The Sun.
London, England, 1851-01-01 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

THREE TO ONE. A Comedy.
An ingenious idea has been developed in this
graceful little composition. The only positive
blun-
der on the face of it is its title. " Three to One"
not a comedy, but a vaudeville. In its materials and
arrangement it must be regarded as inevitably coming
under this class of dramatic effusions. And. an ex-
quisite phase in this protean department of .
literature
is the vaudeville, the elegant trifle into which con-
densed the truest spirit of the comic. For equivoque,
especially, it forms the most delightful vehicle ma-
ginable. For badinage it presents incomparable op•
portunities. For humorous situations of all kinds
it yields the happiest occasions. Whoever has penned
the two acts of humorous cross-purposes hero under
consideration has availed himself of all these advan-
tages with very considerable esprit, and no small
degree of adroitness. This, moreover, has been ac-
compliihed, we should observe, under singu-
larly depressing circumstances. For we cannot,
according to our own conception, but
i view
the unities as dead weights, leaden incubi,
and intolerable shackles imposed by pedantry
upon imagination. The author of " Three to One"
has chosen of his own accord to revive this old custom
—a custom, happily, long since obselete with the
majority of p!ay w rights—and has displayed the vigour
of his undeveloped energies in so doing, by moving
with actual agility under the pressure of what to a
less powerful ability would have proved altogether
overwhelming. Both the unities of time and place
are preserved throughout with the most scrupulous
exactitude. Insomuch is regard had to the former,
that a clock is introduced, by which the audience may
themselves estimate the punctuality of the exits and
entrances, and the skill of the writer's measurement.
The scene is an apartment in the house of one of the
characters, resident in Belgrave-square. The date is
explicitly intimated, being Wednesday, the 21st of Au-
gust, 1850. The dramatis persona are literally, as the
title of the vaudeville indicates, Three to One—three
heroines and one hero—Felix (otherwise Mr. Manners)
being beloved at once by Julia, Sophia, and Fanny
(otherwise the Baroness Carlton, Mrs. Blunt, and
Miss Quicke). Altogether there are seventeen scenes
—twelve in the first and five in the second act—all of
which are varied with much amusing animation.
Several times the dialogue is inimitably smart, though
occasionally the dramatist falls into the error, common
to most beginners, of allowing a speech to run to
too great a length, thereby jeopardizing the scene
with a chance of its proving tedious,—an error easily
avoided by an adroit sprinkling of parenthetic inter-
ruptions. Besides, it should be remembered by every
young writer for the stage that the position of the
actors should ever be kept in mind, care being
taken that they should not be bound down
to an embarrassing silence of too great
duration. No individual is more enamoured of his
own voice than a player. No one has a more painful
disinclination to maintain an air of taciturnity ; and
this possibly from an instinct of the judicious require-
ments of the histrionic art. For if an actor has
nothing to say yet a while—don't bring him on to the
age, or at any rate don't drag him down to the foot-
lights to stand the dummy of the conversation. Let
him lounge in the background until allowed to par-
ticipate in the dialogue. No listeners are wanted on
the boards, the audience furnishing enough themselves.
Only now and then, it must be acknowledged, the
author of " Three to One" falls into this mistake, but
his slips in this particular, though as brief as they are
infrequent, are still sufficiently important to demand
met!tien—if only with a view to their future avoidance.
Felix himself is a sort of virtuous Don Juan, a
gentleman-hero of romance, with whom every,
Woman is falling in love, but who yields him-
self to the gentle passion only once, and that when
least expected, and to the lady least counted upon at
first by the spectators. The idiosyncrasy of the
character is very nicely discriminated. The Baroness
Carlton is the elegant and interesting lady of the
piece—Mrs. Blunt being the lively rattle (just such a
part as Mrs. Stirling would play to admiration)—
and Miss Quicke is the most insignificant figure in
the group, standing before the audience in a rather
contemptible, if not positively invidious light. The
interest of the plot, which is intricate enough not to
be disagreeably confused, concentrates about Julia
and Felix, and the denouement proves (as that of
every vaudeville should) in the highest de•
gre e satisfactory. The changes of situation
and alternations of equivoque are cleverly
managed, and reveal on the part of the writer a talent
capable of cultivation into excellence. Considered as
a whole, indeed, and as the manifest production of a
tyro in dramatic composition, the vaudeville of
"Three. to One," is in many respects singularly
merito nous. As an experiment, moreover, in this in-
teresting department of literature it is largely at-
tractive. The fascination of the plot we will not
endeavour to mar by any premature explanation,
leaving the examination of the various incidents to
the scrutiny of the curious and intelligent.
1211

AGINATION. An Original Poem. By Spero.
A poetical effusion which upon its very title- page
suggests the remembrance of two such poets as Tho-
mas Campbell and Mark Akemide must assuredly be
regarded as somewhat lerasided by the characteris-
tics of temerity. Campbell and his masterpiece are
Called to mind by the nom de guerre—" Spero."
Akenside and his masterpiece by the subject—" Ima-
gination." Yet a disinterested scrutiny of the poem
here brought before us modestly by an anonymous
aspirant for the laurels will be sufficient to justify the
writer in the boldness evinced by the act of publica-
tion. A species of guarantee as to the integrity of
his claims on our attention is visible in the circum-
stance of its being dedicated to CHARLES DICKENS,
a circumstance which will win a hearing to the author
from many who might otherwise have felt indisposed
to dip into a poem in two parts, extending over
seventy-eight octavo pages. The inscription of the
Work runs to this effect—" To Charles Dickens,
Esquire, who, although surrounded by labours that
must pre-eminently occupy his mind, read with the
promptness of a friend the work of a stranger, and
honoured it with his name." The incident (an im•
portant one in the life of the young writer, though
apparently trivial in itself) is eminently characteristic
of that illustrious author whose genius has a scope
large enough to embrace the most eclectic sympathies.
Several passages in the volume under notice are of
genuine excellence, and some of them indicate also a
real splendour of " Imagination."