Punch: Punch (84.1883)

100

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[Maech 3, 1883.

VERY LIKELY.

Effie {to pretty Nursemaid). “Oh, Martha, did you see? That
Policeman winked his Eye at me ! ”

A CASTE ” IN OUR EYE.

Undoubtedly the best of Robertson’s comedies. From first to
last it is amusing, and always more or less interesting, according to
the capability of the performers. The parts are all true to Nature,
allowing here and there for a certain exaggeration necessary to

Drama,—and the Actors
have only to be true to art.
How well this is done may
be seen in Mrs. Bancroft’s
admirable impersonation of
Polly Eccles, Mr. Ban-
croft’s Captain Hawtree,
and Mr. David James’s
Eccles,—though, in the
last instance, this clever
artist is too much in-
clined to be gentle to the
old villain’s vices, and to
tone down the character
into a weak, besotted old
fool,—to “ draw it mild,”
in fact,—instead of in-
sisting on the more re-
pulsive features of the
character.

Eccles has grown old in
wickedness: he is a de-
praved Captain Costigan ;

£JOu

A Hit. An unrehearsed effect. “Don’t
make a noise, or else you ’ll wake the Baby! ”

Fearful Scene between Sulky Sam and Polly in the
Borough Itoad. “Who gave you those ringsP”

, jt'j.o.vcu. Kyupunn uosuigun ;

a brute whose cruelty killed his wife, who made his weaker daughter
his drudge, who beat and bullied her (we know all this from her
own account), who would have sold his girls to the highest bidder,

or committed any crime, had the opportunity offered and the reward
sufficient. It is a mistake, though probably not so from a Low
Comedian’s point of view, to give undue prominence to the temporary
maudlin or convivial aspect of this irreclaimable old scoundrel.

Robertson was inspired by Thackeray in many of his pieces r
in Caste, _.Eccles is founded, as we have said, on Costigan; Hawtree-
is a fashionable Dubbin ; Polly Eccles is a very superior Fanny
Bolton; and Sam Gerridge is founded on Sam Huxter, who dislikes
Pendennis as cordially as Gerridge does Hawtree, and who marries.
Fanny Bolton.

The dialogue is not brilliant,—that is, if by “ brilliant” is meant
a lot of sharp epigrammatic sentences dealt out at hap-hazard to the
dramatis personce all round, without any reference to their individu-
ality, and worked up into dialogue,—but it is thoroughly natural..
Polly talks as such. a Polly would talk, and her mild joke about
Hawtree looking as if he were “ superior to ham and up to tongue,
glazed,” is thoroughly enjoyed by the audience as being capital
“for her ’’—due credit being given, of course, for the inimitable
way in which it is given by Mrs. Bancroft.

Mr. Brookfield makes Sam Gerridge too brutal. He looks like
a ruffianly costermonger, lurching and sulking about, as if he’d got
a knife in his
pocket to stick
into Hawtree ;
and so evident is
it that he only
wants just a
little more pro-
vocation from
Polly in order to
give her a con-
vincing proof of
the thickness of
his boots, that he
excites the com-
passion of the
audience for the
sprightly girl
whose fate it is
to be linked for
life to this ruf-
fian, and who will
come out of her

honeymoon with a black eye, aching bones, and a broken heart. So
“nasty” appears to be his temper, that his worst suspicions must
have been aroused by the glitter of the numerous gold rings which
ornament Polly Eccles’ fingers. Polly is only a ballet-girl,
receiving a pound a week, and, of course, it must speak very highly
for her "thrift if, after subscribing to the household expenses and
giving father his sixpence on Saturday, she can have saved up
enough to buy rings representing, we should say, a matter of about
a few hundred pounds or so. Sam has an eye to those ornaments,
and from his manner, we should surmise that he intends to marry
her first, beat her next, rob her after-
wards, and realise as much as he can
on the jewellery. We don’t think
Robertson ever meant Polly Eccles
to wear these rings,—at all events, not
without some explanation as to their
being honestly come by. Sam is
instinctively jealous of Hawtree, and
we fancy that if he had caught them
in that back kitchen, to which they
retire for a considerable time, in the
First Act, there would either have
been a big row, or Sam would have
accepted the situation, and looked
forward to a further instalment of
diamond rings.

The Honourable George D' Airoy is
made rather too hard by Mr. Conway ;
he does not impress us as being really
in love with his wife, or caring a scrap
for his mother.

Whether Miss Gerard, as Esther,
is too theatrical when she ought to be
natural, as in her grief in the Second
Act, and in her burst of passion in the
Third, and too natural when she might
well be theatrical—that is, when at

home, in the First Act, where, we may say, the “ scent of the foot-
lights is over them all”—is difficult to decide; but in neither
instance did she appear to win sympathy.

Mrs. Sterling, as the Marquise, is simply perfect. Had the
Author been living now, we fancy he would not have brought on
Eccles and Sam in the Second Act, and would have cut out all the

A Man who strikes us with
“ Aw! ”