The weekly register. [volume] (Point Pleasant, Va. [W. Va.]) 1862-1909, 1881-01-19

''tU AAivi us Auo 49, +ltt'
know, we have all 0iss;1 ~
sedler's Wells Theatfa 81
regions very distant iEd9 sI
End, But the great SID ph
have brought this might, hbt
bounds, and tits possibis |yA
to take ones business Ae tn
miles from home.
sadler's Wells. does 40. +
depend for its audience 'E
dwellers On the oapitoIial
Mayfair or South Keps
has its own life, ,its ew /.
and ssm ssaSk
itheatreof the ASentiires d Jspubfic
wherethe pit and the gallery rule
supreme. 1t is a handsome build
ing, well proportioned, ofoyal shape.
A great stage fronts the audience.
They come from the neighboring
streets and roads, from their dwell
ings by the river, from suburban
squares and busy roads. What Sad.
ler's Wells was once we may still
see painted on the curtain--a green
rural place, shady and umbrageous,
where hooped and powdered ladies,
escorted by attentive gentlemen, trip
to the restoring waters. If this were
really theatre for the Aventines, If
we were Romans living in blue and
yellow weather, this peoples col.
ossem might have been left unin-
closed and open to the stars Of heay-
en-; but as it is, we are English, shud.
dering in u familiar atmosphere of
Grape and halfmourning fog and, so
the house is safely shut away from
the winds and the weather, and the
moonlight is homemade, andis man
ufactured expressly for the love scene.
A lovely moon, lovely scene it is
as we find when the curtain rises and
the play begins; aud then, in little
while, we are touched by some mag
ic. The theatre fades away; that
stage is no stage; London is not; Sad
ler's Wells is not; two centuries roll
back; the audience, the moon-lit
tragedy,'all are conveyed away from
the present to a past ofshakespeare's
creation, to Italy, lDsVerona;S to the
home Of Juliet and ofber lafer;.s : :; 3:
Shakespeare, LIE Bgs stkdSyeh. works
with a strange Intimate scharm, in.
describable but lnmistakable. AS
the people listens s.all that they see
and hear becomes their own, becomes
themselves; their own secret told,
their own feelings revealed. We
never took poison, we never fought
in the streets of Verona, we never
conquered France; we never loved,
hated, endured, philosophical, dream
ed such dreams; never saw such
sights in nature, never gathered
such dewy flowers, as Shakespeare did
nor heard the birds sing as they sang
to him; but, nevertheless, as he speaks
to us we know it all, we feel it all;
we are touched, and made into poets,
strung to some greater mood than our
customary humdrum.
Last night we saw a thousand poets
utterly bewitched, charmed out Of
themselves, dwellers in Ellington and
Hounslow, neigbors of the "Angel,"
humble pedestrians who count from
one public-house to another. There
they sat-gods in the gallery, poets
in the watching the moon that
rose two hundred years ago, while
the nightingales that sang in Shaks-
pcare's time burst into a new song
Romeo and Juliet is very like the
story nightingale might tell. 1t
begins quietly, with some faint echo
of what is to come, a low thrill, a
pause-passion's note suggested, and
then silenced for a moment-then
the jug-jug ofcommonplace, and then
comes a great passionate outburst
thrilling into every heart.
The great theatre was full of hard
working, honest faces, people resting
and forgetting their weeks work, not
lazy capitolincs trying to vile away
an evening; the pit surgcd to the
stalls, the galleries were broad, and
filled with this good audience.
There were only about half a dozen
boxes in all; | think four on either
side. Two or three Of these were
q,