CHAP. XV.

Season of 1801-2.—The great rivals.-Cooke disappoints the public.-Mrs. Billington at both theatres.-Henry Siddons. -Escapes.-Cooke's audit.- Mrs. Billington's illness.Reynolds.--Folly as it Flies.--Browne.-Mrs. Litchfield.Kemble's Zanga.-His Request.-Braham in the Manly Robe.-Henry the Fifth.-A riot quelled by the military.R. Palmer's Falstaff. Alfonso.Urania.-The Cabinet.The Dillettanti.-Mr. Kemble announces the Duke of Bedford's death.-The Winter's Tale.-Cooke's Sir Pertinax. Strawberry Hill comedy.--Mr. King's retirement.-Honours paid to him.-Close of the season.--Mr. Kemble quits Drury Lane.--Theatrical property.—Some clamour against him and his family.-Novelties at Colman's.

THE summer theatre, during the season of 1801, lost the valuable aid of Charles Kemble, who had determined to indulge himself in a tour through Germany. Miss Decamp, too, declined the same summer engagement, and their retreat made room for Henry Johnstone and his wife. Mr. Colman this summer was so amply frequented to his stock pieces, that he needed but little novelty, and the little he had was of no value. There was a two-act farce, called the Gypsey Prince, which was rendered bearable by some very pretty music by Kelly; and a thing called the Corsair, or the Italian Nuptials. The vigour of H. Johnstone and Farley, with a program a yard long, and new scenes by the dozen, rendered it somewhat intelligible to the spectators, and I am afraid, in the long list of annual horrors of this kind, that the Corsair must have been often pirated.

On the 12th of September, the Drury Lane company commenced the season of 1801-2 with the performance of Richard the Third, and No Song no Supper; and it was intended that the rival tragedians should decide their difference in Bosworth Field, and a mighty difference, to be sure, existed between them. But on the 14th, Covent Garden Theatre was found. wanting in its champion, and some most flighty extravagances from the over-heated zeal of Murray drove him from the contest with the pit orators. Lewis then advanced, and offered the discontented their money back. Seven o'clock, however,

having by this time arrived, and the majority remaining immovable, the whole audience took Lovers' Vows with Selima and Azor instead of their money; and having by this acquired some taste for the drunken insolence of Cooke, they now waited for all the tribe of apologetic letters, certificates from physicians, true as to the illness, but in course concealing the cause of it, and the prodigy's own excuse, if he could be kept in his senses to make one. In the summer his marriage with Miss Daniels, fortunately for the lady, had been annulled by Sir William Scott.

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We were now advancing rapidly to that extravagance in the terms demanded by great singers, which nothing short of madness would think of complying with. The instance which I am about to offer, is one as to a lady, for whom I have expressed always the warmest admiration. Mrs. Billington had formed an engagement to sing alternately at the two theatres, from October to the April following, for which the prietors were to secure to her (benefits included) 2000/. from each treasury. She sang on the 3d and 8th of October, and (in her case I may say) acted Mandane in Arne's noble opera Artaxerxes, with powers little short of wonderful. Mrs. Billington's figure here was, as it should be, majestic; there was that visibly about her, that rendered the interest credible. We are grown tired, or ought to be by this time, of receiving every slip of a girl, with neither manners nor motion above a ballad-singer, warbling, however prettily, the sublimities of Arne. We should feel the ridiculous still more strongly, if they were to endeavour to miss the higher parts in tragedy.

On the 8th of October, Mr. Henry Siddons, the elder son of the great actress, made his first appearance in London. He very unluckily chose for his debût the character of a German lawyer in a very moral insipidity, called Integrity. It lasted only a second night, and no author was named for the failure. It might be the actor's own. The appearance of this gentleman denoted very clearly the stock he came from-but he walked the stage ungracefully, and though his features were expressive, the expression was not captivating; and the judgment that regulated his delivery, could do little in the modulation of a hoarse and heavy quality of voice. He was ardent and sensible, feeling and correct-but the most that prepossession even could do, was to breathe a wish that he might not have deceived himself in his choice of a profession. On the 12th, he showed more of his powers in the great trial part of Hamlet. Defective modulation of the organ was principally to be noted, and the character was neither "the

glass of fashion, nor the mould of form." Siddons never was ethereal; he was a studious, ingenious, and careful man, greatly respected, but as an actor only respectable.

A very pleasing afterpiece, called the Escapes, or the Water Carrier, claims a line of notice, because it had some really charming music, selected from Cherubini, and composed by Attwood, and also that it was extremely serviceable to Covent Garden.

ence.

At that theatre, on the 19th of October, Mr. Cooke came to his audit for the disappointment which he had occasioned on the first night of the present season. He entered before the curtain in the dress of Richard, and addressed the audi"He acknowledged that he had no permission to stay in the country so long as he did; that it was certainly in his power to have appeared at the proper time before them: he expressed his deep regret for their disappointment, and would now do his best in their service if they were so indulgent as to permit him."

In all these cases the present result is clear; a people, who come to be amused, will not go away without their entertainment. He who can gratify, will always be pardoned; but the ease of his absolution confirms him in his trespass; at last he grows too indecent to be born, too insecure to be trusted; and, in an odd sort of struggle between his vice and his necessity, is sometimes docile, and at others refractory; followed, in spite of his errors, on account of genius which they seem to enlarge; till intemperance finally destroys the frame, and he is regretted, by a strange inconsistency, often beyond the steady, the unblamable servant of the public.

The disappointments suffered from the gentler sexes in theatres are at all events of a gentle character-slight caprice, not often; real indisposition; and, in the greatest talents indeed, an affection for home on certain evenings of the week, commonly known by the name of box fever.

Poor Mrs. Billington, on the 21st of October, acted Mandane again at Drury Lane, and through two acts exerted herself, so that no illness was felt to fetter her powers at all, and she sang with her utmost brilliancy. At the end of the second act, she had suddenly dropped down, and a succession of most alarming fits rendered it impossible for her to go on with the character. Mr. Kemble himself explained her situation to the public, and they allowed the farce to begin, instead of any mutilated attempt at the third act of the opera.

The real cause was, that, the day before, she had sent for Mr. Heaviside, the surgeon, to inspect her arm, which was much inflamed, and gave her very acute pain. Mr. Heavi

side at length, on the morning of the 21st, took out an entire needle from below the right shoulder. The arm had assumed a black appearance, and her friendly surgeon dissuaded her strongly from venturing to the theatre; but she could not bear to disappoint the public, and yet struggled in vain against the dread of mortification from the blackness of the arm. Happily, no such consequence followed the accident. In a fortnight she got well.

On the 29th, Reynolds again delighted the town with a comedy called Folly as it Flies. The serious incidents are the consequences of dissipation; but his Lady Melmoth not being depraved, though deluded, recovers her wits at last by the aid of her virtues, and even comfort is secured by cutting off an entail in the 5th act. Fortunately that entail was not the generous Tom Tick (Lewis), nor the legacy hunter, Peter Post Obit (Munden). This character, the hæredipeta of antiquity, untouched, I think, upon the modern stage, was suggested by the 197th and following paper of the Rambler. Dr. Johnson exposes the folly of sacrifices in order to obtain legacies and shows that the tricks to conciliate favour may be always betrayed by an accomplice. Reynolds looked at the character, as he commonly did at ALL characters, on the ludicrous side. He contrives, therefore, to embarrass his legacy-hunter with all the debts of Tom Tick, in order to become his heir, and assigns over to him even a guardianship of Leonard's mistress. So that seriously and comically he is provided amply to his catastrophe.

Peter Post Obit, it should be stated, is not at all indebted to Le Legataire, of Regnard, which the author, I believe, never read to the present hour. The French nation once delighted in the wit, in the sallies of pleasantry, in the general air of the enjoyment, that breathed through the writings of Regnard. His gaiety is cultivated, his eccentricity is amiable. But the spectators of such a poet must learn to be hearers, and enjoy themselves like rational beings. They, like ourselves, must get back again from the eye to the ear, or all that is excellent in the drama will be, like the other antiquities of the nation, the entertainment of the studious, and confined to the closet.

On the 27th of November, to the Gamester of Mr. Browne, a very judicious actor, Mr. Cooke performed Stukely with considerable effect; not so plausible, not so genteel as John Palmer, yet, the visual prepossession against him got over, he played it powerfully. I mean by this, that any body might be gulled by him, who could once bring himself to endure his company; but Palmer looked qualified to ensuare

and ruin the brightest spirit. Mrs. Litchfield made a very powerful impression indeed, in Mrs. Beverley, among those accustomed to the wonders of Mrs. Siddons. Is it possible to bestow praise more enviable? Murray, in Jarvis, had more passion than Aickin, and was, personally, quite as respectable.

Mr. Kemble, on the 4th of December, revived Dr. Young's tragedy, the Revenge. His Zanga, at any time, repaid the utmost attention of a refined audience. Dr. Young, though not a secure model for tragic writers, because he is frequently turgid, and, as in the Night Thoughts, (a subject still more solemn,) devoted to flowery prettiness, and Italian conceits, is nevertheless, in the character of Zanga, always poetical, impassioned, and sometimes even sublime. To this part, therefore, Mr. Kemble ardently devoted every congenial feeling of his mind, and it was a performance that ranked absolutely with the author's power. On this night he had a great house, and one, unfortunately, uncommonly noisy. In a word, they were not Athenians. In the middle of the fourth act, he saw clearly, that if the gods thus continued to keep their "dreadful pudder" o'er his head, his fine burst, in the fifth act, where the whole concentered venom of the fiend thunders out

"Know then,-'Twas I,"

might be as well sung as spoken; so he suddenly stopped, in the midst of a speech, and addressed the noisy, with a sweetmeat of respect, to induce them to bear a dose of very cool and even sarcastic counsel. I insert it, though some succeeding managers have gone far beyond him in the tone of such expostulations.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

"We cannot express how much we feel obliged to you, for the honour of your attendance; but, at this rate, the object of your visit must be completely frustrated. We must, therefore, entreat you to condescend to favour us with a little more of your ATTENTION.”

The turbulent were literally quelled by it; "governed their roaring throats," and vehemently "applauded their monitor." The 9th of December, 1801, claims a particular record in stage history, as introducing Braham, now an adult, to the complete honours of vocal excellence. He acted the generosity