acted in London sixty-three days without interruption, and renewed the next season with equal applause, it spread into all the great towns of England, was played in many places to the thirtieth and fortieth time, at Bath and Bristol fifty, else. It made its progress into Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, where it was• performed twenty-four days successively. The ladies carried about with them the favourite songs of it in fans, and houses were furnished with it in screens. The fame of it was not confined to the author only. The person who acted Polly, till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town ; her pictures were engraved and sold in great numbers her life written, books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests. Furthermore, it drove out of England (for that season) the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years."

Pope was not quite correct in saying that the person who acted Polly was till then obscure, for Lavinia Fenton had already played with applause in The Orphan and in Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem, through which play "she became the talk

of the coffee-houses, the most celebrated toast in town. Her face, her form, her grace, her voice, her archness, her simplicity, were lauded alike on all hands." But as soon as she appeared in the role of " Polly," Lavinia Fenton became the rage. Swift wrote from Dublin to bespeak an early copy of her " memo- tinto." Gay observed that " Polly is now in so high vogue that I am in doubt whether her fame does not surpass that of the opera itself." " When the appeal to Mr. and Mrs. Peachum to spare Macheath—` Oh, ponder well ? be not severe ! '- rang through the house in tones of the deepest emotion, she fairly carried the whole audience away with her and secured the success of the opera."

Even in a frank age there was a certain amount of controversy as to the morality of the piece. Swift commended it as a piece

that " placed all kinds of vice in the strongest and most odious light," but " Dr. Herring, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, censured it as giving encouragement not only to vice but to crimes, by making a highwayman the hero and dismissing him at last unpunished. It has been even said that, after the exhibi- tion of The Beggar's Opera, the gangs of robbers were evidently multiplied." Dr. Johnson deals with this point with his usual knock-down good sense, and leaves nothing more to be said about it :- " But these decisions are surely exaggerated. The play, like many others, was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good ; nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and house- breakers seldom frequent the play-house, or mingle in any elegant diversion ; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because ho sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage."

Not a whit the more is a modern public likely to be debauched

by the example of Mrs. Diana Trapes. TARN.