THE THEATRES.
Tim Haymarket, on Tuesday, was besieged by the adorers of ELLEN TREE Oil this side the Atlantic, eager to get a glimpse of their divinity
through any loophole : their prolonged raptures ahnost overpowered the object of them, and the ardour of the Tree-worshippers was attested by waving of boughs in addition to the customary shower of lesser greenery.. The fair voyager is not in any respect altered from wheat she was before her departure; and we are indebted to her own good
judgment (perhaps the discriminating taste of American audiences also) for restoring to us a charming actress, with her quiet, expressive manner unchanged.
The play was SuAnsmnes delicious comedy Twelfth Right; than which none is more remarkable for the felicitous intermingling of sen- timent and raillery, love and merriment, and for the clearness with which the plot is unfolded : the serious interest is just deep enough to set off the lightness of the comic scenes. ELLEN TREE was of course the Bolo, Sweetly did the poetry of SHAKSPERE flow from her lips in " the honey of her music voice," and her modest frankness well be- came the delicate boldness of the character ; but she made a strange mistake in her reading of the scenes with Olivia; which, in so intel- ligent and judicious a performer, surprised us not a little. Viola, it will be remembered, being in love with the Duke of Elyria, enters his service disguised as a page ; in which capacity she is required to pro- mote her nmster's love-suit to the obdurate Olivia. It is not till Viola has discovered that Olivia is smitten with herself, that the seeming boy exchanges banter for a more respectful tone. But not even the Duke could have wooed his mistress with more deferential respect and hn- passioned tenderness than Miss TREE theta assumed When Olivia unveiled, Miss TREE dropped on her knee, as if with unfeigned admira- tion of the lady's beauty ; though, to avoid making this perversion of the author's meaning too glaring, she suppressed the saucy sneer with which Viola, in answer to the lady's appeal " Is't not well done ?" replies, "Excellently done, if God did it all." Her acting of the very next scene, moreover, showed the inconsistency still stronger; for, instead of gravely deploring, as Viola does, the mistaken passion of Olivia, Miss 'forge exults as a bona fide page might do on making such a discovery, and, tapping her hat with a complacent air, exclaims, " 1 am the man !"—as though she were the man indeed. This smart " hit" told with the audience, who, intent on the favourite actress, thought little of the character, and it elicited a round of applause ; though it would hardly have been justifiable even had she thrown into the preceding scene the pertness and mocking manner proper to it. Miss Tim:, was not singular in error ; FARREN'S Malcolm() being, as a judicious contemporary observed, "a monstrous misconception." He indeed looked the character well, and dressed it to admiration—in a white doublet and trunks slashed with black, as if he had walked out of' a canvas painted by ZECCHERO but his acting was naught—sheer buffoonery and grimace. Malvolio is an overweening, pragmatical fellow, crazed with conceit ; but he could not by any possibility have been the insufferable fool that FARREN represented, whose wits Olivia prized at halt' her dowry. Instead of showing the self-love and pom- posity of the man's nature, subdued by the humble condition of the steward, and only appearing in the affectation of a dignified carriage, an air of importance, and a supercilious look mantling in his visage, FAR- Jinx obtruded these absurdities on the attention, with a grotesqueness amounting to burlesque : in the scene where Malvolio appears cross- gartered, he outraged all propriety, and violated the spirit of the text by dancing rotund his mistress like an actual madman. Not content with this, he must needs walk up to the foot-lights and provoke the pit to laughter by grimaces ; a practice permitted by custom to favourite buffoons, but unpardonable in a first-rate artist personating a character of SHAKSPERE.
The point between gravity and humour in Malt:olio is exceedingly difficult to hit ; but we are surprised that such a skilful marksman as RUMEN should have aimed so widely. It is a mistake to suppose that this finely-drawn character should be grossly comic. CHARLES LAMB, in his amusing account of "the old actors," tells us that BENSLEY, a tragic performer of some note, was excellent in Malvolio; and even JOHN KEMBLE doffed his buskins and made a successful essay in the p art. Mr. JONES of Edinburgh, (whose refined yet effective perform- aaces of Lord Welly and Young Contrast on the London boards ought to have secured him a permanent engagement in one of our Winter Theatres,) is the only actor we know of who has represented Malvolio successfully since the death of TERRY. STRICKLAND did not do justice to Sir Toby Belch: his levity was too coarse for Olivia's kinsman. Mr. STRICKLAND was easy, but with the slipshod ease of slovenliness :his gusto was a superficial mannerism, wanting the cordial spirit of enjoyment : in a word, it was farce, not comedy. Buessiroxes Sir Andrew Agueeheek was more carefully studied, but it had neither the simplicity nor the gentility proper to the character : Sir Andrew is a zany of quality. WEIMER as the Fool did no more than utter the words of the part, of which he appeared to have no relish whatever. Had Miss P. Howrox, who is engaged here, resumed her motley, she would have come nearer the true vein of the humour, and we should have had the songs, which arc among the most dulcet lyrics that SHARSPERE wrote. Mrs. FITZWILLIAM scarcely threw her ordinary vivacity and archness into the character of Maria ; whose wit should tingle at her fingers' ends, light up her eye with mischief, and lurk in her smile ; her good-nature making the sting sweet and the venom luscious. Mrs. WALTER LACY rehearsed the part of Olivia in her usual style ; but we looked in vain for the nice inflections of ex- pression, voice, and manner, that are required to depict the delicate and ever varying lights and shades of the character. COOPER as Orsino, the Duke, wore a buckram suit of stage-melancholy with the stolid gravity of an undertaker at a funeral. Mr. HOWE made a good enough double of Viola ; PERKINS a tolerable Antonio; and HEMMING a pas- sable Fabian.
It will not appear surprising, after this account of the performance, that the comedy went off flatly : not only was the sparkling wit of the dialogue dulled, but many points, calculated to tell with any audience, • were slurred over ; and laughter was excited by gesticulation in lieu of intelligent and expressive delivery : indeed many good things were omitted entirely. It is not expected, however, that a company habituated to the extravagant incidents and characters, and the com- monplace dialogue of broad farce, should be competent to the per- formance of pure comedy of the most refined and intellectual kind, full of exquisite poetry, and the most subtile strokes of wit and playfulness.
The .Ransom, a mercantile melodrama, followed ; in which ELLEN TREE personated Pauline, the heroine,—a girl who to save her lover, the son of her employer, from disgrace and shame, and his father from the horror of knowing his son's guilt, allows herself to be suspected and accused of the robberies he has committed ; incurring the re- proaches of her benefactor and the curse of her father to screen the wrong-doer, and restraining the delinquent's desire to confess, till ac- cident makes clear her innocence. Miss TREE'S simple and touching performance alone redeems the maudlin and prosy sentiment of this disagreeable piece, which is of French origin. The beauty of her act- ing consists in its perfect naturalness, and entire freedom from the ex- aggerations of speech, gesture, and action, that pass current on the stage. She looked, spoke, and moved, as a real person would have done under similar circumstances : her grief was tearful, not loud ; her agony was suppressed and concealed, not paraded in all the mechanism of pantomimic Ivo : a turn of the head, a glance of the eye, a motion of the hand, pointed the utterance of the words. Her sufferings seemed not only spontaneous and heartfelt, but to be visible unconsciously and against her will ; and when her anguish burst forth, it was with the un- controllable force of feelings that could no longer be restrained, and she sank overpowered. As an instance of the delicate discrimination with which she depicted this character, we may remark, that to any- person not understanding the plot, Pauline would have appeared an in- nocent girl unjustly accused, and enduring the tortures of shame and imputed guilt. The influence of this quiet style was felt by the audi- ence ; though only one applauding hand marked the pathetic intonation with which she uttered the words " It does, indeed!" in assent to some bitter reproaches. No study—only the impulse of the moment—can prompt such gushes of heart eloquence. We wish Miss TREE'S ex- ample could be contagious ; but it requires congenial qualities to take the infection, and all genius has a virus of its own.
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