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1028 THE LEADER. [Saturday,
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THE OLYMPIC AND ITS NEW MANAGEMENT. (Wit...
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Thk Nicw DuTiKH on Skkvantk.—By the now ...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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¦ ¦' ' Xx. ¦ ' Seven Hills, May 4,1s53. ...
I checked the thoughtless g irl j Margaret , however , replied— " I was only answering Alfred ' s question ; but I said , Julie , at first , that women have no principles ; they have only intentions . " " And desperate intentions yon must have , then , my dear , " cried Julie . " And now , who delivers judgment next P " But we none of us felt judicial . Perhaps we were all somewhat surprised by the settled purpose indicated in Margaret ' s manner rather than her words ; and by general consent , the conversation dropped into a separate fit of musing that seized us all .
1028 The Leader. [Saturday,
1028 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,
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The Olympic And Its New Management. (Wit...
THE OLYMPIC AND ITS NEW MANAGEMENT . ( With a Word about Robson . ) On Monday , the Olympic opened its doors , with by far the greatest prospect or success since the days when Madame Vestris made it the most novel , the most elegant , and the most attractive theatre in London . Alfred "Wigan , a great favourite , socially and theatrically , has made a good start . His friends are satisfied . Tn . e game is in his own hands , — a perilous game , as all managers know ; a game in which luck is greater than skill , and yet skill itself as indispensable as luck . To please a public with successive novelties is a terrible task ; for the public , facile in enthusiasm , ready to gape at any absurdity others are gaping at , ready to rush out and see any " reed shaken by the wind , " is also a most capricious as well as stupid public , and more ungrateful than either .
Wigan is , I hope , too wise to be cajoled into security by his opening success . We all know how promising are the honeymoons of management ! Great as Wigan ' s " reception" was , ( expressive of real hearty good-will and admiration , ) great as was the enthusiasm of Monday night , such things have no permanent influence . Jones , who has shouted himself hoarse , and blistered his beefy hands in enthusiasm , will mercilessly hiss the first inferior piece , and as mercilessly keep away from the first dull one 1 Jones himself , like his enthusiasm , is a vanishing phenomenon , not a perdurable noumenon ! This by way of moralizing . On Monday , then , to resume narrative , the season was " inaugurated . " The Olympic-Camp , a sort of revue by
Planehe , and written in his very happiest vein , introduced the forces ( and the " weaknesses" ) of the company , and while incidentally satirizing the present state of the drama , announced the " intentions" of the new management . The piece is on an old and not agreeable plan , and is rather too long ; but there are so many admirable and " telling" lines in it , the fun is so appreciable , and so removed from coarseness , that it passes off gaily . One point I wish to remark , because it is characteristic . The opening scene is meant to represent the bare Avails and stage of a theatre ; but on the stage it is almost impossible to get reality , and this scene , instead of being the reality , ( which was surely facile enough ?) was the " stage idea" of a bare stage !
JPJot and Passion , the drama in three acts , which followed , is the joint production of Tom Taylor and John Lang , ( known as " Mofussilite " Lang , ) and is an effective piece , carrying the audience with it from the first . The germ of the drama is Pouche ' s known practice of employing persona of rank as his spies . Among his unhappy victims is the beautiful JMarie de Fontanges , thrown into his power by her unfortunate passion for gambling . He gives her money to indulge her vice , and she in return gives him information . Become his instrument , through dread of oxr posure to the world which believes her spotless , slio is forced to act as u decoy to bring to Paris one of douche ' s enemies . In doing so , she falls in love with tlie man whose ruin she is sent to effect . ' I will not tell you more of the plot , lest the edge of curiosity be taken from your interest ; but you can at once sec the capabilities of such a story for powerful
situation . If it were a work of more pretensions , I would pause to point out several serious defects both of characterization and construction ; but there are only two points needful to bo alluded to , and I allude to thorn because oven in a drama of this unpretending class , they are sources of weakness . The first is a want of earnestness ami passion in tlio diar logue ; the second is the undramatic . disposition to take for granted what ought to be shown : 1 allude to such points as Marie da Fontanqes , both as gambler and spy , not being represented , but merely spoken of . We ought ;
to see her under thefascinations of play , and under the infamy of her office Very fine dramatic material is lost by this neglect . If I am told that bv such a picture her character would lose its " interest" with the audience I reply , that , in the first place , an audience sympathizes s trongly with human passion and human infirmity , and would be more inclined to pardon . Marie if they felt her temptation , and saw her struggles ; and , in the second place ,- do what you will , you cannot efface the stain from , her forehead— -she has been a spy ; and a gambler . Another point of the same " take for granted style , " is' FouchS ' s consummate ability and astuteness of which we are perpetually told , but of which , throughout the piece , he exhibits no evidence . All deductions made , however , the piece is an ingenious ly-wrought drama of the modern French school , abounding in good situations with
, characters strongly marked , and with the interest kept up to the last . Wigan p layed the Creole lover with very remarkable force of passionthe passion of a gentleman , not of a stage lover ; and there were accents in his voice which made the audience thrill . Mrs . Sterling—what a favourite she is !—threw all her pathos into the part of Marie and Emery was careful in the part of FoucJie . But th & paxi- in the piece was one I have not yet mentioned—a secretary of the Marall species , raised into dominant eminence by the admirable acting of Pu > bson , who made a " hit" in it which will draw the town .
I had only seen this now popular actor m the burlesque ShylocJc ; and it may be as well to repeat here what were my first impressions , given in Leader ISTo . 174 : — " His performance is certainly peculiar , showing mimetic power , and significance of gesture , but no humour . It was not funny—yet was it not tragic , although hovering on the confines of tragedy . It had the merit of originality and invention ; but I must see Mr . Robson in some character not burlesque before venturing on an opinion as to his powers . " i Those were my first impressions ; and those remain with me , after seeingt him play the serpent secretary . He is a remarkable—a very remarkable actor ; and I shall be much surprised if he do not become , in his way , a great actor ; for he has two essential qualities—originality and mimetic power . Humour he has none ; he is as dry and hard as " Orabstick Persius ;" and it is not as a low comedian that he will take rank , but as an actor of
Bouffe parts , in which character—individuality—is represented by truthful details . For I think those critics who credit him with tragic power make a fundamental mistake ; because his Shylock was more serious than comic , they jumped to the conclusion that he would have played Shakspeare ' s ShylocJc finely ; because in this secretary the emotive passages were finely represented , his admirers pass on in admiration to the belief that he has tragic passion at command . Now , I must not be understood as depreciating Hobson ' s powers , but as describing and defining them , in saying , that he seems to me unequal to the force , breadth , and impassioned dignity of a tragic scene . It is not 2 > i ° much as excitability he
portrays . The details by which , lie illustrates his emotion are all good , true , and suggestive ; but they are small—they are the details of an irritable nature easily moved , and moved from the surface—not of a passionate nature moved from the depths , " which moveth all together , if it move at all . " And hence my impression of his acting in burlesque , that it " hovered on the confines of tragedy , " remains true of his serious acting ; it lies as near tragedy as temper does to passion—^ as the exasperation of an ordinary man against his wife does to the deep and all-absorbing passion of wronged Othello .
As an actor of what may be called Boulfe parts , I believe Robson will eventually take his position . In spite of his success—in spite of the powers which legitimate that success—he must not , however , be spoken of in the same breath with ' "BoufFe * —yet . Bouffe had both passion and humour . But be bad , also , one quality which Robson must work very hard still to attain—I mean , that of being an artist . In his performance , on Mx > nda . y , the details , taken separately , wcu 6 admirable ; but they made no homogeneous creation . There were dashes of burlesque , and rapid
transitions , which marred the unity , because they were transitions not from one emotion to another , but from one individuality to another . He represented emotions of rage , jealousy , love , triumph ., hate ; but he never represented those emotions in their subsidence ; on the contrary , the passage from one to the other was like that of figures in a galanteeshow . I direct bis attention to this defect ; because , with his intelligence , and mobile face , lie can remedy it ; whereas , ' to tell an ;> efx ) rlike Charles ICoan to express subsiding emotions , is like telling Daniel Lambert to jump over a hurdle ! Vivian .
Thk Nicw Dutikh On Skkvantk.—By The Now ...
Thk Nicw DuTiKH on Skkvantk . —By the now AmemaA Taxes Act , masters have to pay from the 10 th instant for every male servant of the age of eighteen and upwanlH tho annual duty of XL In ., and under that ago We . Vul . ] - > HHt year tho duty on servants brought ; to the revenue 200 , ( MM . Quinisms "Jvtivum . "—Not long since , rh the Emperor wjih walking on the h 1 oj > oh in bin garden at Pekin , an attempt was made upon liin life , but ,, happily for tho " Won of Heaven , " a ohamberlain intorpoHud . his arm , and succeeded , at the hazard of his own , in Having his mastor ' s life . it wan never precisely ascertained whether the miscreant were instigated to the act by tho rebels , but eighteen mandarins of tho highoHt rank were accused of complicity , and they , and evoiy member of their respective familioH were put to death , and the country for many miled round their dwollingH was absolutely laid waste ! ^ Such ih OhinoHo justice , at least under the old r < $ gane /—New Quarterly Jitiview for October . W | flMlW iticviONUK ' jfitoM Kkoicii'T Htami'H . By a Tftrhamonlary paper just printed it appears that tho revenue from receipt stamps in the year onded tho 5 th January , 1851 , wjih ] < $ i ) , 67 O £ . ; in 1852 , 174 , 7441 ; . ; and in I 8 M , 180 , 41 ) 1 * .
AmuH Pahha and hih Dor ; . —Abbas Pasha lately obtained from " Englan < l , l > y great exertion , a gigantic luastifr , of tho celebrated Lyine breed , and the monster wan tho talk of the whole city of Cairo . As the Pasha ' s private Secretary proceeded through tho narrow streets , accompanied by bin very docilo but very formidable - looking acquisition , the Turks did not , lly , nor did they seek shelter , nor put themselves in attitude ol" resistance . They stood still and trembled . Some muttered only " Wonderful ! wonderful !" 'others adapted literally the Haydon phrase , "Our tniHt is in God . " One old man we heard to exclaim , " Many of the uroationB of God are terrible !" and another gravely asked tho dignified dog , "Artthou" sent to consume uh utterly ' ( " The general expression , however , was " God can protect us overt from tlioe , oh terrible one \— -N < : w Quarterly Revieto fw October . lliciNJt 'I'HK CIicuman . T 01 cr .--T . J 1 c ) German poet , Henry Heine , has for many years past been struck with paralysis . HiH limltfl , bin body , Ins features , oven to liis very eyelids , are lame , and to all purposes like those of a dead man . indued it may bo said that life only lingers in the brain and tongue—the man is a more corpse : the poet alone survives . An oxile from
his country for many long years past , and for many years past , too , a captive to illness in the back roo »( i oi a small apartment in the Faubourg Poissiniere at 1 ariH , the poot , whose early flights of fancy created a nowvora in German lyrics—and , one might almost say , i » V . j , man politicn and religion—has still been active ; aii ( not his best , at least his most pungent books Imvo insuod from that living head attached to a dead Iway , which keeps its long vigils in the heart of the JJiilml oi Franco . —New Quarterly Review for October . ¦ OtfKKJiAMHM IN Ammbioa . . —Tho American 1 j « . U )» v offico does not confine its dutios to the more uiihiuhn oi" granting patents , but , in addition , endeavours , . collect information on tho subject of inventions ami " ^ duHtrial progress in every part of tho world . i < . ^ purpose the American consuls in each of their ai « ¦ arc charged with the duty of reporting to the ""'""" V j at home everything that may be calculated to 1 ) 0 «» to homo industry . Journal of the Society W \™ { Sthic . ct Kaiiwayh m AwwJUOA . --Tho f"f ^ Z of Brooklyn , United States , have taken tlio it , street locomotion , and are about , with tho Hanctwn tlio Common Council , to lay rails and run enrj , lieu of oumibuuoB and cabs , through tho pnw j streets , Sundays expected . '
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 22, 1853, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_22101853/page/20/
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