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النشر الإلكتروني

EXPRESSION OF THE PASSIONS,

In the countenance of dramatic heroes and heroines.

Has it been remarked, that in the violence of their efforts to represent excessive sorrow, bitter anguish, and violent rage, some of our best performers frequently lapse into broad caricature, and the grin of licentious dis tortion?

I will not mention names, yet I could point out those of renown, who, in some of the most interesting scenes of our best tragedies, have actually excited laughter.

Perhaps, it may be asked, is an actor of feeling and rapid perception to balance his limbs, discipline his features, and adjust his looks before a glass, previous to his appearing on the stage? Is he to regulate by a thermometer, the warmth of his impressions, and consult a posture-master on the gracefulness of his attitudes, and the propriety of his gestures?

I answer, yes, if his own taste and execution are not sufficiently correct: in acting, as in painting, the effect produced on the retina of the spectator, is every thing; effect is the grand business of a player's life, to which all rules, all favorite theories must be subservient; the tongue, the eyes, the lips, the muscles of the face, are the principal organs, by which the passions of the heart are demonstrated and conveyed; they are tools given to us by nature, to make certain impressions on the minds of others; but if, from a want of skilful they produce sensations, and excite ideas, not only difmanagement, ferent, but exactly opposite to those which the dramatic artist meant to convey; if they do nothing by doing too much, they act as false interpreters, translate their lesson wrong, and should be sent to school again.

It was the opinion of Leonardo D'Avinsi, that a man born dumb would be a good study for an artist, in the business of expression; but here too sobriety and moderation must not be forgotten, or we shall degenerate into pantomime.

It is the opinion of a friend, that I was seated too near the performers whose over-acting I censure; that the picture was not placed in its proper light and position; he is convinced, if I had been in a more distant part of the theatre, that what appeared coarse, violent and outra

geous, would have met with my approbation, as natural and appropriate :

Ainsi foit il, mais parlons d'autres choses.

I cannot help remarking another impropriety, sometimes exhibited on the stage: the giving young characters, whom passionate lovers are calling goddesses and angels, to aged, infirm, and wrinkled old women, or to others, who, however qualified by age, possess not a single attraction to render them objects of love or desire to a man of common sense, eye-sight, or discernment.

I am ready to make allowance for the vagaries of whim, and the extravaganza of capricious appetite; but it is not consistent with nature or experience, for a man to be pouring forth strains of rapture and admiration, when every spectator knows and feels that the object of the actor's adoration is old enough to be his grandmother; it is equally revolting to common feelings, as well as correct taste, to see a virago, well calculated for an oyster-basket, the slaughter-house, or a butt of por ter, assuming the Medicean Venus, and caricaturing the Loves and Graces.

These improprieties sometimes perplex a good-natured audience, because the performers in question are frequently excellent in other walks, or stage veterans, who once knew better days, and for whom the majority of the persons present feel the strongest sympathy, and entertain the highest respect.

Is it avarice or cruel kindness in managers, thus to suffer or entice age and decrepitude to expose themselves, and sport with the feelings of the public? Were a subscription proposed, I have little doubt of its being encouraged; but to pay six shillings for sitting three hours the harrassed spectator of scenes at once ridiculous and distressing, is what I will not again submit to.

QUAKERS, AND THE STAGE.

C. P. B.

THE amusements of the theatre are strictly forbid den to Quakers of every description; and this, partly because many plays are immoral, but chiefly (according to Mr. Clarkson*), because on the stage, men perso

* See his Portraiture of Quakerism,

nate characters that are not their own; and thus become altogether sophisticated in their looks, words and actions, which is contrary to the simplicity and truth required by Christianity.' The Edinburgh Reviews make the following observations on this statement. We scarcely think the Quakers will be much obliged to Mr. Clarkson for imputing this kind of reasoning to them. We would rather hear at once that the play-house was the Devil's drawing-room, and that actors paint their faces, and deserve the fate of Jezebel. As to the sin of personating characters not their own, and sophisticating their looks and words, it is necessarily committed by every man who reads aloud a dialogue from the New Testament, or who adopts, from the highest authority, a dramatic form in his preaching. As to the other objection, that theatrical amusements produce too high a degree of excitement for the necessary sedateness of a good Christian, we answer, in the first place, that we do not see why a good Christian should be more still and sedate than his innocence and natural gaiety incline him to be; and, in the second place, that the objection proves Mr. Clarkson to be laudably ignorant of the state of the modern drama, which, we are credibly informed, is by no means so extremely interesting, as to make men neglect their business and their duties to run after it.

EXTRACT FROM AN ACCOUNT OF THE

GERMAN THEATRE.

IN examining these pieces in detail, and appropriating them to their respective authors, one is immediately struck with the name of Lessing, whom Germany so much reveres as one of the founders of her drama. He is the author of the first piece in Friedel's collection, Emilie de Galotti, another tragedy in one act called Philotas, a third called Sara Samson, and a drame entitled Nathan le Sage. He is author also of several other plays contained in the Theatre Allemand of Junker, one of which, Minna de Barnhelm, is reckoned the chef d'œuvre of German comedy. I have perused it with all the attention to which its high character entitled it, and indeed with a great degree of the pleasure, though not with all the admiration which that high character led me to expect. It is of the graver or sentimental kind of comedy, where the characters maintain a war of generosity, from which the embarrassments and implications of the plot, not very intricate nor artificial ones, result.

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The principal person is Major Telheim, a disbanded officer, whose merits his country had ill-rewarded; a man of the most consummate bravery, generosity and virtue, for whom these qualities have gained the love of every soldier and domestic around him. They have cured him a still more valuable attachment, the love of the heroine of the piece, Minna of Barnhelm, who, on hearing of the Major's regiment being disbanded, comes to Berlin to seek him, and to make him happy. The rival nobleness of mind of these two characters produces. the principal incidents of the piece, which however are not always natural, nor very happily imagined; and besides, as Fielding jocularly says, when comparing a shallow book to a shallow man, may be easily seen through. But, with all these defects, and that want of comic force which the turn and situation of the principal characters naturally occasions, the play must please and interest every reader. There is something in the constitution of the human mind so congenial to disinterestedness, generosity and magnanimity, that it never fails to be pleased with such characters, after all the de.ductions which critical discernment can make from them. Amidst the want of comic humour which I have observed in this play, I must not omit, however, doing justice to a serjeant-major of Telheim's regiment, and to Justin his valet, who are drawn with a strong and natural pencil. The story of the spaniel, told by the latter, when his master's poverty makes him wish to dismiss him from his service, is one of the best imagined, and best told, I remember to have met with. There is a good deal of comic character and lively dialogue in some of Lessing's less celebrated pieces in the collection of Junker; but the plots are in general extravagant and farcical.

In judging of Lessing as a tragic writer, one will do him no injustice by making the tragedy of Emilie de Galotti the criterion of that judgment. The others in these volumes are very inferior to this, which is certainly, in point of composition, character and passion, a performance of no ordinary kind. Lessing was well acquainted with the ancient drama, and wished to bring the theatre of his country to a point of regularity nearer to that of the ancients. He published, for some time, a periodical criticism on theatrical composition, called, Le Dramaturgie de Hambourg." His plays, accordingly, though not exactly conformable to the Aristotelian

standard, approach pretty near to it, in the observation of the unities. He is said to have got into a dispute with Goethé on this subject, in which, from a degree of timidity in his nature, he rather yielded to his antagonist. I am not sure if he has profited by confining himself more than some other of his countrymen within the bounds of the regular drama. The fable of Emilie de Galotti, as well as of his other tragedies, is more regular than hap→ py, and the denouement neither natural nor pleasing.It is founded on circumstances somewhat similar to those in the story of Virginia. A prince of Guastalla is deɛperately enamoured of Emilie de Galotti, who is just about to be married to a man of rank and fortune, the Count Appiani. On the day of his marriage, he is waylaid by order of a wicked minister of the prince, and murdered. His bride is brought to the prince's countryseat, where, to prevent any chance of her dishononr, her father kills her.

After the first reading of Emilie, I was disposed to wonder at the reputation it had acquired; but a second placed it higher in my estimation. This was naturally the case in a performance where the whole was neither so perfect nor so interesting as some of the scenes in detail were forcible and striking. The heroine Emilie de Galotti is but imperfectly drawn, and not very well supported. Indeed, it may in general be observed in these pieces, that the characters of the female personages are by much the most defective, both in beauty and in force. This may perhaps be ascribed to the state of society in Germany, where the sex is less an object of consideration and respect than in France, and some other parts of the Continent. But there is another lady in this tragedy, the Countess d'Orsina, the last betrayed and abandoned mistress of the prince, whose character the poet has delineated with great ability; and one scene, in which she is introduced along with the father of Emilie, in genuine expression of passion, and pointed force of dialogue, may be compared to some of the best which the modern stage can boast.

In the developement of the secret foldings of the heart, Lessing seems deeply skilled, and the opening scenes of this tragedy contain some of those little incidents that mark an intimacy with human nature, which genius alone can claim. But in its progress we find, in some degree, a want of that strong and just delineation and support of character, but chiefly of that probable conduct and in

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