The Sun.
London, England, 1849-11-21 00:00:00

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( .NDON, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1849.

Actors, according to that courtly expression which
has become proverbial, are designated her MAJESTY'S
servants. Assuredly they might yet more truthfully
—and we say this without any question whatever of
their loyalty—be termed also the public benefactors.
For, of all classes of the community, theirs is the one
which dedicates more particularly its whole energies
to the sentiment, the sensibility, and the intellectual
entertainment of the multitude. To them we are in
a special manner indebted for those touching and
graceful impersonations which effect more than ser-
mons or homilies in softening the moral and elevating
the mental character. With them, although unknown
to ourselves personally, we acquire an earnest and
familiar friendship—associated as they are with our
joys and sorrows, our tears and our laughter. They
minister at the altar of our hearts, in the shrine of our
consciences, and open to us those beautiful regions of
illusion which to the less imaginative would be other-
wise inaccessible. It may be, it has been, and unhappily
comes to pass even now-a-days, but too frequently,
that while conducing to our own amusement, they
themselves are masking some secret grief with their
smiles, are shrouding some poignant suffering with
an affectation of merriment, and, as has been recog-

niaed in one or two cases which have accidentally
come before the public knowledge, are throwing the
house into convulsions when their hearts are all but
breaking. Our object at present is not to dilate upon
these extreme casualties in the histrionic profession ;
it is to draw attention more particularly to the inva-
riable assiduity with which the members of that
profession sacrifice their own comfort and their
noblest faculties for the advantage of the popu-
lation. Every evening, at the very period
when most men and women are disposed to
rest from the diurnal toils of existence—their
labours may be said to begin in earnest. Not, how-
ever, that it must be supposed for an instant that the
previous portions of the day have remained for them
unoccupied. What with rehearsals, with studying
their parts, and with the other duties of preparation,
the morning and the afternoon glide away only to
bring them the time of their principal occupation.
Thus, for the majority, the chief rewards of a career
—mere than any other precarious—is the applause
which nourishes them with an enervating excitement.
Latterly it has become notorious that the theatrical
profession—that portion of it at least which is
devoted to what is vulgarly called the legitimate
drama—has met with no encouragement adequate to its
proper maintenance. A change in the popular taste, a
preference for the more artificial entertainments, for
the ornate beauties of the " opera," and the gorgeous
appliances of mere " spectacle," as led, as every one
knows, to the partial dethronement of the great kings
of our dramatic literature. A country which can
boast of a AI ASSINGER and a WYCHERLEY, a FAR-
QUHAR, a JOHNSON, a FLETCHER, a BEAUMONT, an
OTWAY, a CONGREVE, and a SHERIDAN, one, more-
over, which glories in the possession of that wonder-
ful man whose humble birth place has been for more
than three centuries the object of reverential pilgrim-
age—can yet find a difficulty in supporting one of
those great establishments in which their master-
pieces were formerly represented by the genius of a
KRA.N or a GARRICK, an O'NEIL or a SIDDONS,
COOKE or a KEMBLE. To say in extenuation of this
evidence of popular degeneracy that the decay of the
drama, of the legitimate drama, is attributable to
want of histrionic ability, is to place cause and effect
in their inverse positions ; while, at the same time, it
argues but a poor faculty for the appreciation of those
indisputable talents, and, in one or two instances, of
that unquestionable genius which still continue to
adorn the stage and to impart a lustre to it even at a
period regarded by some as preliminary to its dissolu-
tion. One circumstance in the matter under argu-
ment is, to ourselves, of all others the most incontro-
vertible ; namely, that histrionic abilities are
fostered and even created by a popular
appetite for dramatic representations, more than
that a passion for the stage is produced in the
public mind by the appearance of distinguished
members of the profession. Of this the records of the
drama afford surely sufficient testimony. It was in
consequence of the popularity of our legitimate
theatres during the last generation that at length a
body of actors were assembled together more admi-
rable in their several departments, when regarded
collectively, than any of their predecessors. At that
time, when the stage had gradually ascended from its
nadir to its zenith, the principal characters in a tragedy
or a comedy were not only impersonated by actors and
actresses of resplendent ability, but even the subordi-
nate characters were represented by individuals who,
in their different walks, were jusy regarded az
inimitable. While in the performance of the great
works of SHAKSPERE, Othello for example, was realised
in the form of that extraordinary genius whose acting
was of sufficient intensity to throw Lord BYRON into
a tit. and to excite the impassioned enthusiasm of
COLERIDGE—CaIiban, in all his miraculous monstro-
sity, was witnessed in the person of EMERY, Fluellen
in all his Cymrian stupidity, in that of BLANCHARD,
Po/onius, the blending of sage and antic, in that of
MUNDEN, Mercutio in CHARLES KEMISLE, Gratiano
in FARLEY, Launcelot in LISTON, and Prospero in
YOUNG. Even the minor parts in an interlude, or
the mere bystanders as it were in a farce, were fill:a