A WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.*
AMONG the customary crowd of Christmas Books, there came to us this innocent-looking volume. Nothing, it seemed, could be more appropriate to the time. Private theatricals are, at least for those who are engaged in the rehearsals, a very effective sort of amusement, not the less fascinating because they afford a pretext and a shelter for plenty of harmless flirtation. So it comes to pass that in hundreds of households people are asking,—What shall we ant? They want something easy to learn, not requiring much scenery., with not too many characters, and these not too unequally weighted. It is understood, of course, that the plot and language of the drama desired must be perfectly unexceptionable, not merely such as would pass muster on the stage, a region of paint and gas- light, where blushes are not expected, and indeed could not be seen ; but such as boys and girls might learn and act together without the slightest discomfort either to themselves or to their audience, —such in fact as, with all its fun, should be perfectly in harmony with the tone of our best and purest homes. Starting with this view of what such a book should be, we must say that the title of " Home Theatre," as given to the volume before us, is one of the grossest misnomers that we have ever encountered. To justify this opinion, we shall analyze the first of the six dramas which it contains, bearing the title of " A Lost Game." It is by far the most elaborate and ambitious of the six, being extended to four acts, and occupying more than a third of the volume.
In the first and second scenes the servants of Mr. Weightfelt, a retired merchant, communicates to George Bradford, Mr. Weight- felt's nephew, just returned from travel, their suspicions about the young wife whom their master has recently married. In the next scene, the lady herself appears, and fascinates the new comer. In that which follows we find her alone, confessing to herself that she is heartily tired of the respectability by which she is surrounded. In the course of the next act, a certain " Brooke" is introduced, threatening Mrs. Weightfelt with certain very unpleasant revela- tions unless she will consent to buy him off. George Bradford inter- rupts the interview, and the lady passes off her visitor as a man who is applying for a footman's situation. Mr. George, however, has received a letter from a Parisian friend speaking of the excite- ment caused by the sudden disappearance of " Stella," a famous danseuse at the Chatelet, and containing a photograph of that lady, which he finds to bear a wonderful resemblance to his uncle's wife. The two, wife and nephew, whose interests are, of course, diverse, and whom we now see to be matched against each other, sit down to a game of chess which is meant to be symbolical of the " game " which the drama represents. George begins by showing the photograph, which the lady " tears in pieces very passionately," • The Home Theatre By Mary Healy London: SampsonLow, Son, and Marston. 1871.
accounting for her rage by the lame story that this photograph had been the cause of great trouble to her, an employer having dis- missed her from the post of governess in his family on the ground of having sat for it. Meanwhile, the game of chess goes on till it is lost by the lady, who " in an access of ungovernable anger overturns the chess-board," &c. In the next act we find George accusing his antagonist of having misappropriated moneys given her to pay certain bills ; the bills themselves being, as he has discovered, ficti- tious; while Brooke, the footman, is found to be in possession of unac- countably large sums of money, which he boasts can be easily re- plenished. She acknowledges the charge, but Brooke, she says, is her brother, a man of disgraceful antecedents, who has threatened to make himself known to her husband unless he is bribed. Mean- while a love affair has sprung up between George Bradford and Milly, Mr. Weightfelt's American niece, and the wife witnesses with envy a scene between them. "1, too," she says, "can be loved." She has had, it seems, a letter from Ldon, Dec de Broyes, suggesting, it may be guessed, a flight about which she is unable to decide. However, she vows vengeance against George, and accordingly accuses him to her husband of having insulted her with an offer of love. The uncle, of course, be- lieves the charge, and turns the nephew out of the house. But by an accident George gets possession of a note which his uncle's wife has written to the Duke, and in which she has consented to meet him. Now, of course, "the game is lost." And now, besides mentioning the fact that Mr. Weightfelt is reduced, on learning the truth, to a state of idiocy, we need say nothing more about the plot of Miss Mary Healy's " home " play.
We do not mean to say that the story is a specially atrocious one. Stories very like it have been put on the stage of theatres frequented by respectable audiences (though these, by the way, tolerate what audiences not called " respectable " would not endure for a moment), and have served for a plot to more than one novel of the class which lie about in ordinary drawing-rooms. But we complain that Miss Healy suggests as a proper character for a young girl to act this profligate adventuress. Let any- one think for a moment what acting means, how thoroughly those who have anything of the " acting " faculty identify them- selves with that which they represent. And it is gravely proposed, and that by a woman, that an innocent young girl should do her best to make herself feel like an abandoned creature, who, after growing weary of a life of splendid prostitution in Paris, has made her way by false pretences into a respectable home, and has more than half made up her mind that respectability is not endurable, and she will go back to the old existence. We do not accuse Miss Healy of writing an immoral book, but we do say that in this Bonze Theatre she, and we must in justice add her pub- lishers, have committed an offence against good taste which it is difficult to characterize in the language which it deserves.
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