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The Corsican Brothers, a piece which in other hands would be a com- mon melodrama, but which by the refined acting of Mr. Charles Kean and the elegance with which its details, natural and supernatural, are conducted, has been rendered one of the most remarkable of modern plays, was revived on Monday last at the Princess's, A Midsummer Night's Dream, with all its pristine beauty, forming a most effective supplement to the evening's entertainment. A revival of The Wife's Secret, with Mr. and Mrs. Kean in their original characters, is expected on Monday next.
At the Haymarket there is a new farce called Out of Sight out of Mind, founded on a French piece, brought out about three years ago with the title of Lea Absences de Monsieur. That state of mental aberra- tion to which both English and French have agreed to give the name of " absence " has often been made a theme of pleasantry. La Brayer° sets down one of the victims to the malady among his " caracteres," the Spectator gives the lively Will Honeycomb a place among the suf- ferers, and Sir Walter Scott has his Dominic Sampson. None of these types of absence are, however, such thorough absentees as the hero of the new piece, played by Mr. Charles Mathews, whose memory will not serve him for half-a-minute, and who commits every possible absurdity from putting up an umbrella in his dining-room to kissing the maid ser- vant by mistake for his wife. With these eccentricities he combines stupidity of a less exceptional kind, so completely misunderstanding his wife when she complains of certain gallant attentions that have been in- flicted upon her, that he involuntarily encourages the libertine gentle- man who has offended her, while he is on the point of turning his best friend out of doors. The incidents are wildly improbable, but the calm self-satisfaction of Mr. Charles Mathews in the midst of a hurricane of blunders is admirably comic. A singular little piece called Why did you die ? originally produced at the Olympic, under the management of Madame Vestris, was revived there on Monday last. Its chief peculiarity arises from the circumstance that it is a kind of practical joke played off upon the public. A certain gentleman, supposed to be dead, returns home, and everybody wishes to know the cause of his pretended decease. But whenever an explanation is about to be given, the speaker is checked by an untimely interruption. At last the resuscitated gentleman calls all the rest of the dramatis per- some around him, and promises to make a clean breast of it. Now 'we shall get the grand secret. Not a bit of it. The bell rings for the fall of the curtain, which drops as an impenetrable veil between us and an important truth.
Tonight Mr. B. Webster, of the Adephi, will take his benefit, and a new piece, called One Touch of Nature, is announced for the occasion. Mr. Emden, of the Olympic, will take his benefit on Saturday next, the 13th instant.
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