THE THEATRE.
AT THE OLD VIC.
THE CHESTER NATIVITY PLAY AND DICKENS'S " A CHRISTMAS CAROL."
TICE Paynters and Glasiors of Chester, whose nativity mystery is " The Play of the Shepherds," must—unless the producer at the Old Vie has helped them out—have been a rather unusually sophisticated guild. Though their play has lost none of the naive charm of most mysteries, it is extremely well managed dramatically. The roles of the divine personages are kept short and dignified, the characters are got on and off the stage with a minimum of machinery and discussion, and, above all, there are hardly any of those meaningless soliloquies in which the author struggles :Atte: some rhyme on which he has set his heart, through a bog of irrelevancies, inversions and " by my troths." The stock example of such padding being, of course, Gower's
"This maiden Canaee was Night Both in the day and eke by night."
Hanchen, Harvey and Tudd are three shepherds who, after a hard day with their flocks, all meet together (on the spurs of the Welsh hills presumably) and take their supper while their servant, Trowle, and the boys look after the sheep. They are rich men, and condescending, if kind, masters, dud their production of quantities of admirable food out of their sacks is much stressed. There is new bread, a tongue, meat pudding, buttermilk, cheese and bacon. Presently, after an incident in which they and Trowle have a comic wrestling business, they all go to sleep and are awakened by the angelic choir, which sings a Gloria in Excelsis by Thomas Weelkes. Their attitude to the vision is one of the best things in the play. They are at first overwhelmed by it and then fall to trying to construe the Latin and what it was that Gabriel sang. This sets them wondering whether the whole thing was a hoax or the practical joke of some sheep stealer, but they conclude that the vision was too strange to have been of man. They decide to search out the Babe, displaying the mystery play's characters' usual knowledge of the principles of a religion at whose inauguration they are supposed to be assisting. They and the boys and Trowle therefore travel round and round the stage to a charming unaccompanied song towards Bethlehem, which in those days was only a step or two from Chester, Townley, or York. Cheered on their way by a vision of Gabriel, they come to the manger and are received by Joseph with rather a dull dissertation on the virgin birth. An admirable scene follows, however, in which the shepherds—who are, of course, unprepared—make offerings of everyday things and the tools of their craft to the Holy Child. One gives a sheep bell, another a leather drinking flask ; Trowle, the comic character, gives a pair of his wife's worsted stockings ; and one of the boys, after a delightfully condescending speech about Jesus being a mere baby, gives him his hood. The last boy, remarking that in so far as the Deity is man and a child, he will need the things proper to his estate, gives him his own nut-hook with an explanation as to its serving just as well to pull down apples and pears.
After the clean simplicity of this play Charles Dickens's atmosphere in A Christmas Carol seems sadly robustious. So disastrously thick, assured and boisterous is the senti- ment, that we leave the theatre feeling that the only tolerable character in the piece was the unrepentant Scrooge. I for one could not bear to wait to the end to see that grand old man take back his dictum that Christmas was a humbug.
Mr. Hay Petrie as Trowle, and later as the clerk, Bob Cratchit, gave very good performances, and the two pro- ductions were admirably managed, Mr. Russell Thorndike having done his adaptation of the Dickens play very well.
TARN.
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