University of Virginia Library

LONDON THEATRES.

Drury-Lane and Covent-garden are two magnificent
temples for the representation of the legitimate
drama. Taste and elegance are conspicuous in
whatever appertains to them; and though both
houses are richly ornamented, the most fastidious
critic would be puzzled to point out any thing gaudy,
glaring, or obtrusive. The contrast between the
chaste simplicity of their common scenery, and the
glittering coarseness of that of the minor theatres
is very striking. The greatest fault of both is their
size; great physical powers being absolutely requisite
to make the singing and acting effective in the
more remote parts of the house. The interior of
each being in the shape of a horse-shoe, the stage is
consequently much smaller in proportion to the audience-part
than that of the Park theatre, which is
semicircular. The saloons and lobbies are uncommonly
spacious and splendid. The principal saloon

at Drury-lane is one large mirror, the walls being
entirely covered with glass. Next in reputation to
these stands the Haymarket, nearly the size of the
Bowery, and bearing about the same relation to
Drury-lane and Covent-garden, that the Chatham in
its best days did to the Park. The English Opera-house—lately
burned and now rebuilding—its name
sufficiently indicates the purposes to which it is appropriated.
The Italian Opera-house is not yet
open for the season, but is, I understand, by far the
largest and most splendid theatrical establishment
in London. Then there is Astley's in the quadruped
line, where dramas written by asses are played
by horses—where the business of the scene is transacted
en croupe, and ladies are courted and tyrants
are slaughtered at a three-quarter pace or a full gallop.
Sadler's Wells, once famous for heroic actions
and real water, swearing and tobacco. Here ships
were nightly wrecked and long-boats overturned;
and sailors continually employed in jumping over-board
to save beauty and innocence, in wet white
garments from a watery grave. The performers
were a species of amphibious animals, and passed
half their time in fluids; and the best swimmer was,
next to a Newfoundland dog, the most important
personage in the establishment. Here it was that
the “Courageous Coral Diver, or the Shark of the
Gulph of California,” had such a successful run.
The “Humane Society for the recovery of drowned
persons” allowed, I believe, their drag-nets, warm
flannels, stomach-pumps, and other apparatus to be
kept in readiness at this theatre, in case of accident;
but still they could not prevent the coughs, colds,
catarrhs, and pulmonary complaints incident to
such an otter-like state of existence—the real water
was therefore discontinued—the sea was sunk, and
the ocean is now made of carpets and painted sail-cloth,
as in other establishments.

Besides these, there is an infinite number of minor
theatres, with the names of half of which I am
unacquainted. Some of the major-minors are highly
respectable, and not unfrequently have first-rate
talent on their boards; but the minor-minors are,
from stage to gallery, an unmixed mass of ignorance
and vulgarity. Here is performed that species
of “national drama,” which was wont to be enacted
at the Lafayette and Mount Pitt circus before
they were purified by fire; and which is still to be
seen at the Park and Bowery, much to their credit,
on holiday nights, where the several parties have it
all their own way; and the most glorious and decisive
victories are obtained by the tremendous carnage
of one half of the supernumeraries, and the
craven cowardice of the other; and where the enemies

of valiant Englishmen and courageous Americans
are humbled into the dust before them, much
to the credit of the very patriotic and enlightened
audiences. Here, as on your side of the water, instances
of almost incredible prowess are as common
as can be; and an enemy's first-rate is frequently
boarded and taken by a single midshipman, or a
young officer alone cuts a whole detachment to
pieces, except that the curtain falls amid shouts of
“England for ever!” instead of “Hurrah for Jackson!”
I had been so long accustomed to hear all
the love and liberty and heroism and bombast proceed
out of the mouths of gentlemen in blue jackets,
that it at first seemed strange to hear gentlemen
in red declaiming in precisely the self-same strain.
However, it must be said for the Londoners, that
these direct national puffs are not tolerated at decent
theatres. The victories of his majesty's forces
are almost entirely confined to places patronized for
the most part by butcher's boys, dustmen, draymen,
and coal-heavers.

The principal source of profit, however, to nearly
all the minor theatres, is the “supernatural business,”
or representation of demoniacal dramas.
But here no narrow national feelings prevail—justice
is equally dealt out to all; and in the last scene
the devil has his due, let the culprit be what countryman

he may. The mythologies of all ages and
nations have been raked up, and the evil spirits
with which they abound re-produced upon the
stage. It is really fearful to look upon a dead wall,
covered with play-bills, and read the dreadful announcements
for the evening's amusements, rendered
terribly distinct by ominous red and sombre
black type of gigantic stature. Some of the managers
ground their claims to public patronage
and support on the immense expense they have
been at in order to do justice to the views of the interior
of the infernal regions; and one spirited lessee
has actually constructed a false or double stage,
which, at the termination of the piece, sinks down
with the particular fiend and victim of the evening,
amid cataracts of flame spouting forth from the
side-wings. The enacting of demons has become
a regular branch of theatrical business; and Mr. O.
Smith, a man with an unamiable countenance, and
a voice horrifically hoarse, is as distinguished in
this line as Kean in tragedy, or Liston in comedy.
“The prince of darkness is a gentleman,” says
Shakspeare, but two-thirds of his representatives in
London make him out little better than an illiterate
scoundrel. It is rather too bad on the most serious
occasions, to hear the father of all evil transposing
his v's and w's, and leaving out his h's, in the true
cockney style, unable even to pronounce his own
proper place of residence in a correct manner.

The public appetite for gloomy horrors is at present
perfectly ravenous. I know not how to account for
this, except by attributing it to the alarming increase
in the consumption of pork which has taken place in
the metropolis within these few years. This species
of animal nutriment is the favorite food of the lower
orders, and I am inclined to think, generates more
diabolical tastes and propensities than “flesh of
muttons, beeves, or goats.” How is it possible that a
person who banquets off pork sausages and heavy
porter, and then swallows two or three drams of
spirits of turpentine, miscalled gin, can have his
sensibilities aroused by such slight provocations as
wit and humor? Is he a man to be tickled with a
straw? What is a joke or a scrap of sentiment,
or a lively conceit to him? You might as well give
a glass of delicately flavored wine to an habitual
bibber of fourth-proof brandy. Take him to see
“Much ado about nothing,” and he thinks the play
well named—or “As you like it,” and he likes it
not. No—he pays his money and goes to witness
“The Infernal Compact; or, the Fiend, the Victim,
and the Murderer!”—he puts his hands in his
pockets, and criticizes the vagaries of Mr. Smith,
in his favorite character of the “Demon of the Valley

of Skulls,” (as performed by him fifty-seven
successive nights, with distinguished approbation!)
These monstrosities have been of gradual growth.
First came “Cherries and Fair Stars,” “Visions of
the Sun,” and similar tales of enchantment; but
these were soon found to be mere moonshine, and
a class of melo-dramas was got up where “murders
were done too terrible for the ear.” The Newgate
calendar was regularly dramatized, and a most
atrocious state of things prevailed for some time;
but, as the anti-temperance man goes on regularly
to increase the strength of the dose, as his acuteness
of taste decreases, so the managers, after blunting
the feelings and perceptions of the public, were
obliged to resort to still stronger stimulants, and
hence the present sulphureous state of the stage.
But even this is beginning to fail. Notwithstanding
the “infernal abysses,” by the help of chemical
substances, which throw on the stage a strong glare
of red, blue, or yellow light, are rendered, as the
term is, “highly effective,” insomuch, indeed, as to
produce a strong impression on any person unused
to such exhibitions, the cockney surveys the whole
with critical coolness, until a superabundant quantity
of flame elicits some such exclamation of admiration
as—“I say, Bill, vot do you think of that
'ere? My eyes!” delivered in a tone of voice which
evidently shows that the view of the place of punishment
before him has not made any impression on
the mind of the speaker in regard to his own ulterior
prospects. If the stage at present actually
shows “the very age and body of the time, its form
and pressure,” the millenium is much further off
than many people suppose.