DOI Heft:
June 22, 1861
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16867#0264
256
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [June 22, 1861.
Doctor. “ Gout, my dear Madam,—Gout everywhere I No Port,—No Beer. Brandy and Vichy-water only.”
Elderly Lady (in dismay). “ Thank you, Doctor ; but 1 hate your Vishy-Vashy Drinks.”
OUR DRAMATIC CORRESPONDENT.
“Dear, Punch,
“ I am: sure that you and I, and every lover of good acting,
must rejoice that Mr. Robson has recovered from his illness, and is
able once again to delight a British audience. In the present dearth
of talent (protect me from a challenge for using such a phrase!) Mr.
Robson is an actor who can very ill be spared, and whose place it
would at present be impossible to fill. Faults be may have, doubtless
—who of us has notP—and to those who see him often his very
eccentricity may seem mannered, if not forced. But where are we to
look for an actor to replace himP and when we lose him, will not
hundreds of us much lament the gap ? When I think of all the tears
and laughs that he has won from me, I can but own his power, and
accord my thanks and praise. Pew men have held their audience so
much at their command, and have moved its smiles or sighs with such
a ready sway. His quick change of emotion, if not the work of genius
is that of perfect art; and if he skips at times too suddenly from silly
to sublime, it is because his better judgment has been blunted by
burlesque. They who have not seen him in such plays as Plot and
Passion, know but little of his skill in making much of a small part,
and but little of his power in the conception of a character, and adapt-
ing voice and person to the carrying it out. Varied as they are, the
parts that he appears in he stamps upon one’s memory, so that one at
any time can bring them to one’s mind ; and when, some score years
hence, one lights on an old playbill with either Daddy Hardacre or The
Porter's Knot inscribed on it, one will at once recai the character he
played, and revive some of the pleasure which the seeing it produced.
“ The other night I dropped into the cosy little Bandbox, which
people from the country may know better as the Strand. It was nor,
the ‘ Great Sensation Burlesque ’ which attracted me, for I saw that,
long ago, and said my say about it; and have only now to add a sigh
of sorrow that Aladdin has not taken my advice, and given up devoting
her talents to hurlesque. That she can turn her tongue and person
to a far better account than giving point to puns and dancing comic
jigs, her acting in Court Favour abundantly well proved ; and as a lady-
like demeanour is at present (more’s the pity !) none too common on
the stage, I regret to see it vulgarised by acting in burlesque. Appa-
rently the public are not of my opinion, seeing with what clamour they
welcome Miss Aladdin, and applaud her every joke; and it is difficult, (
of course, in the face of such approval, to persuade a young performer
to avoid what calls it forth.
“ The piece that tempted me to flmg in my four shillings to the
treasury was paraded in the playbill as a ‘ triumphantly successful new
and original comedy;* and excepting that I found it neither novelty
nor comedy, I have no reason to quarrel with the title thus put forth.
With a captivating candour, the comedy (so called) is christened The
Old Story, and with the exception of some few minor points, the story
is as old as it is owned to be. The piece abounds throughout in stale
and stagy situations, and has the flavour rather of a hash-up of old
farces, except one serious scene which is by no means badly played.
There is our old, old friend the footman, whose heart is with the lady’s
maid, and hopes in a snug ‘public’; and our old, old friends the poet
and the half-pay Indian Captain, who both want a wife with money,
and are rival plagues in pestering the heroine of the piece. And there’s
the old, old way of bringing on the dramatis personce: first, the two
servants conversing, then the lover just arrived, and then the old man
and his pet; and the old, old way of callers coming quite by chance
together, half-a-dozen at a time, and entering through the window, or
anyhow they choose, exactly, we all know, as they do in real life. In-
spite, however, of antiquity—perhaps, indeed, because of it, for some
people most enjoy the tales they’ve often heard before, for they know
so well what’s coming, and like to look as though they didn’t—The
Old Story has been running now for half-a-hundred nights, which is
surely quite enough to make its author proud of it, and tempt him to
regard it as a model when he writes. Well, opinions of course differ ;
and I have no right to assume that mine infallibly is right. But, to
my thinking, the character which Mr. Parselle plays affords the only
chance of acting with anything like nature; and of this chance, Mr.
Parselle, who never over-acts himself, takes care to make the most.
I never met the author, mind, and have no private pique against him ;.
nor, as I hear this is his maiden effort at a comedy, would I use a
word so harsh as to discourage him from making a better-judged
attempt. But as the clapping of the gallery is not the soundest praise
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [June 22, 1861.
Doctor. “ Gout, my dear Madam,—Gout everywhere I No Port,—No Beer. Brandy and Vichy-water only.”
Elderly Lady (in dismay). “ Thank you, Doctor ; but 1 hate your Vishy-Vashy Drinks.”
OUR DRAMATIC CORRESPONDENT.
“Dear, Punch,
“ I am: sure that you and I, and every lover of good acting,
must rejoice that Mr. Robson has recovered from his illness, and is
able once again to delight a British audience. In the present dearth
of talent (protect me from a challenge for using such a phrase!) Mr.
Robson is an actor who can very ill be spared, and whose place it
would at present be impossible to fill. Faults be may have, doubtless
—who of us has notP—and to those who see him often his very
eccentricity may seem mannered, if not forced. But where are we to
look for an actor to replace himP and when we lose him, will not
hundreds of us much lament the gap ? When I think of all the tears
and laughs that he has won from me, I can but own his power, and
accord my thanks and praise. Pew men have held their audience so
much at their command, and have moved its smiles or sighs with such
a ready sway. His quick change of emotion, if not the work of genius
is that of perfect art; and if he skips at times too suddenly from silly
to sublime, it is because his better judgment has been blunted by
burlesque. They who have not seen him in such plays as Plot and
Passion, know but little of his skill in making much of a small part,
and but little of his power in the conception of a character, and adapt-
ing voice and person to the carrying it out. Varied as they are, the
parts that he appears in he stamps upon one’s memory, so that one at
any time can bring them to one’s mind ; and when, some score years
hence, one lights on an old playbill with either Daddy Hardacre or The
Porter's Knot inscribed on it, one will at once recai the character he
played, and revive some of the pleasure which the seeing it produced.
“ The other night I dropped into the cosy little Bandbox, which
people from the country may know better as the Strand. It was nor,
the ‘ Great Sensation Burlesque ’ which attracted me, for I saw that,
long ago, and said my say about it; and have only now to add a sigh
of sorrow that Aladdin has not taken my advice, and given up devoting
her talents to hurlesque. That she can turn her tongue and person
to a far better account than giving point to puns and dancing comic
jigs, her acting in Court Favour abundantly well proved ; and as a lady-
like demeanour is at present (more’s the pity !) none too common on
the stage, I regret to see it vulgarised by acting in burlesque. Appa-
rently the public are not of my opinion, seeing with what clamour they
welcome Miss Aladdin, and applaud her every joke; and it is difficult, (
of course, in the face of such approval, to persuade a young performer
to avoid what calls it forth.
“ The piece that tempted me to flmg in my four shillings to the
treasury was paraded in the playbill as a ‘ triumphantly successful new
and original comedy;* and excepting that I found it neither novelty
nor comedy, I have no reason to quarrel with the title thus put forth.
With a captivating candour, the comedy (so called) is christened The
Old Story, and with the exception of some few minor points, the story
is as old as it is owned to be. The piece abounds throughout in stale
and stagy situations, and has the flavour rather of a hash-up of old
farces, except one serious scene which is by no means badly played.
There is our old, old friend the footman, whose heart is with the lady’s
maid, and hopes in a snug ‘public’; and our old, old friends the poet
and the half-pay Indian Captain, who both want a wife with money,
and are rival plagues in pestering the heroine of the piece. And there’s
the old, old way of bringing on the dramatis personce: first, the two
servants conversing, then the lover just arrived, and then the old man
and his pet; and the old, old way of callers coming quite by chance
together, half-a-dozen at a time, and entering through the window, or
anyhow they choose, exactly, we all know, as they do in real life. In-
spite, however, of antiquity—perhaps, indeed, because of it, for some
people most enjoy the tales they’ve often heard before, for they know
so well what’s coming, and like to look as though they didn’t—The
Old Story has been running now for half-a-hundred nights, which is
surely quite enough to make its author proud of it, and tempt him to
regard it as a model when he writes. Well, opinions of course differ ;
and I have no right to assume that mine infallibly is right. But, to
my thinking, the character which Mr. Parselle plays affords the only
chance of acting with anything like nature; and of this chance, Mr.
Parselle, who never over-acts himself, takes care to make the most.
I never met the author, mind, and have no private pique against him ;.
nor, as I hear this is his maiden effort at a comedy, would I use a
word so harsh as to discourage him from making a better-judged
attempt. But as the clapping of the gallery is not the soundest praise