"A NEW OLD COMEDY."
MACAULAY has told us, writing of Byron's sudden punish- ment at the hands of' Society," how periodically fits of out- raged virtue break out in that mystic body, as a concession to morals. Our generation has recently witnessed a similar protest in the case of the Member for Northampton,—much to its edification. The Tories of Society evidently felt that after Zulu wars, secret treaties, and bogus budgets, something must be done in vindica- tion of Providence, and the hour and the man arose. As Society has its fits of virtue, so has the Stage its periodical visita-
tions of old comedy. Some manager, half-ruined by French adaptations, but bound to prove his great prin- ciple that there are no original plays to be had in England (whereby he may wive the possession of any judgment of his own), by the simple process of producing none, suddenly discovers that there exists a mine of wealth in the old English drama. He produces the School for Scandal, Rivals, and She Stoops to Conquer, in one order or another, and makes money. Then he tries more old comedies, and loses it,— the Road to Ruin, the Belle's Stratagem, and the like, proving only that, judging by results, what is old is not of necessity good. The critics do their best to help him, for with them to be dead is to be great, and one old writer is as dead as another. But they pipe in vain, for the public will not dance, but go away much impressed by the outer dreariness, apart from the three living works of genius cited, of the comedies which amused our forefathers.
It is strange that within living memory no manager should have been tempted to add to his list of old comedies Goldsmith's other acted play, the Good-Natured Man.* Goldsmith is, to our thinking, facile princeps among the writers of pure English comedy. With Sheridan, the play seems to be built up for the mere sake of the brilliant wit which keeps it eternally alive. With Goldsmith, the pretty wit, and humour, and tenderness which abound, with less of epigram, but more of humanity, keep bubbling out of the story which gives them their opportunity. One always suspect& Sheridan of making his dialogue first and his story afterwards. Brilliant he is always, but human almost never. Goldsmith in his most farcical moments is human always, and the Marlows and Croakers are types of character, where the Surfaces and Absolutes are but varieties of wit, though that wit was genius. The kind of personal feeling that one has for " Goldie " and for Sheridan (who could never be " Sherry " to us) respectively is in each case like that inspired by their plays. We wonder at one writer, and we love the other. Goldsmith is known to every playgoer by his She • Goldsmith's Comedy " The (bed-Natured Men." In Five Asia. As Played at the Ladbroke Hall, Notting Hill, June 22nd and 23rd, 1880. Stoops to Conquer, and by the many stage versions—why did he not write one himself F—of his Vicar of Wakefield, one of those dramatic stories which is ready-made to the playwright's hand. To every book-lover he is known quite as well by his Good-Natured Man, a comedy to the full as amusing, ingenious, and humorous as its more successful sister. We can bear Mrs. Croaker now, with her grumbling husband (by the by, the one fault we have to find in the performance presently to be mentioned is that that lady is not "made up" as old as she should be), "Never mind the world, my dear ! You were never in a pleasanter place in your life I" The history of the play is curious, and may be read with interest in Forster's life of the author. How it was first presented to Garrick, who of course pre- sumed, like all actors and managers before and since, that he understood the playwright's business much better than the poor man himself, and worried him to death about this change and that improvement, all of which, equally of course, would have been very much for the worse ; how it was at last pi oduced, under the management of Colman, on the 29th of January, 1768, —and the curious fate which befell it, are written in the chronicle. " Society " had just been ravished, being in a sentimental and moral phase for the moment, by a ridiculous piece by Kelly, called False Delicacy. We are not at all sure by-the-bye, that a revival of this piece of sickliness just now, while the town is on the moral tack, would not be timely and successful. The patronage of the leader of the Opposition once secured for the performance, all would be well ; and with the critics, Hugh Kelly, being as dead as Oliver Goldsmith, would pass for as good a genius. Only fashionable actresses are geniuses in stage-land, while yet alive. When Goldsmith pro- duced his comedy, three thousand published copies of False Delicacy had been sold on the first clay ; it had had a consecutive run, then a rare matter. The author had been treated to a public breakfast at the Chapter Coffee-house, and his publisher had presented him with twenty pounds' worth of plate. The result was that to the fashionable opposition collected on the benches of the theatric house, under the spell of False Delicacy, Oliver Goldsmith was as a very Bradlaugh. The acting of Shiites in the capital part of Croaker so carried the majority with it, that their boisterous laughter overcame the opposition at times ; but as a whole, the play was a failure fore- doomed, and the crowning blow was dealt by the inimitable scene in which the hero, Honeywood, passes off two bailiffs as his eccentric friends, in order to hide his real situation from his lady-love. The nerves of Society were quite unable to stand the vulgarity of this. What gentleman would do so indelicate a thing? The London Chronicle rnouthpieceing the Jingo of the day, and ignoring the pits and galleries, said that it was "language uncommonly low,"—like the speeches in Midlothian ; and the conscience of Society, unpleasantly stirred by the bodily pro- pinquity of bailiff and gentleman, then and there Bradlaughed Goldsmith. Again, in the last act, Shuter, in the rich drollery of the incendiary letter, rescued the author from the pains of complete damnation ; but the restoration of success was but partial. In the few representations which followed the bailiff scene was cut out, though it appeared once more at a single performance three years afterwards. That so admirable a specimen of comedy-writing is not as lost as the books of Livy is due to the fashion of that day, by which the play was published directly on its appearance. It sold at once, and Goldsmith "shamed the rogues" by the success of his scene in print. Now-a-days, the dramatic author has no such chance. He is not literary, and nobody will read him. His critics have no opportunity of being acquainted with his language, except through the actors and their memories ; and he may perhaps, as happened in a recent instance, hear a sentence like this,—" To do her justice, she asks as little quarter as she gives," thus amazingly paraphrased in perfect good-faith, on his "first night,"--" To do her justice, she gives as little trouble as she takes." For the modern English dramatist, there is no appeal from the excited verdict of the theatre to the cool judgment of the library, and the difficulty is well worth taking into account in discussions on dramatic reform.
To return to our text, however, this admirable comedy, which we believe to be one of the best acting comedies in existence, was a stage failure, and so remained. It was revived, we be- lieve, at the beginning of this century, and Macready (accord- ing to Forster) intended another revival, when his management of Drury Lane abruptly ended. He proposed, oddly enough, to play the character of "Lofty," the Jack Brag of the piece,
which it is still more odd that the late Charles Mathews never seized on. It would have suited him to a turn. Since then, it has remained on the shelves, till only the other day it came into the minds of four sisters to produce it for a few amateur performances, and at one of these it was our rare fortune to be pre- sent a few nights ago. The spirit of the enterprise must have been well rewarded by its singular success. We ourselves remember no amateur performance to touch it, and the readers of the Spec- tator may be the more interested when they learn that the young ladies who did this unique service to Art, which should lead to an early stage revival of what is now proved to be an admirable stage play, are the daughters of Richard Cobden. The name carries brains and heart; there were heart and brains in the ladies' acting. The eldest of the four (and all appeared in the play) took the part of Miss Richland, first borne by Mrs. Bulkley, who believed in part and play. Miss Cobden clearly believes in them too, and she acted throughout with singular grace and distinction, and refreshing unconventionality. By that, we are far from meaning "amateurishness ;" for, now-a-days, alas ! when the amateur actor has become one of the banes of life, and has lost half his charm by gaining his hall-knowledge, there is nothing more terribly conventional than the acting of the amateur. He knows all about standing and moving, and that is all. He speaks without a prompter, and his voice and mien are as an echo of his especial original, even as his reper- tory is a damnable iteration of the most hard-worn pieces of the stage, with the " crosses " and entrances correctly copied from the stage edition. The only excuse for amateur acting, its freshness, had died to us, when we suddenly found it again in Miss Cobden and her lieges. Her Miss Rich- land reminded us of some courtly dame of old masquing for re- laxation; her dress and manner were in a graceful harmony with the design ; and, high-comedy throughout, she succeeded in in- fusing into her last speech and confession to her timid lover a special touch of womanhood which fairly brought the tears to the writer's eyes. In sweet contrast was the delicious Olivia of Miss A. Cobden, whose humorous exposition of the audacious little minx who does the most daring things with the most innocent air caught the character to the life. We have found ourselves laughing at the recollection constantly since.
The men of the company seconded the ladies well. The great advantage of the play chosen was that all had to originate their acting for themselves. If we do not use the popular word "to create," it is because we have always a little associated that part of the business with the despised author. When an actor " creates " a part, it can only be, as it seems to us, when he de- parts from the author's intention. Mr. Irving's Shylock is, in some opinions, quite a creation. Every one of this little amateur band had thought out his author. Nobody could apply to Mr. Colnaghi's Honeywood the criticism passed on the original Powell,—" unifoim tameness, not to say insipidity;" and Mr. Bloinfield's spirited Lofty caught Charles Mathews's idea of similar parts so well, that it was he who suggested to us bow well Mathews would have been fitted. But with all respect to all the others, the gem of the performance was the Croaker of Mr. W. P. Beale. The man lived before you in his queer identity, in one of the most thoughtful and consistent pieces of acting we have seen. The studied gloom, the real good-nature, the rough accent and the forlorn expression, were so thoroughly sustained, that the actor really reached that most difficult pitch where the identity be- comes quite lost in the 'character presented. We do not re- member, on any professional stage, a more remarkable perform- ance. It stands by the side of the first Tartuffe we remember to have seen, as Goldsmith is very suggestive of Moliere.
We hope that this chrysolite among amateur performances may soon be repeated upon some larger stage, where some of our leading comedians may see it. If it should lead to a suc- cessful professional revival, the name of Cobden will be as worthily associated with the cause of Art as with that of Free- trade. And the instalment of a superb comedy upon the standard acting list, a century and more after its first unsuc- cessful production, will supply another instance of the victorious appeal "of Truth to Time."
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