The Sun.
London, England, 1865-06-13 00:00:00

Last night, a tragic play in five acts, entitled
" Geraldine ; or, the Master Passion," was pro-
duced here, and during its representation it elicited
the most unbounded applause. The play, we be-
lieve, is from the pen of Mrs. Bateman, and was
originally acted in America, where Miss Bateman
created a great impression as the heroine Geraldine.
This fact, coupled with the desire on the part of
Miss Bateman to vary her performance in London,
no doubt led to its being brought forward, but at
the outset we must openly confess our opinion to
be that a far better play in all respects could have
been easily selected. The idea, with the author or
authoress, which is strikingly apparent, has been to
preserve all the peculiarities of the character of
Leah in that of Geraldine, and not only has that been
done to the greatest nicety, but several addi-
tions have been made, all, however, bearing
the same peculiarities and mannerism. Thus
we have in the part of Geraldine, as in Leah,
concealed but consuming love, doubting constancy,
rage, jealousy, revenge, remorse, and death, all of
which Miss Bateman illustrates with her well-known
dramatic power, ; but speaking of the drama as a
stage play, it is most undramatically built. The
first three acts are tame and flat, and it is not until
the fourth and fifth that Miss Bateman has an
opportunity of thoroughly illustrating those emo-
tions which so singularly mark her dramatic imper-
sonations. The plot of Geraldine, in brief, is as
follows :—Geraldine de Lacy, daughter of the Earl
of Chester, is betrothed to a gallant knight, Hubert
de Burgh, who has gone to Palestine as a crusader.
Six years being the period of her lover's anticipated
absence, the Earl of Chester, her father, determines
on her marriage by proxy, and Hubert's friend
Hugo, Earl of Shrewsbury, arrives at the
castle to take his part in the ceremony
as the vicarious bridegroom. During the revelry a
Welsh bard offers the service of his minstrelsy, and
instead of a song the harper bursts forth with a cata-
logue of injuries suffered by the Cambrian moun-
taineers from the incursions of the English, and
denounces the father of Geraldine as the destroyer
of his son, home, and happiness. The earl tells the
old man that his son, who has been a prisoner, had
been liberated that morning ; but the incensed
Welshman, in the midst of the festive party, pro-
claims the wrongs his countrymen have endured
and invokes a curse on all within the castle walls,
and on the shrinking group of the De Lacy family
the act-drop descends. Six years elapse—now
and in the meantime the earl has died,
and his daughter Geraldine has become,
through illness, a hunch-backed woman. When
Hubert de Burgh returns from the crusades
he is received by Geraldine with a fear that his love
for her will not survive the sight of her deformity ;
but the crusader weds her in despite of the disfigure-
ment, which, by the by, is never perceptible to the
audience. Then a seemingly honest prior instils
into the heart of Geraldine a suspicion of her
younger sister Edith being her rival in the affections
of her husband. Sympathy shown by Edith at
Hubert's ill success at the tournay feeds the flame of
jealousy which has been kindled by the prior. The
maddened wife enters the chamber of her sister with
the intention of murdering her, but better thoughts

prevail ; and when the prior, who turns out to be
the son of the Welsh harper, is exulting over the
triumph of his machinations, Geraldine produces
Edith, and, having poisoned herself to render
Hubert happier with a fairer bride, she joins her
husband's hand with that of her sister, and dies.
In the last two acts Miss Bateman declaimed the
passionate speeches of the frenzied and jealous
woman with her usual intensity and effect. The
result was tremendous applause, and applause is
nowadays looked upon as a certain sign of success.
Miss Clara Denvil, as Edith, acted with much

sweetness and feeling, and Mr. Bateman, who made
his first appearance as the Welch Harper, gave the
terrible malediction in the first act with all the fire

and spirit of a genuine American actor. The other
parts of the play, the father of Geraldine, Hubert
the husband, and Anselme the priest, were respec-
tively supported by Messrs. R. Phillips, Jordan,
and Swinbourne, but the call on their abilities is
very small, and smaller still is the part of
Gambo, the court fool, whose jokes were as hard
as the heels of Mr. Billington's shoes invariably are.
The piece has not been extravagantly mounted,
rather the reverse ; but with all its imperfections it
secured a complete ovation for Miss Bateman and
her father.

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