The Sun.
London, England, 1845-11-05 00:00:00

DRURY-LANE i'HEATRE.

A grand extravaganza fairy :Ter tecle, entitled The Pi incess
who was Changed into a beer, was produced at this theatre
on Monday. It is funded on the French piece, La Riche
au Bois, which has been recently acted at the Porte
Martin for nearly two hundred successive nights. The
plot is a variation of the story of the sleeping
beauty. We have the christening of the infant
Princess, the gifts of the good fairies who had
been invited as guests, and the malevolence of the wicked
fairy, who appears as a guest although uninvited. She
threatens to destroy her if she sees the light of day until she
bas attained her 21st year, and on the athice of the other
fairies she is shut up in a tower without doors or windows
Here the author leaves the old fairy-tale and borrows
an incident from the story of the Princess of China
in the " Arabian Nights." In her dreams she sees
a handsome young Prince and falls in love with him,
and he in his dreams sees the Princess, and falls in love
with her. He soon discovers the original. The King, her
father, has sent his trusty squire to all the neighbouring
courts with the portrait of his daughter to secure a suitable
alliance for her. The Prince recognizes her portrait—de-
mands her hand, and she is to be conveyed to him
in a chariot without windows. A black Princess,
to whom the Prince had been affianced, causes
her familiar to waylay the carriage, break it in pieces
in the forest, and the Princess is transformed into
a deer. The Prince, who is out sho•eting wounds her.
She is, however, cured by a magic ring, which enables her to
resume her human shape during the day. The ring is lost,
and the Prince visits the realms of fishes in search of it, and
is attacked by a regiment of salmon, lobsters, sharks, and
crocodiles; he is, however, saved by a winged whale. The
Princess is restored to humanity and tie Prince, and all was
intended to have ended happily, but alas! for the best in-
tentions, the audience were not dispo to let it end
happily, and at the conclusion, the e:hilation was
loud and long continued. During the progress of the
piece disapprobation had been freq•dently manifested
sometimes uproariously, at others, in the more art-
rioying way of interjectional observations addressed to the
actors. Harley, while doing his very best to " make fun,"
was greeted with a cry of " You know it won't do, Harley,"
"How do you like it, Wieland?" asked a stentorian voice of
the funniest of devils in the midst of a storm of hisses. The
coup de grace, however, was given when Mrs. Selby, who
acted the Black Princess, exclaimed, " These senseless revels
delight me not." Such a shout of .‘ Hear, bear," was set up
u has not greeted our cars since the eventful morning when
the late Ministry were declared to be in a minority of
one on the Vote of Confidence question. How is it
that this piece, so successful in Paris, should have been so
nnsuccesJul in London. The scenery was gorgeous, the
ballet pretty, the dresses superb, the mounting perfect. But
while the dialogue of the Paris piece is full of wit and quid
pro quo, and hits of all sorts, the dialogue of the English
piece is stale, dull, flat, and unprofitable. After all, the
weather is sometimes a person of greater consequence than
the generality of managers and actors are disposed to admit.