THE THEATRE.

A DRYDEN REVIVAL.

rrox what sort of a play will the curtain rise when the Phoenix Society produces Dryden's Marriage a la Mode on Sunday and

Monday next ? When it was first acted in 1673 the play was a brilliant success ; for did it not contain all the ingredients that the age preferred ? Here was a satiric comedy and an heroical pastoral in one. The flippant could enjoy the amusing and dis- graceful shifts to which the author put his abominable Doralice, and the sentimental the barley-sugar loves and gingerbread vicissitudes of Palmyra and Leonidas. For the whole age could but afford this choice of auditor to a stage play ; men and women

of sense and discernment were (as Scott points out in his notes on The Conlue-st of Granada) no longer frequenters of the theatre. " They were banished by the rigour of religious prejudice and

perhaps by a just abhorrence of the licentious turn of the drama."

A vicious circle had been formed. Without the restraint which the presence of such critics would have imposed, with an audience

who cared only for ogling and dexterity,-..the drama naturally became more and more polished, heartless, sensual, and foppish. Dryden applauded the change of audience, for he was among other things a snob, and loved that it should be thought of his plays that they were addressed exclusively to the Court. "Gentlemen," he, says, "will now be entertained with the follies of each other; and though they allow Cobb and Tib to speak

properly, yet they are not much pleased with their Tankard or with their rags ; and surely their conversation can be no jest to them en the theatre, when they would avoid it in the street." One fact, however, complicated the situation. Dryden was too great a poet and too keen an antiquary not to admire Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Fletcher exceedingly, and to be perpetually worried by an uneasy feeling that all was not well with ordinary comedies of intrigue be they never so " judicious." But Shakespeare was surely too coarse a dish (with a corrupt text this was partly true) to set before a king ? Therefore Dryden will refurbish, polish, paint up, mix, and " heighten " Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, and Fletcher, and present an improved version of the heroic blank-verse drama to his elegant audience.

When he is " on his day " as with Marriage a la Mode he will, moreover, link a poetical play up with an ordinary comedy of

intrigue, and salt the whole with a mixture of flattery to the Court and thinly veiled indecency that delighted his age and is likely to nauseate ours. The wit and raillery but just serve to keep the play from putrefaction. The first act opens with delightful liveliness upon Doraliee's impudent song and dialogue with Palamede. We hope that the Phoenix's actors will make the action of this part of the play as quick and light as it should be. After the foundations of the two cross love intrigues have

been laid, we have the very dull blank verse with which the ingthlue and the Prince disguised as a shepherd are introduced, and the poetic part of the drama begins. This piece of dialogue is enlivened only by the following stage direction concerning

the rustic foster-father of the Prince :- " As the guards are carrying Hermogenes away, his peruke falls off."

Let us hope that the actors will have noted this revealing par- ticular. However, the audience is not long left to bcwigged Imitations of Fletcher. Melantha, the character so much praised by Colley Cibber, soon appears :—

" Melantha is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be tortured into the form of a fine lady "— Ifelantha, who never allows her lover to get in a word edgeways, who has a list of the newest French words brought to her every day by her waiting-woman, and who is always hurrying off

" to pay half a and of visits." In the fourth act there is a masquerade and the stage directions speak of songs and dances.

If the dresses in this play are as good as were those in The Duchess of Malf, the audience should here enjoy a scene rather like the

Russian ballet's Good-Humoured Ladies with Pietro Longhi black cloaks, three-cornered hats, and white masks.

The general impression left upon the reader of Marriage a la Mode is one of having experienced something very lively, moderately witty, occasionally pretty, and usually exceedingly unedifying, though by no means as revolting as some of the plays of the period.

If the acting is good in the Phoenix's production, especially if the four lovers in the comedy of intrigue (Melantha, Rhodophil, Palamede,and Doralice) are sufficiently quick and good-humoured, the effect of the play when performed should be a brilliant one, despite the tediousness of its poetic half. Indeed it is just possible that when it is acted this " improved " Fletcher (shades of the Faithful Shepherdess !) may be reasonably effective and its absurd vicissitudes take on something of adventure and romance. We shall report next week upon the Phoenix's performance, and tell how the actors played their parts, and how

Dryden's fine faded coat stood the limelight. Dam