THE THEATRES.
THE "tragic drama" with the unmeaning title of The Cavalier, that was brought out at the Haymarket on Thursday, furnishes an opt solution of what appears a mystery to many,—namely, how it is that, with such a cloud of writers, we have so few good dramatists. This play is a striking example, showing the small share that mere skill in authorcraft—the art of employing words to express ideas—hi s in pro-
clueing a fine drama; and it is, at the same time, a proof of the influ- ence of a rhetorical style upon the multitude. Like oral eloquence, it dazzles the perception and misleads the understanding for the time ; though the triumph of the merely fluent writer and florid orator is equally transient.
The author of The Cavaliers, a Mr. Wiirresteeo, has a good choice of poetic imagery, as well as of words to clothe it in ; he has no lack of appropriate sentiment, prettily, though rather elaborately expressed ; but in all the essentials of dramatic composition he appears to be utterly deficient, judging from this (we suppose) his first attempt. The cha- racters, when they are any thing more than mere vehicles of dialogue, are ludicrously Inconsistent and unnatural ; the incidents arc shocking to the sense, and outrage probability ; while the construction of the drama is deficient in action, progression, and stage situation. Yet such is the effect of clever writing in the dialogue, that, in spite of these capital defects, the audience sat attentively through many feeble, mawkish, and tedious scenes, applauding beautiful passages as they oc- curred, and eagerly seizing upon any redeeming point of the acting to mark their approbation : indeed, had the denouement been it happy in- stead of a tragical one, we verily believe the play would have been suc- cessful. Here is another moral for the benefit of inexperienced dra- matis ts.
The story is this. Hargrave " the Cavalier," a peer soldier, with nothing left to him but his honour and an independent spirit, is happy,
however, in the possession of a lovely and affectionate wife. A cer- tain Lord .Moreton, one of the courtiers of Charles the Second, sees the wife of Hargrave during her repeated visits to the court with me. modals for the restitution of her husband's estates, which had been escheated by Cromwell. He is smitten ; and finding his addresses spurned by the lady,-tempts the husband to become the pander to his own shame, by the offer of money, and of influence at court, to promote
his suit. Hargrave is slow to see through the shallow pretence of friendship that veils this insulting proposal ; but when he does at last perceive it, plumes himself upon returning the purse, that, with all his boasted, pride and independence he had accepted as a loan ; and his in- dignation evaporates in idle threats and bluster. All on a sudden, how- ever, lie begins to suspect his wife's fidelity,—for it never occurs to him that a seducer would not be likely to incur the risk of being run through the body by the husband, if he had any chance of making the wife corn- pliant ; and he proceeds to put her virtue to the test, by the monstrous and revolting expedient of proposing to her to adopt the atrocious scheme of advancing his fortunes suggested by Lord Moreton. The wife is of course horror-struck, and rejects the vile overture with loathing. Even this does not satisfy the dolt : he still suspects her ; and her pro- tracted absence on another errand to the court confirms his suspicions. Seeking her at Lord Moreton's house, he learns that she is there, from a procuress who has her in custody ; and who, though such a novice in hi r infamous office as to reveal the secret, tells a string of gratuitous lies, in the same breath with which she boggles at one. On his return home, he is joined by his wife, who has escaped from the violence offered to her by stabbing her abducer. Her manner of relating the circumstance, however, prepares the audience to expect the consumma- tion of the villany. The devoted woman is no sooner restored to her ht:-band's confidence, than she is hurried away to prison for the murder; tri:.(1, and condemned to death, by the perjury of the wretched procuress and another tool of the rascally Lord. The husband, after whining and maundering to himself, and sennoilizing his unhappy wife at considerable length, stabs her, in order to avert the disgrace of a public execution, and then himself dies of poison he had taken beforehand ! On the heels of this catastrophe, the repentant procuress rushes in, and confesses that she contrived to make the jury believe that the seemingly chaste matron, defending her honour, was a profligate termagant stabbing her paraindur because he would not give her more money ! Such is the farrago of grossness and absurdity, which was received with applause and the silent praise of tears, and but for the shock of the catastrophe, which elicited a burst of hisses, would have been successful; nay, as it was, the hisses were overpowered by plaudits, when it was announced for repetition to-night. For ourselves, disgust was stifled by laughter, in which we were joined by a few, who like us, were provoked to merriment by these monstrous incongruities. We do not pretend, therefore, to appreciate the acting ; for we really could
not sympathize even with the distress of ELLEN TREE as Mrs. Har-
grave, delicate and spontaneously impassioned as was her expression of the emotions natural to a woman under such impossible circumstances.
VANDENHOIT, as Hargrave, had a disagreeable, dreary, up-hill part to
play: he did his best to simulate reality, but his pathos, always heavy and monotonous, in this instance became insufferably tedious : the maudlin weakness of the character was ill suited to the hardness of his manner and the unvarying expression of his countenance, and it became a lumbering piece of imbecility.
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