unacknowledged, head; for Ben Jonson had scarcely a successor. One effect of mannerism in art is, to efface the marks of individual originality, and make the productions of various artists resemble each other; and from this mannerism no dramatic poet of that age who succeeded Shakspeare is altogether free. Nevertheless, in a general view of dramatic art, this first period of the English theatre is far the most important: it can hardly be doubted that some even of the secondary writers of that time are more instructive for theory and more remarkable in practice than the most celebrated of all the succeeding times.

Such was the general condition of the stage during the reign of Charles I. down to the year 1642, when the invectives of the puritans, who had long murmured against the theatre, and at last thundered loudly against it, were changed into prohibitory law; and in 1648 not only to act plays, but even to witness them, was made a penal offence. Nearly all the players now took arms on that side the interests of which seemed identified with the existence of their own profession. Many of them perished in the field; and after the final close of the war, one company of actors only was formed out of the remains of all the former ones, and occasionally, with great circumspection, performed at private mansions in the vicinity of London.

to be found in any of his characters: passions, criminal and magnanimous, flow with indifferent levity from their li without ever having dwelt in the heart: their chief delight seems to be in heroical boasting. The tone of expression is by turns flat and madly bombastic: the author's wit is dis played in far-fetched sophisms, and his imagination in longspun similes awkwardly introduced. The Duke of Buck ingham, who, amongst other vigorous though wayward and generally misapplied talents, possessed high powers of rid cule, undertook to satirize these faults and absurdities of Dryden and his school, in his comedy of 'The Rehearsal wherein, although the structure of the piece itself migh; have been more artificial and diversified, the separate parodies are very ingenious and effective.

But the best-aimed satire, though it might correct in some degree, could not regenerate the stage. This could have been done only by the arising of some greater and more genuine dramatic genius, or at least by the successful ap pearance of some very great actor, capable of entering fully into the spirit of the elder drama. The Rehearsal' might indeed contribute to produce that nearer approach to nature which, among the compositions of Dryden's younger contemporaries, has preserved upon the stage one tragedy of Lee's and two of Otway's, while not one of Dryden's Davenant as manager, and Betterton as actor, form a pieces has maintained its theatrical existence; but the slender link of connection between the old stage and that essential constitution of the acting drama remained as he of the Restoration. Charles II. being considered, in his fore. The mixed romantic species being entirely laid aside, relation to the theatre, as a sort of restoring and tutelar all was either tragedy or comedy. Dryden wrote comedies deity, its character was now formed in absolute deference as well as tragedies; but as, with all his command of lanto the half foreign and wholly vicious taste of himself and guage and flow of rhyme, he did not possess in any perhis courtiers. Under these auspices, Davenant introduced fection either the greatest dramatic or the highest poetical the Italian system of decoration, the costume as then under- qualities, his dramatic writings, in this kind as well as in stood, the opera music, and the use of the orchestra in the other, have fallen, if not into absolute oblivion, at least general. A still more important innovation in theatrical into entire neglect. Shadwell's seventeen comedies, though arrangements was, the permanent adoption of the practice, he affected to imitate Ben Jonson in exhibiting humorous against which the puritans had directed the most violent and eccentric peculiarities of character, are deservedly for of their anti-dramatic fury, but which had long been estab- gotten. Wycherley, so much in favour both with Bucklished in Italy, Spain, and France, of having the female ingham and King Charles, and afterwards with King James, parts personated by women instead of boys. At the same had much more genuine pretensions to the higher and fime, Betterton was sent over to Paris expressly to take a more vigorous order of comic power, notwithstanding that view of the French stage, in order to such other modifica- his greatest performance, The Plain-dealer,' is a sort of tions of the English as the inspection might suggest. The counterpart of Molière's 'Misanthrope;' his next best piece, result of this great neglect of the old dramatic and thea- The Country Wife,' has been retained upon the stage, by trical system of England, and assiduous study of that of means of adaptation and purification, under the title of France, was, for a long period, an almost entire denational-The Country Girl.' Although the Sir Fopling Flutter' of ization, both in form and spirit, of the current dramatic Etherege is not yet forgotten, still Congreve deserves to be literature. Davenant himself, who had resided very much considered as the true father of genteel comedy' on the at Paris, seems to have acquired this exotic taste long before English stage, and was long regarded as the great model the Restoration, as it is fully exhibited, amongst others of for imitation in that department, to which distinction he his productions, in his operatic piece, 'The Siege of Rhodes,' was much less entitled by any lively and humorous delineperformed as early as 1656. Hence, in the theatrical re- ation of natural character than by a perpetual reciprocation storation which accompanied the political, he set himself of wit in his dialogue, together with originality of plot, and cordially to work, by altering old pieces, and writing new novel combinations of factitious manners: he drew little plays, operas, prologues, &c., to contribute towards the fur- from common life; but his portraits of sharpers and conishing of that new theatrical repertory which the new dra-quettes-of men without principle and women without dematic system required. Of all his works, however, nothing has escaped a merited oblivion.

It was left for the industry and fertility of Dryden to give the new theatre a thorough establishment according to the new ideas, a task to which he applied himself with all possible diligence both by example and precept. The numerous essays on dramatic art which accompanied the publication of his several pieces, together with the larger treatise which he put forth separately, exhibit in a remarkable manner the anarchy which then prevailed in the notions of that art which then pervaded the public mind. The court indeed, whose taste it was now the leading object of the dramatic writers to seize and to follow, had no real knowledge of the fine arts; it merely favoured them, like other foreign fashions and inventions of luxury. Hence the drama of the day became a strange compound of the extreme license of the later writers of the earlier English school with the conventional stiffness and formality of the French, but without any of the natural and vigorous spirit which had animated either of those models. Dryden's fatal facility of rhyming, as in this case it may well be termed, materially aided him in effecting this incongruous combination, to which the absence in him of the highest poetic spirit likewise essentially conduced. It may be observed of his plays in general, that the plots are grossly improbable, and the incidents thrown out at random, while the most marvellous theatrical strokes drop, as it were, incessantly from the clouds. Scarcely a spark of nature is

licacy-are but too faithful representations of the fine gentlemen and ladies of his day. His 'Love for Love' is the only one of his pieces the licentiousness of which it has been found possible to prune sufficiently for performance in later years.

Of the poetic spirit and the moral tone of English comedy during the period we have just reviewed, we shall state our opinion in the words of Schlegel, because we think it useful to show to the English reader in what light that particular portion of our dramatic literature is justly received and represented by so able a continental critic:- The greatest merit of the English comic poets of this period consists in the drawing of character; yet, though many of them have shown much talent in this way, I cannot ascribe to any of them a peculiar genius for character. Even in this department the older poets (not only Shakspeare, for that may well be supposed, but even Fletcher and Jonson) are supe rior to them. The moderns seldom possess the faculty of seizing the most hidden and involuntary emotions, and giving them comic expression; they generally draw merely the natural or assumed surface of men. The same circumstance that was attended with so prejudicial an effect in France after Molière's time came here also into play. The comic muse, instead of becoming familiar with the way of living of the middle and lower ranks, her proper sphere, assumed an air of distinction; she squeezed herself into courts, and endeavoured to snatch a resemblance of the beau monde. It was now no longer an English national,

but a London comedy. The whole nearly turns on fashionable love-suits and fashionable raillery; the love affairs are either disgusting or insipid, and the raillery is always puerile and devoid of humour. These comic writers may have accurately hit the tone of their time: in this they did their duty; but they have reared a lamentable memorial of their age. In few periods has taste in the fine arts been at so low an ebb as towards the close of the seventeenth century and during the first half of the eighteenth. The political machine held its course; wars, negotiations, and changes of states, give to that age a certain historic splendour; but the comic poets and the portrait-painters have revealed to us the secret of its pitifulness, the latter in their copies of the dresses, the former in their imitations of the social tone. I am convinced that if we could listen to the conversation of the beau monde of that day in the present, we should find it as pettily affected and full of tasteless pretension as the hoops, the towering head-dresses, and high-heeled shoes of the women, and the huge perruques, cravats, wide sleeves, and ribbon-knots of the men. The last, and not the least, defect of the English comedies is their indecency. I may sum up the whole in one word by saying, that after all that we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles II., we still are lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of Wycherley and Congreve. Not merely is decency most grossly violated in single speeches, and frequently in the whole plot; but in the character of the rake, the fashionable débauchée, a moral scepticism is directly preached, and marriage is the constant subject of ridicule. Beaumont and Fletcher portrayed a vigorous though irregular nature; but nothing can be more repulsive than rude depravity coupled with claims to higher refinement.'

juror' (a sort of adaptation of the 'Tartuffe' of Molière), the very great success of which at that time was owing partly to its flattering the sentiments of the friends of the Hanoverian succession, and which, under an altered form and another title, The Hypocrite,' is still a favourite on the stage. Fielding, the novelist, commenced his literary career as a writer of comedy: he chiefly demands notice in dramatic history as one of the principal of those writers for the stage who afforded Sir Robert Walpole a pretext for obtaining the act to limit the number of theatres, and subject dramatic performances to the lord chamberlain's license. In a very similar predicament was Gay, after the appearance, in 1727, of his Beggars' Opera.' Its professed object was, by way of burlesque, to ridicule the Italian Opera, which had been established and maintained at great expense, and was thought by many to be rising in hurtful rivalry with the national drama. But amidst the general satire on political and fashionable selfishness and depravity which this composition implied, the persons then in power took so much of it to themselves, that while The Beggars' Opera' had the unprecedented run of sixty-three successive nights, and transformed the actress who represented the heroine into a duchess, the lord chamberlain refused to license for performance a second part of it entitled Polly.' This celebrated production, however, though still a standing favourite with the public, is now chiefly remarkable in dramatic history as the prototype (unwittingly, it seems, on its author's part) of a new species of dramatic composition upon the British stage, since known as the English opera.'

·

We must now revert for a moment to the history of modern English tragedy. After the example of Lee and Otway, Southern and Rowe endeavoured to return to a The continuance, and even increase, of this moral de- more natural tragic tone and style than those which Drypravation of the drama produced at length, in 1698, a severe den had so long practised and inculcated. Southern even castigation from the pen of the sturdy nonjuror, Jeremy ventured to attempt the Shakspearian combination of the Collier, under the title of 'A short View of the Immorality humorous and the ludicrous with the tragic, but was so and Profaneness of the English Stage, together with the deficient in that high mastery of the art which is necessary Sense of Antiquity on this Argument.' In this work, its to accomplish this with success, that in his Oroonoko,' author, armed with sufficient learning and sarcastic wit, which, with another of his tragedies, under the altered title of attacked all the living dramatists from Dryden to D'Urfey; Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage,' has kept the stage, the and although some of them, including Congreve, less candid comic portions, being merely inserted or stuck on rather on this occasion than Dryden himself, set up a petulant and than interwoven or blended, have been simply dropped in sophistical defence, yet this publication of Collier's had a performance, without being at all missed by the audience. permanent effect on the stage as well as on the public mind. Rowe was an honest admirer of Shakspeare, and in his This effect, however, was operated only by degrees. Van-Jane Shore' has even directly borrowed the part of Gloster burgh followed in the line of Congreve, and, in spite of Col- from 'Richard the Third.' Without boldness and vigour, lier's animadversions, did so with little more regard either he possessed sweetness and feeling; he could excite the to morality or decorum, though mingling more humour softer emotions; and hence, in his Fair Penitent' (a feeble with his wit. This unbounded license has long banished remodelling, it must be observed, of Massinger's Fatal from the stage his ablest production, The Confederacy,' Dowry'), in Jane Shore, and in 'Lady Jane Grey,' he while The Provoked Wife' and 'The Provoked Husband, has successfully chosen the weaknesses of heroines for his inferior in comic power, have survived by virtue of their subject. Addison's Cato,' notwithstanding the great temgreater decency. His contemporary, Farquhar, though dis-porary celebrity and popularity which party rivalry conferred playing sufficient libertinism of language and sentiment, did upon it, merits no attention in the history of dramatic art, not carry them to so gross an excess. A perfect gentlemanly except as having been the first, and, it should seem, the ease of manner, lively spontaneity of wit, natural though model, of a series of the most frigid productions in imitation not strongly drawn character, and a felicitous, uninvolved of the French classic school, by Young, Johnson, Thomson, construction of plot, are his peculiar characteristics, and Glover, &c., that are to be found in our literary history. have preserved The Beaux' Stratagem' and two other of With some small poetic, they have no dramatic pretensions; his pieces in public favour to the present time. His Sir yet the very excess of their formality and frigidity perhaps Harry Wildair,' too, was the legitimate successor of the contributed to that decisive reaction of the public mind in 'Sir Fopling Flutter' of the preceding generation; but in favour of the elder dramatic school, which took place in the the true dramatic qualities Farquhar excels Etherege be- middle of the last century, and which now demands our yond all comparison. The Restoration period of English attention. theatrical history had not only brought female performers Garrick's restoration of Shakspeare to his rightful sufor the first time before the public, but female dramatists premacy over the English theatre has entailed upon his also. The numerous comedies of Mrs. Behn, who wrote countrymen a permanent debt of gratitude which is yet under Charles II., are remarkable only for the full share more glorious to the memory of that great performer than which they possess of the licentiousness of her time; nor the idolatrous admiration of his contemporaries for his unneed we remark upon two tragedies and a comedy, acted rivalled histrionic powers. It was nothing less than the with some success, from the pen of Mrs. Manley, better removal of one great mark, worn for eighty years before, of known as a romantic memoir writer. But in Mrs. Centlivre, national degradation, morally and intellectually. Here, a prolific writer of comedy, exactly contemporary with Farqu- too, we have a signal instance of the great degree in which har, we find more genuine dramatic talent, yet exhibited much the dignity and prosperity of a national theatre at any more in a lively bustle of intrigue than in forcible delinea- given period may depend on the taste and genius of a single tion of character, although Marplot, in her Busy Body,' is actor, especially when that actor becomes a leading manager still proverbial as a comic portrait, and some others of her also. In the instance in question this was more peculiarly plays, as The Wonder,' A Bold Stroke for a Wife,' &c., and necessarily the case. When the condition of the Engremain as well-known stock pieces. Just at the same pe-lish stage for three generations before is considered, it is riod, also, Steele, among the other various exertions of his pen, wrote for the stage in a kindred spirit with Farquhar, but with inferior dramatic skill; and Cibber produced his best comedies. The Careless Husband' and The NonP. C., No. 585.

quite evident that no person but an actor of very high genius could achieve the theatrical resuscitation of the greatest of all dramatic poets. Had any such actor existed at the restoration of Charles II., he might probably have VOL. IX-3 K

!

done much to prevent the wretched denationalization of
the theatre which was so much favoured by that king's
exotic and vitiated taste. But it was one of the vital
and lasting injuries inflicted on the theatrical system by
the puritanical suppression, that the old line of actors
which had risen and flourished along with the great and
vigorous dramatic school of the age of Elizabeth and James,
and had intimately imbibed its healthy natural tone, had
'grown with its growth, and strengthened with its strength,'
was violently and fatally interrupted: a new race of actors
had to arise, who, not having, like their predecessors of the
former period, the example and the awe of the great his
trionic models of the old school before them, found it a
much easier task to strut and rant in the delivery of un-
natural bombast than to sound the depths and reach the
delicacies of nature's favourite poet. And thus an addi-
tional facility was opened for the introduction and perpe-
tuation upon the stage of the factitious taste of Dryden and
his followers.

It was left for one qualified to be the great actor of
nature to lead forth the sublime poet of nature from his
long theatrical obscurity. The clear, deep, quick, and
varied truth which appeared in Garrick's interpretation of
Shakspeare's leading characters, after all the cold, leaden,
formal declamation under which even the best-esteemed
performers had so long been accustomed to smother their
spirit, was nothing less than a revelation to the play-going
public of that day. The effect was electrical. Not only
the leading dramatic taste, but the highest standard of
acting, was raised at once to its antient elevation; nor has
either of them, amidst all the minor vicissitudes of our
theatrical history, ever since descended below it.

Of the genius and efforts of our dramatic writers during this latter æra it is not possible to speak so highly. It is perhaps too much to look once in a century, or even in several centuries, for a writer like Shakspeare, possessing such universal mastery over all human emotions as to be able to blend them in such endless variety as to move at will, in whatever order, in whatever alternation or juxtaposition that he pleases, our laughter and our tears. We know that there are myriads who can enjoy the tragic or the comic, more especially the latter, for one who can thoroughly relish both; and that yet smaller is the proportion among those who can relish both, of those who can excel in producing both. Yet it might not have been unreasonable to have expected among our later dramatic productions a greater number approaching the perfection of those models which other countries have produced within those narrower limits of tragedy and comedy which, as we have seen, were established as part of their dramatic system.

Garrick himself, having made no great attempt in dramatic composition, exposed himself to no considerable failure: one or two of his small afterpieces have kept possession of the stage; but his labour of this kind most worthy of mention is probably the share which he took in the composition of one of Colman's best comedies, 'The Clandestine Marriage. Cumberland's comic powers were respectable; but in his most successful pieces, The West Indian, brought out by Garrick in 1771, and The Wheel of Fortune,' to which John Kemble's masterly personation of the principal character gave so decided a popularity, he scarcely rises above mediocrity. Horace Walpole's tragedy, 'The Mysterious Mother,' though its subject necessarily excluded it from representation, set the first example of a vigorous attempt to return to a natural and healthy tragic tone and style. As for the Douglas' of Home, it has no such qualities to recommend it, but aequired and has retained the public favour chiefly by dint of one truly and deeply pathetic situation wherein the strongest domestic affections are profoundly and permanently interested. Sheridan gave new life and spirit to 'genteel comedy,' in which department he remains at the head of the writers of the present æra. Though perhaps his pieces are less perfectly finished than those of Congreve, already characterized as the chief of this class of dramatists in the preceding period, and although, especially in 'The School for Scandal,' he is subject to the same imputation as his predecessor, of being too indiscriminately lavish of epigrammatic wit, yet he has more truly comic wit, more force of genuine humour, than Congreve, as is more particularly felt in his play of 'The Rivals,' and should therefore, we conceive, be ranked above him as regards the more essential qualities of comedy. The dramatic merits of Goldsmith were of a totally different

cast: a certain eccentric drollery of character and whimsical extravagance of plot are the distinctive characteristics of his two comedies, one of which, though by no means among the most excellent productions of his pen, has kept an ho nourable place in the public favour. Of the elder Colman's pieces, two, 'The Jealous Wife' and 'The Clandestine Marriage,' are still deservedly esteemed; and the latter in particular is frequently acted: they combine much elegance of composition with considerable comic power. Nor among the comic dramatists of the latter half of the last century must we forget to mention the once celebrated Samuel Foote, who has been more commonly than appropriately called the English Aristophanes, seeing that such a desig nation conveys much too high a compliment to Foote, and a very indifferent one to the great master of the elder Grecian comedy. So little had Foote's pieces of that burlesque ideality which constituted the essential character of the latter, that his exercise of the vis comica reduced itself almost exclusively to a contemporary personal satire, amounting to little more than a refined species of mimiery, which, from the merest mercenary motives, he directed quite as readily against the most innocent peculiarities of living individuals as against the most injurious vices or follies. Hence it is, that of the many farces which he wrote, chiefly to exhibit in them his own powers of satirical mimicry as an actor, not more than one survives upon the stage.

It was towards the close of the century that the senti mental comedy of the German school of Kotzebue, with little but its novelty to recommend it, acquired a footing in England. In this kind, among the direct adaptations from the German,The Stranger has had the most general success, and is the most perfect representative of the species. Among the native efforts in the same line, Holcroft's Road to Ruin,' still popular, is one of the most meritorious. The same writer has the credit also of having first introduced on the English stage the melo-drama, which has since filled so large a place upon it. Mrs. Inchbald, among many pleasing original pieces in the lighter comedy, has likewise given us an adaptation from Kotzebue. M. G. Lewis, in his tragedies, as in his romances, drew from a very different German source, in his taste, we might almost say his rage, for the marvellous and the terrific. A kindred spirit is displayed in the late Charles Maturin's tragedy of 'Bertram, to which Kean's acting gave high success. As regards Lord Byron's tragedies, we have only to remind the reader that as their author never designed them for representation, he is by no means chargeable with their dramatic failure.

We abstain from individual criticism of living English contemporaries. As regards modern efforts in the Shakspearian drama, the flight in this case is so lofty and so bold, that even to attempt it may be said to require almost as vigorous and as rare a genius as to succeed. But on the ground next in elevation, that of tragedy in the mcre limited sense, aspirants, if not very numerous, are yet, from time to time, presenting themselves: however, we have not yet anything that approaches in natural vigour or in poetic richness, either to the masterpieces of Schilier, or even to the most successful efforts of the new romantic school of France. In the higher comedy the experiments are yet more rare. Decency has long been thoroughly established in this department; but since Sheridan's time, we look in vain either for the raciness of humour, the brilliancy of wit, or the happiness of invention which seasoned the licentiousness of our earlier comic writers. Of the occasional pieces written to show off the talent of particular actors, the numerous adaptations of French farces and vaudevilles, and the many trifles that are continually coming forth into an ephemeral popularity in the form of comic opera or burletta, we shall merely remark that, with much that is lively and amusing, they have little that indicates either vigour or originality of dramatic talent.

The late and continued decline of dramatic art in England, which it is common to speak of as if it were tending to the utter abasement of that art, if not to its total extinction, seems to demand that we should point out distinctly the leading considerations relative to this subject. It is true that since the age of Elizabeth, for instance, the spread of printing and of reading, and above all, the rise and progress of novel and romance writing since the middle of the last century, have reduced the theatre to the occupation of a much smaller relative space among the sources of

public amusement. Novel and romance reading, in particular, has become its most immediate and powerful rival, as approaching nearest to it in the nature and vividness of the stimulus afforded to the feelings and imagination, and as having the convenient capability of administering that excitement in all times and all places. Nevertheless, theatrical representations, besides those more general attractions which they may be said to share with some branches of reading, have their peculiar charms, for which no absolute equivalent is elsewhere to be found, and which therefore seem to place their perpetuity beyond all reasonable doubt Besides that the perfect performance of a drama of the first order supplies the noblest enjoyment that art can offer to the mind through the medium of the senses, the pleasure which an audience derives from even an inferior dramatic production on the stage, is so much more vivid and immediate than reading can supply, as to free the former from all danger of being superseded by the latter. Nor are we inclined to lay much stress upon the favour extended by the more peculiarly aristocratic classes to the Italian opera, as a circumstance having any fatal or very injurious tendency as regards the national drama. The entire subordination in this foreign entertainment of every | truly dramatic feature to musical effect (not to mention the unintelligibility of the language to most English ears), quite excludes it from the sphere of dramatic rivalry. Mere fashion apart, and as far as real pleasure is concerned, it is music and dancing, not acting, that people go expressly to enjoy at the Italian opera.

all, of the performers thus enumerated had belonged to the
old one. It should be further observed, that in this same
period the income of the theatre declined, on an average of
the last six seasons as compared with the first six, at the
rate of nearly 21,000l. a year. The ten following seasons,
however, when the theatre was held by Messrs. Kemble,
Willett, and Forbes, present a much more deplorable ac-
count. Captain Forbes himself, in the evidence already
quoted, states the loss at 20,000l. per annum.
It also ap-
pears, from the statements of the interested parties them-
selves, that during the first twelve seasons the house was
not, on an average, much more than half filled with spec-
tators; and that during the last three of the seasons alluded
to by Captain Forbes it was considerably less than half
filled. The case of Drury-Lane theatre is so exactly pa-
rallel to that of Covent-Garden, as to require no separate
illustration.

That the relish of the public for theatrical representations in general, if diminished at all, has not declined in a degree at all proportionate to the decay in the prosperity of the larger establishments, is manifest from one fact, of which the proprietors themselves complain-the extraordinary success of some of the minor theatres during the same period, which had risen, it would seem, in much the same proportion as the attendance at the great houses has fallen off,-showing, what indeed is plain enough without such demonstration, that people will more willingly attend even an inferior dramatic representation which they can see and hear perfectly, than a superior one which they cannot so hear and see.

The remedy for this preposterous state of things lies with the legislature, by opening a free theatrical competition which shall lead to the erection of houses for the regular drama, capable of holding little more than half the number of spectators necessary to fill houses so large as those of Covent-Garden and Drury-Lane. A bill to permit the erection of other playhouses was, indeed, recently passed by the House of Commons, but was rejected by the Lords, owing in this case, we must suppose, to indolence or indifference in the hereditary House, rather than to hostility. This is, however, a question upon which the best interests of dramatic art, the care of the nation for its noblest scenic enjoyments, and a just regard for its character as to general cultivation in the eyes of the civilized world, should cause the public opinion to be expressed loudly, distinctly, and unceasingly, until the legislature does apply the remedy in its power.

A much more evident, if not indeed an all-sufficient cause of the decline in question, is to be found in one remarkable result, which we must briefly state, of the monopoly of the higher dramatic performances possessed by the patentees of the two great winter theatres of the metropolis. The interpretation which for so long a period has been given to this privilege, of being not merely permissive, but exclusive, led at length to an enormous enlargement of the houses, with a view to obviate complaint as to want of accommodation for the increased and increasing metropolitan population. Now, it is plain that nature in fixing the ave rage powers of vision and of hearing, has appointed certain limits beyond which the most scientifically constructed theatre for the performance of the regular drama cannot be conveniently nor even safely extended: yet this most important consideration has been altogether overlooked or neglected in the instances before us; and the inevitable and merited consequence has followed, in the desertion of the great houses, and of those higher and more genuine dramatic performances which they at once monopolized and marred by their very magnitude. The falling off in the attendance of the publie was gradual, though somewhat fluctuating. There was a large play-going audience who could not readily give up their amusements at the theatre-persons to whom this kind of entertainment had become almost a necessary of life, which they relinquished very slowly and with great reluctance, even when they could no longer see and hear as they wished to see and hear. Some did, however, give up their enjoyments; some died; some fell off from other causes, and their places were not supplied by others; many found new modes of being entertained; and thus the play-going audience was gradually reduced, and the theatres were abandoned and forgotten by a very large portion of those who, under other circumstances, would have supported them."* Hence, at Covent-Garden theatre, for example, during the twelve seasons from its rebuilding in 1809 to the year 1821, as One leading error, then, which still besets the practice of shown from the accounts of the theatre, by the manager dramatic composition is directly derived from the grandest himself, the whole receipts of the house, including the per- and most glorious event in the intellectual history of modern formance of pantomimes, for which indeed its enormous times, the revival of art and letters in the fifteenth and sixmagnitude was better adapted, was unequal to the current teenth centuries. We may well excuse many of the expenses of the legitimate drama' alone. Yet during that greatest minds of that period if, in the ardour with which period the company was remarkably strong in excellent they applied themselves to the wondrous and long-hidden performers. Captain Forbes, in his evidence before the stores of physical and intellectual beauty which had sudHouse of Commons' Committee on Dramatic Literature, in denly opened upon them, their first irresistible impulse was 1832, named the principal ones thus: John Kemble, to emulate the external graces of the antique models by Charles Kemble, Cooke, Lewis, Incledon, Munden, Faw-close and devoted imitation-if often they mistook the form cett, Young, Jones, Blanchard, Emery, Liston; Mrs. Sid- for the essence, or at least confounded them together. But dons, Mrs. Dickens, Mrs. C. Kemble, Mrs. H. Johnstone, it is not easy to extend the like indulgence to the artist of Mrs. Gibbs, and Mrs. Davenport.' Nor was this an expensive company made up for the new house; for all, or nearly

See an accurate and able exposition of the operation of the theatrical monopoly upon the interests of the proprietors and lessees themselves, in the Monthly Magazine, of March, 1834.

Under these circumstances, the higher walks of dramatic composition could expect and have indeed received but little encouragement from the directors of the privileged theatres. Their first solicitude has necessarily been to fill the treasuries of their respective establishments; and this they have long been striving, though vainly, to effect by the production of all manner of dazzling and stunning spectacles, with performers two-footed and four-footed, which should at least possess, as they seem to have thought, the requisites of being visible and audible. But the few concluding suggestions which we proceed to make are offered in the firm conviction that the present injurious and degrading theatrical system as by law established' is too monstrous in itself and too insulting to the national taste and reason to be much longer maintained; so that any dramatist who is capable of deserving, may rely upon shortly obtaining, the most effective medium for communicating his creations to the minds of his countrymen.

the present age. Let him, indeed, study the antients; but let him study them to the bottom. 'These time-bettering' days demand that he should be able not only to raise his view above the maxims of Horace and Aristotle to that of the works from the consideration of which those maxims 3 K 2