S4tatits.
The appearance of Her Majesty's Theatre en Tuesday, when the first so-called festival performance" took place, was so utterly different
from that which usually belongs to it, that the audience without any" violent stretch of imagination, might have fancied themselves in another house. The Royal box, fashioned for the occasion, took in about &third of the grand tier, and was in itself sufficient to change the character of the sale. Moreover, the panels of the boxes throughout the edifice we covered with lace ; and this again was adorned with hanging garland:inf. flowers, so that very little of the original surface remained visible.'
To the pit and gallery there had been a fearful rush on the opening Of the doors ; but the boxes and stalls were leisurely filled, and we have certainly seen more obvious symptoms of excitement at the ordinary commencement of a season. Then a chill was produced by the late arrival of the Royal party ; the large box remaining empty till more
than an act of Macbeth was over, and thus causing a sort of dreary
anxiety, which even in the case of a more lively work would have greatly damped hilarity. As for the tragedy, it literally went for nothing; failing to compete in point of interest either with the Royal absence or the Royal presence. No blame, on this account, is to be attached to Mx. ?helps or Miss Helen Faucit, who played the murderowi Thane and
his wife, since unless Macbeth had been got up as a great show, it could not have appealed to the senses that are most active on the occasion of a show-night.
When the Royal box was at length occupied, the spectacle presented was _certainly imposing; all the personages whose proceedings are so minutely recorded in the Court Circular being at once brought before the eke as one compact though large assemblage. The feeling to which this spectacle gave rise was chiefly manifested when the national anthem was sung, and every one in the house both the honouring and the honoured, rose for the occasion. This demonstration was of course the grand sight of the evening; and still more imposing vrill the effect boon the last night of the "festival," when the semi-state of the earlier visits has expanded into state-plenitude.
The second of the state performances, on Thursday, went off with more complete felicity. The chief piece, Bailers opera of The Bose of Castille, was better suited than tragedy to the place and the appliances at hand ; and in the farce, The Boots at the Swan Robson drew from the Royal box shouts of laughter as hearty as from his own Olympic friends.
Mr. Leigh Hunt's new drama of Lore's Amazement:, produeed at the Lyceum on Wednesday, comes in as a charming little spsoimen of dra- matic literature, at a time when the drama has nearly ceased to be lite- rary altogether. Every passage of the graceful dialogue is evidently the work of a veteran, who, if he did not live in an age of great theatrical productiveness, belonged at any rate to a period when the belief that the stage was a fitting vehicle for delicate wit and poetry still existed among men of practical intellect. The plot is one of the tiniest—a sort of Cosi fan tutte. Two gentlemen are or seem slightly inconstant With reference to two ladies; and they, in their turn, are or seem slightly inconstant to the two gallants ; till at last each party dim:oven where his or her heart can properly bestow its sympathies, and note on the discovery by selecting a right partner for life. Four personages, all carefully drawn—a courteous noble, a bluff captain, a brilliant countess, and an unsophisticated specimen of feminine devotion relieved by feminine gayety—carry on the entire business of the action, which is supposed to occur in the times of the Fronde, and gains a pleasant oldfaahiened look in consequence. On the dialogue which is in blank verse and not without 'Elizabethan quaintness, sedulous pains have olosiotehy been bestowed; but remark- ible ease and lightness, accompanied by much graceful thought, is the result. Novel images, and home truths clothed in poetical language, sparkle through the whole. work ; which should be witnessed by every literary man in London, as something unique in its day. Dra- matic trifles are common enough, but dramatic trifles that are likewise poetic are rare indeed. The characters in Mr. Hunt's piece are creditably sustained by Mr. and Mrs. Dillon, Mrs. A. Mellon, and Mr. Shore. At the Adelphi there is a work that much more typifies the stage pre- dilections of the present age—a melodrama by Mr. Watts Phillips, en- titled The Poor Strollers. Here we have an itinerant actor and fiddler, who under circumstances of strong temptation commits a little bit of lar- ceny, and in consequence gives himself up to that sort of tippling re- morse -which Mr. Webster delineates with so much success. The inte- rest attached to this far from spotless person is heightened by his daugh- ter, who dances-in gaudy attire abroad and is a model of domestic affec- tion at home ; being, of course, represented by Madame Celeste. The fiddler has a foil in the person of a wicked wight that has risen to wealth in consequence of a murder ; and when the man of larceny is brought into antagonism with the man of blood, it is surprising to see !how innocent he appears. Nay, he is an instrument of Providence, , while he simply thinks he is committing a theft. The gentleman whom the greater villain murders is the person whom the lesser sinner robs; and the pocket-book which the latter lays hands upon contains, besides the paper-money desired, a will which the former sought to destroy, but which, restored into proper hands at the proper moment, overthrows the possessor of M-gotten wealth, and converts wrong into right, with a completeness that would have satisfied the exigencies of Meg Merrilies. In short, we shudder to think what mischief would have ensued had Pierre Leroux, the peccant fiddler, been a thoroughly honest individual. Let us add, in his behalf, that when he had stolen the pocket-book, he was so deeply sensible of his guilt as to sew it up in his waistcoat, and make no use of its contents ! The dialogue of this piece is more carefully written than in the generality of Adelphi productions; the au- thor having evidently aspired to rise from melodrame tO " drame," not without reason for his ambition.
The custom of bowing front a private box, in answer to a general call for "the author" on the part of the audience, seems likely to fall into disuse. The veteran Mr. Leigh Hunt walked across the stage of the Lyceum on Wednesday, and the young aspirant Mr. Watts Phillips went through the same ceremony at the Adelphi on the preceding Mon- day. This is as it should be : an author who shuns publicity can easily keep out of the way on the first night of a new piece, but there is neither wisdom nor modesty in showing oneself to only half an audi- ence in answer to a call by an entire house.
PARISIAN THEATRICALS.
The name of M. Alexandre Dumas the younger is generally associated with the great success of the Parisian season, and this year his good fortune has not deserted him. The piece of the day is a comedy in five acts, of which he is the author, and which was produced last Saturday at the Gymnase, with the title Le Pk Nature?. In this work he has endeavoured to exhibit the ultimate triumph of rectitude and energy under unfavourable circumstances. His hero is a young man, the ille- gitimete offspring of a 'hither of high family and a mother of humble origin, who, slighted in the first instance on the paternal side, advances to such a position in the world, that the parent who has discarded him solicits-favours at his lands, and offers a surname, previously denied. , The offer is scorned by the magnanimous antagonist of prejUdi who-. prefers the name of a mother who has reared him tenderly to that of a father by whom he has been deserted ; and the old gentleman is only too lucky to become the uncle of his own son, through the marriage of the latter with his niece.
The lifideein malgre lid of Molibre has been converted into an opera with music by M. Gounod, and in this condition has been brought out at the Theatre Lyrique. At the Cirque, a great triumph has been achieved by a feerie in thief • tableaux (Anglia scenes,) entitled Turlututu. The young adventurer who bears this name, and goes through all sorts of fantastic region's:3s the focus of a strange mythological system, in which the good principle is the Devil's wife, and the evil principle is the Devil himself; the ulti- mate triumph of virtue being signified by the subjection of Satan to petti- coat government. The aggregate receipts of the places of public amusement during the month of December amounted to 1,309,836f. 95c.; being 48,260f. 75c. less than the receipts of November. This decrease seems somewhat anomalous, as in 1856 the December receipts exceeded those of the pre- - ceding month. For the whole year 1857, the aggregate receipts amount to 13,746,264f. 20e. - which is an increase on 1866, and a still greater increase on 1854. The year 1855 presents a higher figure, but being the Exhibition year, is excluded from the comparison ; so that from 1854 to 1857, both inclusive, the amounts show a steady progress.
Previous page
