" SARDANAPALUS," SEEN WITH OTHER EYES.
THERE is nothing intrinsically agreeable in doing what may by possibility work pain or disappointment to any. But non omnibus omniu ; and every man must be content to go through the fair ordeal of criticism, without assuming that the demonstration of where he fails, implies any denial of what may be his merits else- where. The rule is particularly applicable to theatrical exhibi• tions; where the systematic pains taken to debase the public judgment, have produced in the multitude an almost morbid in. sensibility to good or evil in the higher orders of performance. The immediate object is to comment on the total failure in bring- ing forward Lord BYRON'S drama of Sardanapalus. Whether political or religious animosity interfered to compass the depression of the national poet, might almost be a point suspected, if there was not some difficulty in assigning a reason why the drama should have been produced at all. If its production had been forced on the producers, the question would be clear. Without the slightest desire to depreciate the representative of Sardanapalus in any other character, nothing could be devised to harrow up the poet's soul (if it attends to tragedies) like seeing his hero when he makes his appearance at the head of his troop of dancing-girls, looking like a man who has straggled from his grave. Sardana- pains, not to speak it irreverently, should have some touch of the Mercutio in him: he should be a smiling, gay, Assyrian GEORGE the Fourth, without his fatness; with just as much odour of the dandy, as might serve to contrast the change which takes place, on a less royal scale, when a light-hearted officer of Life-Guards starts forth, as he has been known to do, to play the part of a true leader in a night alarm. There should be some attraction in him, some kindred with humanity. He should at least laugh some- times; and if he cannot, he had better grin. What makes the whole more passing patience, is the knowledge that besets the spectator, that if all this is to be redeemed at all, it is to be by coming to the common claptrap heroism of stalk and stagger, the sweepings of the Minor Theatres, where girls point to the stage and say "That's a Genii' Sardanapalus might in truth he made a stock character; but then it must be by somebody who has a gift for it. One of the most interesting points about the stage, is to see how the genius of a particular actor will some- times bring out a character which nobody knew to be one before. No better example can be given than Mr. FawcErr's Casca ; and perhaps Mr. FARLEY'S "Cloten the Queen's son." Nobody knew either of these to be characters, till he saw them in the hands of those actors. On the other hand, Audrey seems to be a character which no known actress has imagined : the writer once saw a French peasant-girl in wooden shoes, that was Audrey to the life. She was uglier than anything not sinful ; but bounced about to serve her guests (who, soot's to say, were none other than certain dragoons of the enemy's army quartered in her house), with a half-idiotic alacrity, that must have won the heart of any Touchstone in the party. Somebody in this manner must bring out Sardanapalus. It is a national object that the whole should be recast and tried again. Decided alterations should at the same time be made in the drama. The whole part of Zarina is a horror on the boards. If an alderman were produced on the stage, "doing the pathetic" to his much-injured wife, and in three mi- nutes and a half afterwards which is the time taken to boil and swallow an egg, were found by his brother-in-law and partner in business in the arms of his servant-maid in the counting-house, the house would roar with the idea of the " Double Arrangement " of the Antijacobin. There is no business with a Zarina at all. The Oriental of a " thousand harlotries," should be represented as for the first time touched with true love in the parson of a Grecian slave; and then Myrrha would be turned into as amiable and re- spectable a person as Roxalana in the Sultan, instead of repre- senting a naughty servant-girl waiting to walk into her master's room at one door when her mistress walks out at the other. All this might easily be done. Under the existing representation, the omission of the passage where Sardanapalus looks at himself in the mirror, is a huge felicity. But in better cir- cumstances, it might easily be introduced ; saving only the an- tiquarian difficulty of knowing what an ancient mirror was like. It would hardly do to bring a pier-glass from the property-man ; and a hand mirror, which is probably the veritable antique, would hardly be large enough to be understood. Perhaps Myrrha might be made the excuse for introducing something between both ; into which the valiant muscadin might take a glance, with the expres- sion that it might be his last. Sardanapalus also should be dressed with a certain reference to what passes for attractive. He may be copied from BELZONI.S figures ; but a modern audience is not cap- tivated by a gentleman in a yellow bed-gown, his lengthy locks restrained by mistake with the string of his wife's or the servant- girl's nightcap. if Sardanapalus was " translated,- it would be as well that Myrrha should undergo a change of the same kind. Not that any immediate fault can be found with the present performer, who hangs about her master's neck in a very approvable manner. On one occasion only, the spirit of BYRON was triumphant over ob- stacles. When Sardanapalus falls asleep upon the couch,—from the moment his Scotch sergeant-major's voice was lulled to slum- ber. the effect of Myrrha and her " vocal shell " was BYRON all. Greece, Europe, Asia, liberty, the ancient struggle, the triumph of the arts and love in a strange land, shone through the tableau vivant the curtain fell upon. The moment too where Myrrha, in the act of death, stops to apostrophize Ionia, wanted nothing but the removal of the needless debasements attached to the character, to be sublime. It must be re-done ; Englishmen cannot see their poet put under a bushel. CHARLES KEMBLE, if he revisit this olden world, would seem to be the only hope; and if Mrs. MAR- DYN thinks she imbibed the veritable Myrrha, she ought to be persuaded to enact its resurrection.
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