THE THEATRES.
Mr. Sullivan is a clever and sensible dramatist. His Beggar on Horse- back he conducted with a great deal of skill and purpose through the le-
gitimate course of five acts; and he seems to know what he was about bet-
ter than most of his contemporaries. But now comes one of the conse- quences of a fixed form of drama. It is a dignified thing to write five acts;
but it is nothing of the sort to write three acts. An English dramatist,
having once established himself as a producer of five-act dramas, feels he would lose caste if he dropped into a smaller number of divisions. Sooner
shall the Brahmin turn water-carrier than the writer of legitimate English comedy strive to amuse in a less imposing form. The French are without this fine sense of dignity. There was a certain playwright in the time of Louis Quatorze--Moliere, we believe, the man was called—who though he could write a five-act comedy as well as most people, had a notion that where there was but little to say, the play might be short in proportion; so
he even wrote pieces in one act—and capital pieces they are. Nor do the Gauls seem to have improved in later years. There is one Scribe, who wrote .Bertrand et Raton, a five-act comedy, which is only about twenty times as good as any piece of the sort that has been produced in London since the time of its production in Paris; and yet this same Scribe does not mind throwing off it neat little one-act or two-act affair, that Mademoiselle Rose Cheri may charmingly interpret it at the Gym- nese. Sad want of feeling in all this, which one grieves to see in a metro- polis that boasts of being the head of European civilization. There is no- thing of the sort in our English dramatists. He who has written his five acts sticks to his five acts like Cato to agriculture. " I have got a dra- matic subject; what shall I do with it? "—" Make a good five-act play." " The subject will not admit of it."—" Then make a middling five-act play." " But the subject will not admit of that."—" Then make a bad five-act play." No flinching! Better be damned in five acts than ap- plauded to the ceiling for three. So sacred is the number five, that it jus- tifies a martyrdom. If you cannot get the victory of Tell, aim at the death of Winkelried.
Let us drop the ironical, and come straight to the truth about Family Pride, Mr. Sullivan's new piece at the Haymarket. It is a good three-act comedy spoiled by the reckless adherence to the importance of five acts. There are an aristocratic mother, a high-born son clownishly educated, a rich and accomplished young lady of plebeian birth, and a tutor who is an impostor with a good heart. The love of the high-born young gentleman for the humbly-born lady, and the difficulties thrown in the way through the mother's " family pride," foy,m the subject of this piece; which goes on famously to the end of three acts—when, lop there is little more to be done, and yet there are two more acts to get through. The characters are drawn boldly and distinctly; and while these peculiarities have to be exhibited the piece is interesting; this done, the interest drops off. Are we writing over again an account of Mr. White's John &vile? No two pieces could be more unlike in tone than the poetical work acted at Sadler's Wells and the thorough prose exhibited at the Haymarket; yet there is a strong similarity in the faults of both—the foundation, in both cases, is better than the su- perstructure.
Mr. Sullivan's dialogue is very peculiar. No writer could be more free from that epigrammatic point which so many have deemed essential to the language of comedy. Generally it is confined to a hard exhibition of cha- racter, and the carrying out of a practical purpose. But it is not destitute of a certain " point" of its own; and the audience are sometimes, when they least expect it, struck by a happy sentence of irresistible oddity. When the old tutor, who has been a veterinary surgeon, states that he was one day ".riding one of his own patients "—meaning a horse—the roar was tremendous.
Mr. Farren has a good part in this old tutor, who has passed through the phases of man of fortune, horse-doctor, and youth-trainer; and plays it with fitting proportions of urbanity, good-humour, and cunning. It is a good thing for Mr. Henry Farren that the sprig of high birth is meant to be uncouth and inelegant; for in some of the coarser scenes the real want of training supplies the place of an artistical imitation of the deficiency. Mrs. Nisbett is vivacious in the young plebeian, which is but an indifferent part; and Mrs. W. Clifford very carefully ices down the aristocratic mother, making her as smooth and at the same time as cold as marble. Another novelty at the Haymarket is the Roused Lion; an adaptation of a French piece called Le Revell du Lion. This rendering of the title isnot so true as it appears; for the French writer uses the word "lion" to denote a gay man of fashion,—a signification which it does not bear in Eng- land. An old beau of the Empire, finding himself considered passe by the young men of the day, determines to show his pristine strength, and makes a grand flash for one evening, when he cuts out all the fine gentlemen at a gay party. Webster gives all the force of the character, (and there .are some situations of a serious interest,) but he does not keep the age of the " lion " sufficiently in view. The prime part of the drama is a ci-devant danseuse, acted by Mrs. Keeley; whose combination of the gayety of her former profession, (which she conceals,) and the demure formality which she chooses to assume in later life, is one of the oddest mixtures imagin- able. Prior to the appearance of this lady, the piece is rather heavy; but she brings it up with immense force. The fault of the drama is that it is too strictly a tronslation, and not enough of an odaplation. In these two words lies all the difference between the proper and improper use of a foreign plot.
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