Punch (45.1863)

December 5, 1863.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

233

rather heightens than impairs the effect of a slight work which is
adapted for the drawing-room as well as for Ihe stage. Like other
mortal people, both the Reeds and Mr. Parry of course at times
require rest; and Jessy Lea will fitly serve to keep their Gallery from
disappearing from the list of pleasant public places of amusement.
For certainly with so much of attractiveness about it, there is not a
whit of fear that the Opera di Camera is likely to turn out a Camera

Obscurer.

One who Pays.

THE TURF AND THE PRESS.

ll for having criticised the
proceedings of the Jockey
Club in their judicial capa-
city, that assembly of high-
minded gentlemen disdained
not to warn Argus, the
sporting correspondent of
tlio, Morning Post, off New-
market, Heath. The Court
of Queen’s Bench has de-
cided that they had a right
to do so, because New-
market Heath is private
property. Very well. If
Newmarket Heath belongs
to Admiral Rous & Co.,
and the public have no
business there but on their
sufferance, it is for the
public to decide whether
Admiral Rous & Co.
shall or shall not continue
ro carry on their races with
the assistance of public
money. Queen’s Plates are
run for at Newmarket three
times a year, and their ex-
penses are defrayed out of
the Civil List. If there is
any gentleman in the House of Commons who loves justice and hates
iniquity, as soon as the fit opportunity occurs in the debate on the
Estimates, a resolution will be moved for the reduction of the Civil
List by an amount equal to the sum that has heretofore been appro-
priated to the provision of the Queen’s Plates at Newmarket. Let the
Press be free of the Turf, or stop the supplies.

FURTHER FROM THE SPIRIT OP SHAICSPEARE.

{ To the Worshipful Master Punch.)

Right Worthy,

Ghosts now-a-days are admitted to so much fuller and easier
speech of living men and women than they were in the days of good
■Queen Bess, t hat, you must not marvel if I address you in the fashion
of your times rather than my own.

Ghosts were ghosts when I lived, and comported themselves with
gravity. I have tried to show one on the Boards, as I knew him, and
you may gauge the distance between embodied spirits in the seventeenth
and in the nineteenth century, by comparing my Ghost of Hamlet’s
Father with the rapping ghosts who come at the call of Messrs. Home
and Howitt, Mbs. Dennet or Mrs. Haydon.

Of a truth I prefer the old style of ghost, and though I did lately try
the effect, of a few raps on you, I found the process so slow (to say
nothing of the company elbowing me), that 1 was minded to make my
next communication through the post. We spirits are allowed pen,
ink, and paper, and the post-office arrangements between our world and
yours are excellent.

I hold it well to enlarge a little on the subject of my late message to
you, wherein 1 said a good theatre would be the best monument to my
memory.

Of course in revisiting the glimpses of the moon, I often bend my
steps to London. I like to hover about my old haunts, the Bankside
ana Blackfriars, and the Bear Garden, and to amuse myself by noting
the wonderful changes that two centuries and a-half have made in men
and things. I visit the theatres, and marvel at the many huge and
splendid homes of the Drama that have replaced my poor old Globe and
Fortune, the Red Bull and the Curtain : to compare the stately scenes
that, have succeeded our ragged traverses and curtains ; the well-trained,
well-clad, and bravely appointed crowds, which stand for the five or six
ragged serving men, who in my day did duty for mobs, courts and armies.
I have seen my own plays right royally apparelled, nobly housed, set in
grand frames, with fair backgrounds, but of the chief personages
therein, and their enacting—well—I have seen nought—of late days at

least—to make me forget Dick Burbage, and my Lord Leicester’s
men, his and my fellows, who strutted and bellowed, when I was in the
flesh, and trod the Boards with them.

With all this, I have an embodied spirit’s privilege to hear the critic’s
complaints, and note the taste of the public. There is free passage for
me to managers’ rooms and authors’ studies. 1 list to critics, and
authors of plays that cannot find their way to the stage, bitter in
denunciation of the scurvy brainless stuff brought out by your managers
and swallowed by your playgoers, i am doomed to overhear that my
own plays will not bring money unless it be as stately shows, or unless
some actor or actress from over sea bring to them the graces of a
foreign accent, and a French delivery. Many use my name as though it
were a spell or a heal-all: calling for “Shakspeare !” “Shakspeare!”
as if my plays could change the tide of a people’s taste, and bring back
to the theatre all I found or made there. Methinks, it would be
strange if, when all is changing, stage plays should stand still: if the
fashion of writing, the subjects, the manner I essayed with my co-mates
and copyists were to be the rule for all that came after us. I changed
plays from what they were before my time, and I ever looked to see
like change made when I should hold the Boards no more. But under
all outward changes, some things that go to a play, in my conceit of it,
methought should never die, or plays must die too—to wit, true
thought, sweet or stately music of well-fitted speech, stirring and noble
action, deep passion, or kindly mirth and merriment. These make up
the tenure by which stage-playing and play-writing use the right tu
live, to hold the ears, and exercise the Drains of men. Groundlings
t here will ever be; and of such I had enow, methinks, in my lifetime.
Needs was I should tickle their ears by word-play, and clownish
jesting, from which, but for pleasing them, I had gladly refrained me.
I was manager as well as play-writer, and if the fools brought grist 1o
my mill, they must be drawn in as well as the wise and the witty.

if, now, I say that the best monument to Shakspeare would bi a
theatre where good plays would be well and worthily put forth, think
not I would claim for myself or my fellows of the past sole kfid, or
chief hold of its stage. Every good play—be it writ in verse or prose,
be its characters kings or beggars, clowns or courtiers, be its time in
the past or the present—may claim kin with the plays of my writing,
and admission to a theatre devoted to my honour. Nay, rather such
plays are most akin to mine as are fullest of the living spirit of their
time, and most in tune with the hearts and pride of Englishmen. I
but ask for high and true thought, well-graced speech, and living
action ; season these with what mirth you will—as all life is seasoned
with mirth—and they will like me all the better. Give me but stuff
worthy to hold the ears of grown men, and not mere ape’s tricks, or
show of painted vizards with no brains behind them, or piling- up of
cunningly contrived engines, such as old Ben Jonson and Master
Inigo Jones were wont to quarrel over at Whitehall or Theobald’s.
These toys may do well for a court-masque, or to follow solider stage
meat, as cooks after beef serve devices of spicery and ma.rchpaine.
But keep them to that. Let my theatre stay the stomach of its guests
with solider and manlier fare—holding the mirror up to Nature, and
showing the body of the time its true form and pressure.

Were the money about to be raised for a monument to me, used for the
support of such a theatre as this—men of fair fame, sound knowledge,
sufficient experience, and true love of stage-plays, being chosen to
administer it, with a fitting manager—such a one as old Edward
Alleyne, or Burbage—to do the work under them—my spirit would
have a pleasanter haunt for its nights in London than it has Row. But
you will ask me, what need of applying other money to this, than men
will be found willing to devote out of their own purses ? If the people
will come to see such plays—methinks I hear it said—they will make
profitable the theatre where they are acted. If'they will not, to what
end strive to keep up by draughts from alien pouches that, which in
the end, must needs languish and fall ?

This were true enough, were it not that you have in some sort a
taste to create—a people to draw from high-spiced or windy meats to
solider simpler fare—and the sore temptation—was I not myseh a
manager?—of the day’s profit, needed to meet the day’s charge. The
moneys thus held in trust for my theatre would be a stay and a
stand-by—what your scriveners now-a-days call a reserve fund,—to be
drawn on, till its fair fame was spread and grounded, till its actors
were trained and taught, till the public was slowly won to worthier
stage-fare than is put before them now. But this once, done, throw
away the corks, in Heaven’s name, and let my theatre sink or swim.
If it sink e’en let it, and leave me without a monument, other than
my printed plays and my tomb. But methinks it would not sink.
And if it swam, my name would swim with it—swim as I would have
it, on the ark that floated the art I loved and lived for.

With this I commend my cause to your fair keeping and rest Master
Punch ’s true servant to command in all worthy service,

Will Shakspeare.

Disinterested Advice.—Outside Madame Rachel’s establish-
ment, during certain repairs, there was lately written up the generous
caution, “ Beware oe the Faint.”