GENTLEMEN,

IT will, I fear, appear to you as somewhat officious, that a stranger, possessing no other skill in the mysteries of theatrical politics, than the constant perusal of every play-bill, and a very frequent seat in the middle of the pit, can afford him, should thus attempt to call away your thoughts from the many anxious and perplexing occupations in which you are engaged, and demand your attention to his unsolicited advice on the management of Covent Garden and Drury-Lane. Do not, gentlemen, cast this letter aside, as the production of a busy and conceited person, foolishly pretending to instruct you in your own immediate concerns; I'll speak of nothing that I am not fully capable of judging of ; and you must remember there is an old proverb, of which I cannot remember the exact words, but of which all men acknowledge the justice, that they who hold the cards in their hands, (who are in this case the managers,) never see half as much of the game as the lookers-on (who are in the present instance the audience.) This trite adage is nowhere so applicable as within the walls of a theatre. Personal interest is there so violently and so perpetually excited; the daily concerns of life are transacted amid such a constant jarring of the little passions; there is at the same time such a hurry of business, and so many contravening checks opposed to its progress, by the envy, and vanity, and avarice of the agents; there is such a turmoil raised by the unceasing conflict of the mean and selfish feelings, existing behind the scenes, that the managing mind becomes confused, and is so engrossed by the clamorous competitions immediately before it, as to omit extending its view beyond the stage, to those more important interests which exist on the other side of the curtain.

Covent-Garden must this year have had a very successful season; I do not remember to have seen a single bad house; but I believe, gentlemen, that to whichever of my correspondents I address myself, either of you will acknowledge that the public taste for theatrical amusement is on the de

cline; that you have had horses, and dogs, and elephants, in vain; that you have gilded and painted, and dressed your melodrames till the public taste is satiated with overloaded decorations, and the gaudiest melodrames will please no longer; that you have exerted all your efforts of ingenuity to invent attractive novelties, but find them exhaust the treasury without exciting the curiosity of the public; that even the looking-glass curtain reflected but a meagre display of empty boxes; that if your affairs flourish for one winter, the opening blossom of your hopes is nipt by the chilling disappointment of the next; and that, in short, our national stage seems to stand a very fair chance of perishing, as our vineyards are said to have perished, by a long succession of unfavourable seasons. This declension in the prosperity of the drama, every man of taste must deeply lament; and if I can point out the cause of the disease, and the nature of the remedy required, I am convinced, gentlemen, that you will feel not a little obliged to me for my present communication. I am aware, that the imputation of loving a paradox, will immediately be cast upon me, when I attribute the present depressed state of the national drama to the fault of your GREAT ACTORS— I mean of your soi-disant GREAT ACTORS-of Messrs Kean, Young, and Macready.

The arrogant pretensions of these gentlemen, as unwarranted by any extraordinary merits of their own, as injurious to the interests of you their employers, are gradually completing the work, which Mr Harris and his pantomimes began. Their demand to be engaged for a few nights in the season, as Stars, without being bound by any permanent engagement to your respective companies, is the occasion of that distaste for the Play which is becoming every day more prevalent in society, and which threatens to ruin the stage

the performers and the managers. I shall, gentlemen, take the liberty of trespassing on your time, while I offer my reasons for entertaining this opinion, and afterwards proceed to recommend my cure.

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And, first, the system of engaging the soi-disants great actors for ten and twelve nights at a time, is destructive to the STAGE. I use this word in its most enlarged sense, and mean by it, that combination of the several arts, poetry, acting, painting, and mechanism, which are essential to produce dramatic interest and illusion. In this association, the poet is the principal person. It is to him the first honours are conceded by the public; and to whom the chief consideration is due from the managers. His task is extremely difficult. To the poet we look for the construction of a tale, which shall, at the same time, be probable and effective, natural and interesting; to him we look for that nice touch in the developement of dramatic changes which shall present his personages before us just so far raised above the common level of human nature as to purify them of the coarseness and vulgarisms of reality, and yet so nearly approximating the truth, as to leave them within the reach of our sympathies. To him we look for situations corresponding with the tenor of his story, in tales of a romantic nature, such as strike the imagination-in tales of a domestic class, such as speak simply to the heart. To him we look for a style of writing, which is of all others the most difficult to be acquired, and which must be, at the same time, so clear in language, as to express the sentiments with the most unequivocal distinctness; so varied in harmony, as to catch the precise tone of every passing and changing emotion of the scene; and so rich in sentiment, and thought, and fancy, as to supply a continuous stream of gratification to the refined taste and the cultivated understanding. The man who is capable of such a work, is, by nature, very highly gifted; and must, also, by cultivation, have highly improved those gifts. He holds a very eminent rank in the scale of intellectual existence. His exertions do not merely amuse, but they tend to edify, his fellow-creatures. He exposes their faults and weaknesses to their own observation, in the portraits of his less worthy characters; and teaches them what they ought to be, by the bright and amiable pictures which he paints from the favourite heroes of his imagination. The poet, therefore, is the chief person in that combination of talent required for the perfection of

the stage. With his right, no one should interfere, except it be to detect an inconsistency in plot or character, to point out an immorality in sentiment or tendency. In all other things, the poet should be perfectly unshackled. He is to be allowed to tell his story exactly as he has conceived it; and sacrifice nothing of the unity of his conceptions to any inferior considerations. He is to construct his drama on the sound principles of good sense and good taste, and then deliver it into the hands of the performers-who are mere secondary instruments-that they may publish it in action.

Now, gentlemen, and in the present state of the theatres, would any play so written have a chance of being represented? Have you the power, ander the tyranny, as you are, of your own servants, to receive such a poem, and apportion the parts, without any regard to which is, or which is not, the first or second parts, according to the talent of the actors ?-It often occurs, that, for the general effect of a play, the finest acting is required in a minor character, for instance, Lusignan in Voltaire's Zaire. Garrick performed this part; but could you persuade Mr Kean, or Mr Young, or Mr Macready, to act anything but the hero of the play? No-they are engaged at thirty pounds a-night, and they must not compromise their pecuniary diguity by playing second to any actor of a lower price. Indeed, it is not that they absolutely refuse to play what are considered as second parts, but their first parts must always be first parts; first in every scene, and in every passage of every scene. No subordinate character is to have a chance

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of displaying itself. Keep down Guido," was the advice given by Macready to Barry Cornwall, while composing Mirandola, "6 Keep down Guido, he is becoming too prominent for the second part in the play." If there be any division of the inte rest; if the attention of the audience is to be for an instant drawn away from the hero, the great actor at thirty pounds a-night refuses to represent him. Have you not, gentlemen, at this moment, plays in your portfolios which cannot be produced on these very grounds? And are you not constantly compelled to sacrifice the interest of the author, which ought to be your first concern, whether you con

sider your duty to the public or to yourselves, to the caprice and absurd vanity of your principal performers?

But this is not the only way in which the system works to evil. For those very great actors, almost every part is too little. As they are not to be constantly before the public, and have not an opportunity of displaying the extent of their powers in a succession of performances, they must have all their strength called into exertion in one single play. They must have tragedies written to suit their several tricks-I beg their pardon, I mean their peculiarities. They must be in "Herc❜les' vein" every night; and every part that they condescend to accept must be, to use the phraseology of their grand type in theatrical vanity and pretension, Bottom the Weaver" a part to tear a cat in." The author must obey the directions of the performer; the whole order and process of the work is reversed, and the dramatist is expected to mould his character to fit the actor, instead of the actor's modelling his performance to the conceptions of the author.

The history of the lately rejected tragedy of Rienzi is strikingly illustrative of the evils that attend the operation of the present system. The authoress, a person not a little distinguished in the literary world, had selected, for the exercise of her talent, a passage of history which Gibbon has recommended as peculiarly calculated for dramatic representation. The play was completed, and shewn to Mr Macready. He was delighted with the production. The chief part was very effective both in language and situation, and only required a very few and slight alterations to render it worthy the abilities of any of the great actors. He wished an entirely new first act; this was indispensable, that Rienzi might be introduced striking to the earth an injurious Patrician, as Moses smote the Egyptian, because this circumstance had peculiarly pleased Mr Macready's faney when a boy at school. To make room for the introduc tion of this new incident, the second and third acts, to the great injury of the general interest and original arrange ment of the tragedy, were to be compressed into one. The fifth act, which had been framed in the most strict conformity with the truth of history, was to be re-written, that the charac VOL. XVII.

ter of Rienzi might, to the very dropping of the curtain, hold its paramount station on the stage. All these alterations were to be made in a fortnight; the authoress was then to return to town with the play, and superintend in person the rehearsals and the getting up of the piece; but, at all events, the work must be ready in a fortnight. In a fortnight the play was mangled and distorted, and fitted to Mr Macready's exaggerated and melo-dramatic manner of performing; the authoress arrived in London, to attend the bringing out of the play; she called on Mr Macready with the manuscript; to her utter astonishment, he received her with the greatest coolness:-" There was no hurry for her play. The managers had another piece at the theatre, which must at all events be produced first; and it was very improbable her play could be acted at all." This other piece was The Fatal Dowry of Massinger.

Now, gentlemen, do you suppose that persons of real poetic genius

persons respectable from their station in society, and their intellectual cultivation-will dedicate their time and talents to the labour of writing for the stage, if they are to be subjected to such impertinence? At the time the stage flourished in this country, all the high poetic talent of the country was exercised in its service. But under the present state of the management, is it possible to anticipate a return of those bright and glorious times? I am aware that if an author has completed a play, rather than have his work returned useless upon his hands, he will condescend to make many sacrifices of the rights of genius. He may be induced, as the authoress of Rienzi did, to alter his characters to the taste of Mr Young, Mr Kean, or Mr Macready; and then, having made the exacted alterations, find, perhaps, his work rejected by the caprice of the performer whom he had striven to conciliate; while those very alterations will have rendered the part unsuitable to the very limited abilities of either of the other great actors. This may occur once, but the attempt will not be repeated. Persons of distinguished talent will cease, as they have ceased, to write for the stage. Instead of having your theatres courted, as the honourable sources by which 5 B

the public were to be presented with the literary efforts of Sir Walter Scott, Southey, Milman, Mrs Hemans, Joanna Baillie, Wilson, and the great poets of our day, and your box-books filled for months, in eager anticipation of a first performance, your stages have fallen into the hands of the most contemptible of the literary tribe; and your admirers, both in number and in consequence, have been worthy your play-writers. Who are your successful authors ?-Planché and Arnold, Poole and Kenney; names so ignoble in the world of literature, that they have no circulation beyond the greenroom, and which the very spectators of their productions regard as too contemptible to be allowed to claim a place in their recollection. All of a higher class have abandoned you, and the public have flown with them. You have given the actor a precedency above the author; and they who have once encountered the delay and the vexations which accompany the attempt to obtain representation for a drama-delays and vexations not originating in you, gentlemen, but in your actors-like Mrs Hemans, relinquish the task for more certain, and less troublesome, sources of literary emolument; while others, warned by their example, and knowing the drudgery to which the effort must subject them-that the performers are not exhorted to study the genius of the author, but the author to study and model his work by the abilities of the performer-have entirely given up all thought of engaging in so mean and degrading an exercise of their talents. The poet will have his genius untrammelled; it should be the pride of the actor to be able to follow him in all his wanderings of imagination. This is his vocation; and he has, by right, no other. The moment he presumes to direct, he exceeds his native sphere, and usurps a province in which he has no claims. Can we suppose that Sir Walter Scott-Southey-or the author of Adam Blair, the tenor of whose minds is decidedly dramatic, will ever condescend to write for the theatre, while there is a possibility of their labours being rendered nugatory by the principal actors refusing, under any pretence whatever, the parts that are assigned to them? Gentlemen, I do not believe that the stage ever can flourish, unless you revive the just

gradation which ought to subsist behind the scenes-till you can claim and do justice to the free exertions of the first poetic talents of the country. Persons of taste will not come to see bad plays, however well performed; and the mob will soon remit their attendance at your houses, which they will condemn as scenes of vulgar amusement, when once they have discovered that those cultivated individuals are away, whose presence to you, from their weight in society, and their influence on public opinion, is really "worth a whole theatre of others."

The great actors are then, by their present conduct, working the ruin of the stage; they are also working the ruin of themselves; I do not mean in a pecuniary way, but as artists. It is no longer the play, but the actor, that the public are called to see; which is the contrary of what ought to be the case. We should have attained the perfection of the dramatic art, if the performers were totally forgotten. The progress of the scene should be attended to, and nothing else; and this is always the result of the finer acting, Barry drew down loud applause; Garrick only tears. I have seen Mrs Siddons go through the part of Constance-of Isabella-of Belvidera-of Mrs Beverly, almost without a single burst of applause-there have been nothing but tears and sobs to interrupt the silence, and if an attempt at a less unequivocal expression of applause was entertained, the clamour was immediately suppressed by an impatient and simultaneous cry for silence, as if each individual among the audience was absorbed in the sorrows of the actress, and felt his feelings outraged by being reminded of the presence of the multitude among whom he sat. But this style of simple and natural acting has passed away. The actor of forty pounds a night comes forth to astonish. He is as a sort of rhetorical Merry Andrew; and all his excellence consists in the exhibition of a certain round of tricks. The audience, who are his conjurated partizans, are in the secret; they come to witness his exhibition as they would witness the tight-rope-walking of Madame Sacchi, under the idea of its being something that is quite prodigious. Every start-every rant-every whisper is followed by rounds of applause; and by these they estimate

his merits. The mob are collected to see an enormously paid actor-who only acts for twelve nights, and their expectations must not be disappointed. If they returned home without having been wonderfully astonishedwithout having something extraordinary and monstrous to relate, they would begin to suspect that the performer did not deserve his wages. The consequence is, that Messrs Young, Kean, and Macready-Mr Young, in a degree less than the other two-have introduced a manner of acting more forced, heavy, exaggerated, and unnatural, than perhaps ever disgraced the stage since England had a regular theatre to boast of.-Nor is this all. These nightly engagements have not only corrupted their style of acting; but have rendered them bad actors in their own style. They don't play often enough to play well. They do not appear to be at home on the stage. Their action is constrained and their voices less flexible. They have all that disagreeable stiffness about them which belongs to holiday utensils, to things that are too fine for daily use, and have grown rusty in inaction. Whatever their talents may formerly have been, it would be the height of prejudice to say that you, Mr Charles Kemble, are not at present the first actor of the day. These great performers, if ever your superiors, have retired into a dignified and limited range of mono-dramatic parts, and have allowed you to pass them. It is absolutely necessary, to play the main effective character with real excellence, that a performer should be in the constant practice of his art, and were it not that the recollection of what, I presume, they once were capable of achieving, obtained respect for their present exertions, I suspect we should all like the old stagers,the really second actors,-Wallack, Cooper, Bennet, or even Abbot himself, better than the soi-disant great actors in the parts which they have arrogated exclusively to themselves. To my mind, these gentlemen actors have become very like gentlemen actors indeed.

As they are ruining the stage and themselves, they are also ruining you

as Managers.-The evil of having what are called Stars is this. The public abstain from the theatres on the nights they do not shine. It distinguishes the two or three nights in the week on which these wonders of art are to be seen and heard, as the only nights on which it is desirable to go to the play. They thin your houses when they are absent: Do they fill them when they return?

Now, gentlemen, the cure that I propose is simply this.-Agree together to engage no Stars-no actors that will. not submit to a regular engagement.If Messrs Kean, Young, and Macready, will not accept these terms, let them go to the country; in one twelve months they will be completely forgotten, and your present actors, or new ones, will supply their places in the favour of the public. They will soon be obliged to submit themselves to your conditions. Very little would they make in the provinces, if they had not the patronage of your boards, and the advertisements of the London Newspapers to recommend them to the country managers.

Re-establish most rigorously the old system of fining every performer who rejected a part.-And having secured again, by mutual consent, a system of subordination behind the scenes, write to the first literary characters of the day to request their support in the production of plays for your theatres. Purchase the Copy-rights on speculation as a publisher would do.-Have them performed as written, without much expense of decoration, dressing, and scene painting, but with the very best acting that you can bestow.

Let the plays exhibited at your theatres be the works of distinguished literary persons, and depend upon it, the curiosity and the interest of the public will be again excited, and permanently excited, towards your representations. The first step towards this happy consummation is to bring your disorderly forces into subjection; and to allow of no actor's being too great for the labours you may choose to prescribe him. I remain, Gentlemen,

Yours very faithfully,
PHILO-DRAMATICUS.