The Sun.
London, England, 1858-03-18 00:00:00

WESTLAND MARSTON'S READINGS.

" ANNE BLAKE."

On Saturday evening we had the gratification of
attending a "Private Reading" by this accom-
plished gentleman—the reading of one of the most
popular among his dramatic productions—Anne
Blake, a name familiar to us as that of a very
charming favourite. Although the occasion was,
strictly speaking, rather a test than a prelimi-
nary entertainment—it was so entirely and emi-
nently successful as a trial of the Playwright's capa-
city as an Elocutionist, that we cannot reasonably
hesitate to refer to it thus publicly, as the precursor,
in all probability, of many a repetition before audi-
tors both more numerous and more miscellaneous.
The audience of Saturday evening was restricted,
in a great measure, to the literary friends of the
author, yet it was an audience in every way
sufficiently critical to render the applause
accorded to Mr. Marston at the close of his enter-
tainment, valuable es a discriminative testimony of
merit rather than as a merely genial tribute of
friendship. Apart, however, from the intrinsic cha-
racter of that assemblage itself, an assemblage com-
posed for the most part of professional critics, critics
both of the closet and the theatre, fastidious book-
men and keen witted playgoers—it could hardly
have failed tobe otherwise as to the impartial nature
of the judgment pronounced upon this initial
" Reading" after the very manly and sensible re-
marks by which the reading itself was briefly but
earnestly introduced. Remarks in which Mr.
Marston, deprecating anything at all bearing the
semblance of partiality from his hearers, sought
merely the simplest and truest verdict as to his own
peculiar qualifications. The decision, we repeat,
was in every respect signally favourable : a re-
sult none the less satisfactory we should pre-
sume to Mr. Westland Marston himself from
the fact of his audience comprising among others
Charles Dickens, John Forster, W. .T. Fox, M.P.
for Oldham, Hepworth Dixon, and ether eminent
literary contemporaries. The design is to break
down the barrier of an old prejudice hitherto sepa-
rating the theatrical world from a very considerable
section of the general community. The result of
this obdurate prejudice (arising, for the most part,
from pure misapprehension) being, of course,
singularly detrimental to the dramatic interest—
while it, at the same time, unintermittingly de-
bars the particular section of society referred to
from the enjoyment of what is, in reality, not
simply a harmless, but an eminently instructive,
and humanising, and elevating species of intellec-
tual entertainment. It is an old story enough, of
course, that of attempting to deal with this preju-
dice with a view to its ulterior dissipation. But
Mr. Marston's method of dealing with it
appears to us to be, in every respect, so novel,
so simple, so undeniably reasonable, from
first to last, that we cannot but think it gives
considerable promise of success—and we certainly
do not hesitate for a single instant to award to its
originator our heartiest good wishes in his endea-
vours. Mr. Marston conceives, as it appears to
us, not in any way extravagantly, that if some of
our living dramatic writers were to read to any one
who cared to come and hear them, those of their
dramas which have nightly drawn to the theatres
many hundreds of the playgoing population—the
non-playgoers might thus be made acquainted with
the real nature of the productions heretofore re-
garded by them through such a mist of distorting
misapprehensions. It is not in the smallest degree
to our thinking an idle dream, this notion of
appealing to the common sense of the public by this
sheer argumentam ad ignorantiam. We look
hopefully to its realisation. And at any rate it has
now the augury of a very auspicious commencement.
For a more appropriate play than " Anne Blake"
could hardly have been selected for the beginning.
Our meaning, in so speaking, will be understood
' upon the instant by those who bear the drama in
their remembrance, as it was originally acted five
or six seasons back at the Princess's,—when Mr.
and Mrs. Charles Kean won the tears and plaudits
of London by their exquisite impersonations of
Anne and Thorold—when Walter Lacy (as only
Walter Lacy could be) was the gay vivacious
Llaniston—where our sympathies were extorted by
Mrs. Daly's Lloyd, and our ridicule by Mrs. Win-
stanley's Lady Poppington, our scorn by Mr. Ad-
dison's Sir Joshua, and our laughter by Mr. Ches-
tee's lillott. Among those half-dozen motley per-
sonages the interest, the animation, the humour,
the pathos, the passion, the whimsicality of the
piece were distributed. Upon the hero and hero-
ine of the drama the charm and fascination of
it were throughout continuously concentrated.
It was recognised, it was admired, It was
appreciated as a five-act play that not only
amused the spectator, but stirred to the
depths all his finer sympathies. It was so
felt on Saturday evening when read to his
with a voice alternately at his own perfect will and
pleasure—now brusque and vulgar like that of the
upstart parvenu, now genial and honeyed like that
of the warm-hearted housekeeper, now pert with
the pertness of the coxcombical butler, now
sprightly, now lackadaisical, tremulously tearful,
or earnestly impassioned. The first applause
was elicited by his delivery of those rallying words
addressed by Thorold to Llaniston

" Women who are but pursued
For the pleasure of the chase—are, like its victims,
Cast off when captured, and the huntsman lover
, Tarns to new game. A wife, my friend, should be
A sweet bird won to one's breast by cherishing :
Not a wild quarry to be hawked down."
There was a thrill of sympathetic feeling, more
over, in the utterance of tho panegyric on—

" The men who think !
Whose weapon is the pen, whose realm the mind.
I mean not laurelled bards ; but daily workers,
Who, like the electric force, unseen. pervade
The sphere they quicken : nameless till they die,
And leaving no memorial but a world
Made better by their lives."
It was, however, in the reading of the two
concluding acts of Jane Blake that the au-
thor of Anne Blake achieved his success on
Saturday night as au Elocutionist. It was
a success, moreover, distinct and unmistake-
able. The entertainment took place at the Beet-
hoven Rooms, near Cavendish-square, the probable
scene of its public repetition at a date of which we
may now anticipate an early announcement.