By ready wit and piquancy of verbal joke, the brothers
Brough have well maintained their recently earned reputation in the Haymarket Easter piece The Sphinx • but they have been less felicitous as to their subject than in Camaralzaman and Badoura. There is humour in making the antique Sphinx ask the most commonplace conundrums that are to be found in our present riddle-books, and then disown the proverbially dull Bosotians, because they cannot tell "when a door is not a door," or "what makes more noise than a pig at a gate ": but this notion is hardly enough for the chief element of a piece; and the extra incidents that fill up the work are not remarkably.striking. Another objection to the subject of the piece lies in the position of (Edipus. To every classical reader, the fatal re- sults of the marriage of (Edipus and Jocasta, forming as they do the basis of three tragedies of Sophocles, are quite as familiar as the destruction of the Sphinx; and the transformation of Jocasta into a daughter of Croon, so that the whole may terminate with a happy wedding, cannot but strike many among an educated audience as a startling violation of a story. The dramatist may do as he likes with details of fact, but be should always hold sacred the real character of a story or personage. It is a great merit with Mr. Planche--for whom the brothers Brough are more than a match in point of via comica—that be always shows a deep reverence for the sub- ject he takes, and satisfies the connoisseurs of the branch of literature to which it belongs. The attraction of the story of Camaralzaman was a small matter; but when we begin to change in its essentials the history of (Edipus, we shall soon deprive the names of dramatis personre of all signi- ficance whatever.
The statuesque dress of Mr. Keeley as the Sphinx—who is what Hero- dotus calls an " androsphinx "—and the stern fierceness with which he propounds his conundrums, are highly amusing. Mrs. Keeley, in the cha- racter of Mercury, being only a sort of chorus, has no opportunity for those displays of feeling which were so exquisitely droll in Camaralzaman.
In the selection of popular tunes for burlesque entertainments, Messrs. Brough always show great talent; and they are fortunate in such good singers as Miss P. Horton and Miss Reynolds. This last-named lady is evidently destined to take a high and secure place in her profession. She is abundantly arch, without forcing her archness upon her audience: in- deed, a union of so much vivacity and so much good sense is rarely to be found.
Previous page
