The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-09 00:00:00

South to fresh efforts ; for unless JOHNSON
falls a victim to the sudden change of plans,
and consequent suspenSion of the armistice,
GRANT has admitted his abilities, but under existing
circumstances one general could hardly be trusted to
criticise another's movements. As if there were not
enough elements of discord already in existence,
ANDREW JOHNSON and his advisers must add fuel
to the flame, they must increase the popular ex-
citement, they must endeavour to stimulate the
masses to acts of tyrannical vengeance towards
the South, they must bring up the old
accusation against neutrals of harbouring assassins,
they must import dissension into their own coun-
cils and amongst their own leaders, and must dis-
gust and incense the moderate men of all parties.
Englishmen cannot look without emotion at such a
prospect; and, independently of all personal sym-
pathies or sentiments, cannot but regret that the
clouds which have so long overshadowed the desti-
nies of that fair and fertile country should but have
been for a moment dispersed to gather again in
greater force, and to presage a yet darker storm.

THEATRE ROYAL, ADELPHI,

Miss Bateman as Bianca, in " Fazio,"

Whatever doubts might still have remained in
the minds of some of the more obdurate among the
representatives of the nil admirari school of criti-
cism, as to the versatility of Miss Bateman's powers
as a tragic actress, those doubts may now be con-
sidered, we presume, to have been finally set at rest,
by her performance last evening of Bianca, in Dean
Mihnan's five-act Tragedy of " Fazio"—a per-
formance so brilliantly successful upon the whole as
to be just simply final and conclusive as to the
scope of the young tragediennes' capabilities. The
play itself, disagreeable though it undoubtedly is,
in the mere story of it, frequently, sometimes
glaringly, inartistic though it is (no less undoubtedly)
in its construction as a work designed for represen-
tation upon the stage, hardly less than for perusal
in the closet—this play of " Fazio " has held its
ground now during very nearly one whole half-
century within the already contracted and
still contracting circle of the Acting Drama.
It enjoyed for a while—in the earlier part of the
half century that has thus elapsed since the
date of its original production upon the boards
of a London Theatre—it enjoyed for a while,
we say, during that earlier part of its career,
a sort of. double celebrity—thanks, that is,
to the twofold attraction of Miss O'Neil's
Bianca and of the Fazio of Mr. Charles
Kemble. Thanks now, in her turn, to Miss Bate-
man—the character of Bianca, at last, is restored to
to London stage in the fullest meaning of
the word redivivus ! Bianca, the jealous wife,
the tender lover, the half-maddened denouncer,
the remorseful consoler, the distracted and impas-
sioned avenger of Fazio—again lives, and breathes,
and talks, and weeps upon the stage like the lovely
poetical creation that she is. llow successful Miss
Bateman's representation of Bianca was last evening,
upon the occasion of that its first performance,
before a throng comprising within it many of the most
fastidious among London Playgoers, may be under-
stood from the simple fact, that upon five or six dis-
tinct occasions, the heroine of the night was sum-
moned before the footlights. At the end of each of
the four last acts—the first act admitting in no way
of the possibility of a recall—at the end of the four
last acts of the play, Miss Bateman was thus recalled.
And finally, when the green curtain had descended
at the close of the tragedy✓--yet once again, as if
the audience were this time determined upon there
being no mistake whatever as to the splendour
of the triumph that had been achieved. The first
act, we will confess, had in noway whateverprepared
us for any such radiant and signal victory. The first
act, we will even add, had so far yielded us disap-
pointment that it had certainly diminished our
expectations. On reflection, however, we cannot
but think that what we are here referring to, is attri-
butable far less to the actress than to the dramatist.
As an acting drama "Fazio," we repeat, is here and
there to our thinking nothing less than flagrantly
faulty and inartistic. Several scenes end most
abruptly—in one of them, namely the one in which
Bianca is pleading in vain to the obdurate senators,
the heroine is left to the hazard of an almost
ludicrous anti-climax ! Bianca, besides this, at the
termination of the very first act of the tragedy,
being left alone upon the stage at the close of a
long speech addressed to her by her husband—she
is left there alone upon the stage at the end of that
long speech of Fazio's to make her way off it, as best
she may. For the good effect of a first act, a wholely
fatal anticlimax ! Hence doubtless the apathy with
which the first descent of the curtain last night was
witnessed. It was afterwards, however and
increasingly afterwards that Miss Bateman
won by successive scenes of varying and ad-
vancing and cumulative intensity, her full mas-
tery over the emotions of her audience, that audi-
ence, including amongst its number, as already
hinted, the more 'fastidious few who, until last
night may be said to have but grudgingly admitted
the validity of her great reputation. The earliest
indication of the triumph achieved by her Bianca
yesterday was towards the close of the third scene
of the second act, where her jealousy is first
awakened by Fazio's avowed admiration for his
former love, the Lady Aldabella. All doubt as to
the character of the success of the impersonation
may be said to have ceased from the moment of
her utterance of the words—
Bian. Fazio, thou sett'st a fever in my brain ;
My lips burn, Fazio, at the thought ;
I had rather thou wert in thy winding sheet

Than that bad woman's arms ; I had rather grave-worms
Were on thy lips than that bad woman's kisses.

And, still more radiant was her success when she
added, in answer to Fazio's deprecatory interrup-
tion—

Howbeit, there is no blistering in their taste:
There is no suffocation in thoso arms—
" Take heed! we are passionate ; our milk of love
Doth turn to wormwood, and that's bitter drinking.

The fondest are most phrenetic: where the firo
Burneth intensest, there the inmate pale
Doth dread the broad and beaconing conflagration.

If that yo cast us to the winds, tho winds

Will give us their unruly, restless nature ;

We whirl and whirl ; and where we settle, Fazio,

But he that ruleth the mad winds can know.

If ye do drive the love out of my soul,
That is its motion, being, and its life,
There'll be a conflict strange and horrible,
Among all fearful and ill-visioned fiends,
For the blank void ; and there mad revel there
Will mako me—oh, I know not what—hate then !"

Then—having withdrawn further from him step
by step with a sort of loathing—flying back to
his arms with a sudden tenderness, her hard and
almost pitiless intonations, abruptly breaking into
tearful accents of love, as she clings to her husband
tenderly, with her fair face nestling against his bosom,
" Oh, no !--I could not hate you, Fazio ! "
So again afterwards, at the close of the first scene of
act the third, when she is bent upon announing her
husband before the Duke in Council ! And yet
more, where at the end of the fourth act, she hurries
from the scene under a sudden impulse to destroy her
children—that act the fourth of Fazio, as it is now
performed at the Adelphi, ending at that precise
point, dropping out of view altogether the sequel to
this affecting incident as given in the printed drama.
Where Bianca, returning from the inner chamber,
having found her children asleep, fondly solilo-
quises over their innocent safety. Miss Bate-
man's crowning triumphs however were in the
concluding incidents of the tragedy, in which
we observe her pleading in vain to the
cruel and wanton destroyer of her wedded
happiness, the profligate Lady Aldabella ; or in
which we watch her parting moments with Fazio
—parting moments that leave her in what we
might call a sculpturesque stupefaction of horror
—from the agonising trance of which she is roused
by her husband's death bell ! Bianca's subsequent
denunciation of the Lady Aldabella to the
Duke of Florence in the midst of a dance
and revelry in that wanton dame's ap-
lazza, brought the green curtain down at the close
of the tragedy in the midst of a general scene of
clatlf3bal, immediately, that ia, after the termi-