THE THEATRES.
NOT content with the overflowing audiences drawn by King John, Othello, and Julius Ccesar, the management of Covent Garden has hit upon the bright fancy of gilding the refined gold of SHAKSEEARE with the copper leaf of a tawdry show. The " new, grand, Eastern ro- mance" of Thalaba the Destroyer, founded on SOUTHEY'S poem, and set off with superlative " splendour and magnificence" in the bills, turns out to be a poor shabby pageant, with only the beasts and Indian carriages to redeem its wretchedness. Coming as it did after the classic spectacle of Roman elegance in Julius Cesar, the effect was like being transported from a temple to a toyshop. The piece itself, too, it seems, is second-hand like the finery; for a correspondent of a morning paper says, this same drama of FITZBALL'S was brought out at the Cobourg a dozen years ago. "The real grand Burmese state car- riage," which is the crowning glory of the procession, looks like an Indian pagoda on wheels. It is not much more tawdry than the state- coach in which our King is compelled to ride when he goes to open Parliament ; though, to make the parallel complete, we should fancy WILLIAM the Fourth shut up in a little gilt model of St. Paul's. The elephants that were announced to draw it did not appear; their places being supplied by six steeds out of Ducaow's piebald stud: which is about as characteristic as a representation of the King's state-coach drawn by a team of oxen. The "living camel," however, was there; and the" Oriental state-chariot "—a red box with a dome top, open in front—came hobbling in on its lumbering wheels, drawn by a couple of "gigantic bulls of Guzerat." The whole affair was most ludicrous. The "necromantic peacock" was much better of its kind than either the horses or the " bulls of Gezerat," and more tractable. Miss VINCENT, who represented Thalaba, looked like an animated statue of silver frost-work, in her suit of tinsel ; she was a solitary exception in the array of dingy dresses. Her appearance in the tri- umphal procession leaning her body out of the front window of the carriage, holding the burning sword, was a caricature of the Sword- bearer in the Lord Mayor's show. No apology was made for the absence of the two principal perfed.- ers—the elephants ; which, we suppose, was the reason why the audi- ence did not call for the other quadrupedal actors to appear before the curtain. The Manager commenced his zoological company with a couple of dogs sewed in leopard skins ; he has now got to real bulls and a camel ; the giraffes, we suppose, will follow, until the whole menagerie is exhausted. The Zoological Gardens will have a formi- dable rival in Covent Garden Theatre. This is Mr. OSBALDISTON'S notion of "the most palmy state of the drama." CHARLES KEMBLE is unwisely taking advantage of the short re- maining term of his stage existence to inflict upon the public his Macbeth and Hamlet. But not even these can make us forget his Faukonbridge and C,assio. His Marc Antony, too, was all the Roman in the look : no actor on the stage wears the toga so nobly. We speak of his Marc Antony in the past tense, for the bills say he has played it fa he last time; we hope 'bey will lie in this as in other particulars.
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