National Republican., 1883-03-24

her first presentation of Lady Mac
beth }ir Barry.Cmwford had grown
too old 10 act when Mrs. Siddons
commenced. Mrs Jordan did not essay high
tragedy. Miss Farren's role was comedy.
When the star of Miss O'Ncill rose in the as
cendcnt Mrs. Siddons retired. Worldly WISE
she iuauguwtcd the system of spending her
vacations acting In the provincial cities, some.
thing 10 star had ever done before. She
would not act for the benefit Of disabled
brother actor without hciug well paid for &c.
Size refused tu act ai her sons benefit unless
hale the receipts were guaranteed her in ad-
faucr. She brought buck the pundcrous and
grJilcial school Of BCttcrton, Style of
uet.uE specially affected BY tic KEN
hlcs None of thcm disdained all the
little tricks of the stage which would give
them mumcutary Cclat And they were n
lucky family Tho luck Of the Kemblcs "
was famous. Until Kcan's day John Philip
kemble met but one man whose genius was
match Tor his own CoOnCss shrcwdncss, and
tUlcut-.Gcorcc Frederick Cooke. But Cooke
threw himself away by drink. When Hean
came aud conquered his place. Hcmblc wisely
retired. In John Howard payne's time the
schools of kean and Of komblc divided
the British stage Tho naturalness of Kcan,
and tho mOCk.heroics Of kembG each
had their disciples and imitators. There
were some very great names in comedy
some brilliant luminaries who held sway in
the realms of laughter and of mirth-Mun-
den, I.iston, Charles Kcmble, Matthews
Elliston, Suctt and others, but in tragedy
Kcan had no rival, and only Booth and
Young as first class supporters. Macready's
day came later, though even then the habtues
of Covent Garden plainly dsccrncd his
genius. There was 4 growing taste for melo-
drama, and after SiddOns' withdrawal Paris
reigned supreme ut London. British pluck
had fairly whipped the greatest military
genius of the past ten hundred years, but the
French thcater conquered the victors Trans
latiOns from the French then as now were all
the rage, and Gallic adaptations were more
highly esteemed aud better compensated than
original compositions. Besides IL cost less to
steal French ideas than to buy native thoughts
The British theater as u school of instruction
had almost ceased TO exist, but the British
theator as an amusement show paid high
profits to managers and TO stars. The rank
and file of the players sunk lower in the
social scale and had to be content with small
recompense for hard labor.
Part of the responsibility for the dccadent
state of the British stage at the period under
consideration was due to the vain, insolcnt
mcrcenary nature of the Kcmbles a greater
part however must be laid to the doors of
the brutal British character. Students of
the English drama cannot help being struck
at the great difference in the character of the
English people as shown by contrasting the
4
In the first period there was coarseness, but
during the second there is brutality. There
arc abundant evidences that in Shakspearo's
time the blood was hot and the speech
was quick, but fair play and manly
courtesy were characteristics of English mon
no less than English maids were noted for
Chaste thoughts and modest bearing. All
during the Hanoverian dynasty, and the evil
is not wholly absent down to this day, men
were gross and brutal-and the women were
fit companions for the men. The pages of
Fielding, of fAphra Benin, of Footc, Wycherley,
Congreve, Farquhar, Van Brugh, Smol-
lett, Villiers, Dc Foe, and others, are ac-
knowledged truthful pOrtraitures of diff
ferent classes of English society since
the Restoration, the evil growing and expand
ing and deepening the further we get from
tho Stuarts day. No man of decent in
stincts to-day can read tho works of these
authors so far as they present pictures of
English society, without feeling his cheek
tingling with shame. Their wit glistens
through corruption, their humor is buried in
filth their imagination is yokcd with beastli-
ness. A hard, cold unfeeling cruelty takes
the place ofsthe frank courtesy of an earlier
day, and the commercial usurps the
chivalrous spirit All things are bought with
n price, the honor of man and the virtue of
II woman, and any protest against this sweep
ing admcasurcment of human worth is
deemed haggling after better bargain
The Bardolphs and Nyms, and Pistols of
Shakespeare, tho refuse of a camps following
after foreign war, have been brutalizcd
and stolidifed, aud become the normal type
of the villagcr and the yeoman, Disregard of
others rights contemptrious cruelty, sneering
heartlessness, are striking characteristics |
These qualities after the Napoleonic wars were
strikingly Characteristic of the English. |
Boys delighted in tying domestic animals to |
stakes and pclting them with stones till the |
poor beasts died under the torture The |
modern prize ring became an institution of
society. The bull dog type of British valor,
was bred TO the whip-tailGd monstrosity of to-
day, and his affection, his fidelity, his pluck
sacrificed TO the one instinct to bite. Even the
preachers Of u reformed religion were affected |
by tho gross materiality of the age and
the race, and their pictures of heavenly bliss |
were tinged with a blasphemous sensuality. !
Contrast the pensioners of the Countess of |
Huntington with the congregations of Robin |
son and EndicOtt! Or, TO exhibit them from |
the pictures of their satrists, look at Corporal
Fight-the-G GoOd-Fight and then at the Shep.
herd, Stiggins, in the "Pickwick Papers" |
They do not seem TO belong to tho same race
And it is not credible that from the Puritan
fathers could have descended the Yorkshire |
NAVY or the Thames bumboat woman, progeny
of the neighbOrs Of these same Puritans |
Tho change in the character of the people |
from the times of the Tudors to those of the |
Guelis Is to be seen from glance ut the pic |
lures OF the different epochs as painted in the |
works of the English writers. The causes of |
the change are not in the province of news |
paper article to discuss
Such being the state of English society |
and such the condition Of the British |
stage at the time Payne entered the |
first aud made his debut on the other |
1t goes without saying that the foreign !
actor and dramatist who wished TO obtain ma
'crlal success must have possessed not |
only dramatic abilities, but shrewdness,
Any student Of Payne's character knows he
was highly gifted with intellect in which
was not the slightest strain of the CONNER
cal. poet, dreamer, an intellectual
Payne was yet man of the world
enough to see where he was cheated or be.
irnyed but had too little of the mcrcenary
10 protect himself against the coaencr or the
traitor. He was Bohemian, and habtually
erected his mir castles in that mysterious, fas.
cinatng Bohemia, whose area Is u dcbatablc
country and whose boundary line is always
shifting one.
With many men the term Bohemian is one
Of reproach and Bohemia an alias for dis
condition of living. They recog-
niHc as BOhcmians, and none other only the
lissolutc impndont, improvident scolcr at
who attempts to pallate
his want OF moral sense by engaging in some
ART and pleading the necessity in that art of
4 license OF thought aud action that has
neither necessity nor excuse iOreNsting. This
Is the social lcper, not the Bohemian
Your bohemian is u man COR woman) of del
-. aa..N N.a...N. IL.