The Sun. — 1850-11-21 (London, England)

SADLERS' WELLS THEATRE. The chef d'ireuvre of John Webster, the Duchess of Malfi, was revived here last evening. It hae.been adapted to the exigencies of the modern stage by Mr. R. H. Horne, who has exhibited a reverential regard for the magnificent work of ono of our finest old dramatists in the alterations which he has found it necessary to make in order to adapt a tragedy, originally produced in 1612, to the tastes of an audience of 1850; indeed, he has been almost too reverential, and we could have wished that he had altogether omitted the fifth act (in itself an anti-climax) or greatly altered the denouement, so as to have avoided the almost burlesque termination of the play, in which all the principal characters left surviving (the Duchess, it will be recollected, is murdered in the fourth act) kill one another. The plot of this work is simple to the last degree, but the author has filled it with horror, mental and physical, to its extreme complement. The Duchess of Amalfi, in Italy (corrupted to "Malfi"), secretly marries her own steward; and her brothers, a prince and a cardinal, by means of a hired miscreant, deliberately murder her, as a punishment for the stain on the family honour. Prior to her death, however, they visit her with a series of moral tortures. She is made to see a wax figure, which she takes for the corpse of her husband ; all the inmates of a madhouse are turned loose about her to terrify her with their horrible antics, a funeral dirge is sung over her while she is still living, and at last her windpipe is closed by the fatal cord. The scene in which this banquet of horrors is presented is the most renowned in the piece, and here we may cite the comment of Charles Lamb, one of the most admiring of Webster's critics. He says, " All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus with which the Duchess's death is ushered in are not more remote from the conceptions of ordinary vengeance than the strange character of suffering .which they seem to bring upon their victim is beyond the imagination of ordinary poets. As they are not like inflictions of this life, so her language seems not of this world. She has lived among horrors till she is become ' native and endowed unto that element.' She speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a swatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale. What are Luke's iron crown,' the brazen bull of Phalaris, Procruste's bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tombmaker, the bellman, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees? To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul; to,the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wear and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit—this only a Webster can do. Writers of'an inferior genius may upon horrors' head horrors accumulate,' but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality, they 'terrify babes with painted devils,' but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without decorum." The play is :well :put :upon 'the stage and is very strongly cast ; Miss Glynn personating the Duchess; Mr. Phelps Ferdinand, and Mr. G. Bennett, Bosola. In the earlier scenes with the Steward, Miss Glynn acted the part as a light comedy one, exhibiting quite a spirit of coquetry, and was, as it struck us, in all the earlier scenes of the play, indeed, up to the conclusion of the third act, somewhat deficient in dignity. The scene in which she parts with her children, at the conclusion of the third act, was very finely given, and the whole of the fourth act was acted with terrific earnestness. Mr. Phelps was very fine in Ferdinand—we have seldom seen the agonies of remorse more finely depicted; and Mr. G. Bennett, as Bosola, was perfect. Taken as a whole, Bosola was the best acted character of the play. The applause was enthusiastic, and at the conclusion all the principal artistes were called on, and there were loud calls for Mr. Horne. The house was crowded.  ST.