MRS. CHATTER LET'S KATHARINE.
THE excellent Petruchio, to which we have done poor justice, is mated, but not matched, by Mrs. CHATTERLEY'S Katharine; ill there is nothing shrewish, but a old, malignant glance of a
bluish-grey eye—we speak under correction, as aware of the Ca- meleon-like property of ladies' eyes by candlelight; and of whose
redoubted talent for scolding we might say in the words of Brutus —" There is no terror, Katharine, in your tongue." Indeed this actress does not scold—she only declaims ; and her deportment reminds you of those performers to whose lot it usually falls to mouth the parts of Regan and Goneril. It strikes us there is only one lady on the stage capable of personating Katharine, and that is MISS KELLY; whose inimitable chamber-maid frequently betrays a decided vein of irritability and shrewishness. The question is, whe- ther that amiable actress of humble tragedy and low comedy could throw enough of ill-natured violence and aristocratical hauteur into her looks'and voice to qualify her for a Kate so curst. It is odd, that a talent conspicuous everywhere else should be missing on the stage. We are inclined to surmise, that the part of Katharine is better played in the green-room once or twice a week, than it is on the stage once or twice in a whole season. At least, so it used to be in the days of Mrs. WOFFINGTON, whom HORACE WALPOLE, or somebody, describes in his letters as playing the saint one mi- nute on the stage, and the fury, the next, in the green-room. And the celebrated affray, produced by the two talismanic words " E' vero !" shows that the modern do not yield to the ancient ornaments of the green-room in pugnacity. One might suppose, that a mood so common among a large portion of the human race in real life, would find a proportionably large number of persons capable of representing it on the stage. Yet experience in some degree con- tradicts this plausible expectation. It is very possible to act a shrew without being one, and to be a shrew without being able to act it ; otherwise we might jump to a blessed conclusion, favour- able not only to Mrs. CHATTERLEY'S amiability, but to that of actresses in general. Mr. C. KEMBLE'S Petruchio was once, we understand, (for our eyes never beheld that accomplished lady,) matched out of his own family, with a Katharine every way worthy of her mate—an actress who appears to have left a livelier impression on the minds of those who have enjoyed the happiness of seeing her perform, than almost any of the departed heroines of comedy—departed from the stage we mean, happily not from life : and this circumstance may be partly attributed to her having— late enough for herself, perhaps, but too soon for everybody else —forsaken the drama, which she illustrated in a double capacity, whilst yet in the zenith of her talents and her charms.
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