But this joke was, of course, a mere goodhumored slander. There were two, at least, of our dramatic corps, Sir Wrixon Becher and Mr. Rothe, whose powers, as tragic actors, few amateurs have ever equalled; and Mr. Corry -perhaps alone of all our company-would have been sure of winning laurels on the public stage.

As to my own share in these representations, the following list of my most successful characters will show how remote from the line of the Heroic was the small orbit through which Iranged; my chief parts having been Sam, in "Raising the Wind," Robin Roughhead, Mungo, Sadi, in the "Mountaineers," Spado, and Peeping Tom. In the part of Spado there occur several allusions to that gay rogue's shortness of stature, which never failed to be welcomed by my auditors with laughter and cheers; and the words "Even Sanguino allows I am a clever little fellow," was always a signal for this sort of friendly explosion. One of the songs, indeed, written by O'Keefe for the character of Spado, so much abounds with points thus personally applicable, that many supposed, with no great compliment either to my poetry or my modesty, that the song had been written, expressly for the occasion, by myself. The following is the verse to which I allude, and for the poetry of which I was thus nade responsible :—

"Though born to be little's my fate,

Yet so was the great Alexander;
And, when I walk under a gate,
I've no need to stoop like a gander.
I'm no lanky, long hoddy-doddy,

Whose paper-kite sails in the sky;
Though wanting two feet, in my body,

In soul, I am thirty feet high."

Some further account of the Kilkenny TheAre, as well as of the history of Private Theairicals in general, will be found in the following article I wrote on the subject for the Edinburgh Review:

There is no subject that we would sooner recommend to any male or female author, in distress for a topic, than a History of the Private Theatres of Europe. It has been said of Gibbon, that his work is "like the great whirlpool of Norway, which sucks into its eddy bears, whales, ships, and every thing that

comes within any possible reach of its engulfing streams ;"-and this, after all, in much humbler walks of literature than that of Gibbon, is the grand secret of book-making. To find a subject which is either capable, or may be made so by a little management, of pressing all other possible subjects into its service, is the grand desideratum to which the quartomonger and the man of many volumes should aspire. Bayle, we know, contrived, in his "Thoughts on the Comet," to make the world acquainted with his thoughts on every other existing topic,-from Jesuits and Jansenists, and the Peace of Nimeguen, to Crusades, Demons, and the ever memorable Bishop of Condom. Berkeley has converted his Essay on Tar Water to purposes no less omnigenous and incongruous;—the principles of attraction, and repulsion, the story of Isis and Osiris— the Anima Mundi of Plato, and the doctrine of the Trinity, all administered to the reader through the somewhat nauseous medium of Tar Water.

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With much less abuse of the privilege of discursiveness than has been assumed by either of those two celebrated skeptics, the author of a History of Private Theatricals might interweave with his subject, not only an account of the Rise and Progress of the Drama, in the different countries of Europe, but by availing himself of the splendid names which have, from time to time, illustrated the annals of Private Theatres, he might, with perfect relevancy, branch out into such a rich variety of anecdote and biography, as few subjects--even among the best adapted for this sort of literary Macédoine-could furnish. By a converse of the proposition, "all the World's a Stage," he might, with little difficulty, succeed in making his "Stage all the World."

Among the ancient Greeks there are, we believe, no traces of private theatrical performances; and the reason may be, that as, in the eyes of that enlightened people, no stigma attached itself to the profession of an actor, the wealthy and high-born might indulge, not only with impunity but with honor, in their taste for the practice of that art on the boards of the public theatres. "It was allowed," says Montaigne, " to persons of the greatest quality

to follow the profession of the stage in Greece." The testimony of Livy to the same point is decisive;-speaking of the tragic actor, Aristo, he says, "Huic et genus et fortuna honesta erant, nec ars, quia nihil tale apud Græcos pudori est, ea deformabat." Some of the greatest dramatic poets of Greece, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes, thought it not unbecoming to take a part in the representation of their immortal works; nor did the fellow-countrymen and contemporaries of Demosthenes feel themselves disgraced by having a great actor, Aristodemus, their representative at the court of Philip.

This high appreciation of the ministers of the Dramatic Muse was worthy of the taste and liberal feeling of such a people. If the interpreters of the oracles of the gods derived a character of sacredness from their very task, those who gave utterance to the written spells of genius, might with equal justice participate in the homage paid to genius itself.

Far different was the estimation in which actors were held among the Romans. Their profession was pronounced by the law to be infamous," and no person of free birth was to be found among its members. The pathetic address of Laberius, the Roman Knight, on being forced by Cæsar to appear on the public stage, is well known :

"Twice thirty years I've borne a spotless name,

But foul dishonor brands, at length, my brow; From home, this morn, a Roman Knight I came, And home a jester I'm returning now. Ah, would that I had died, ere men could say, 'He has outlived his honor-by a day." "65

On the revival of Dramatic Poesy among the Italians, it was in private theatres,—and, for a long period, in private theatres only,that any advances in the cultivation of the art were made. The slow growth, indeed, of this branch of literature in that country, and the few fruits of any excellence which it has even yet put forth, would seem to warrant the conclusion to which the French critics have long since come, that the Italians are not, any more than their great ancestors, a dramatic people. It is certain, that their literature had produced its brightest and most desirable wonders before even the ordinary scenery and decorations of a theatre were introduced among them; and the poetry of Dante and Petrarch, and the prose of Boccaccio, had carried their beautiful language to its highest pitch of perfection, near a century and a half before a single play in this language was attempted. Nothing can, indeed, more strongly prove how little dramatic ideas or associations were afloat in the time of Dante, than that he should have ven tured to call his shadowy and awful panorama of Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory,-a "Com edy."

During all this interval, from the time of the great triumvirate of the fourteenth century to near the close of the fifteenth, an occasional representation of a play of Plautus or Terence, with, now and then, a drama, written in the same language, by some academician of Sien

na,

," and acted, or rather recited, by himself and his brethren, were the only signs of life that the Dramatic Muse of Italy exhibited. At length, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the poet and scholar, Politian-so bepraised during his lifetime, and so wholly unread almost ever since-presented his coun trymen with the first native Italian tragedy;" and the Orfeo was acted before Lorenzo the Magnificent, amid the acclamations of all the wits and beauties of Florence.

science, every art, every language is familiar, -but upon whose young brow the seal of death is already fixed, as the astrologers have already pronounced that he will not pass his thirty-second year.""_" And that child, with the cardinal's hat in his hand, whose red shoes and robes proclaim him already a counsellor of the Pontiff?"-"In that boy you see the future Leo the Tenth," the destined ornament of the Papacy, its first and its last."-" But him yonder, with the neck a little awry;" with that portentous nose and purblind eyes?""" "Tis Politian himself, the author of the Tragedy; and she, that fair maid, to whom he has just handed a Greek extempore, which she reads with the same facility with which it was written, is the beautiful and learned Alessandra Scala, herself a distinguished private actress, as the verses of Politian, on her performance of the Electra of Sophocles, testify." With how little success the poet woos her, may be collected from his extempore :—

"To teach me, that in hopeless suit

I do but waste my sighing hours,

Cold maid, whene'er I ask for fruit,

Thou giv'st me nought but leaves and flowers."

The example set by Politian was soon followed; and, an Italian Comedy being still a desideratum, the want was, not long after, supplied by Cardinal Bibbiera, whose clever, but licentious, comedy, the Calandra, was honored with no less distinguished a place of representation than the private apartments of Leo the Tenth at the Vatican." Gay times! -when Cardinals wrote "right merrye" farces, and Popes were their audience. Had Leo

contented himself with the classic indulgences of this world, without opening a mart for indulgences in the next, Luther would have wanted his best card, and the Papacy might have remained a little longer unshaken.

The illusions of scenic decoration,—which had been first introduced, it is said, by Pomponius Lætus, in a play performed by his scholars at Rome," were at this period not only universally brought into play, but assisted by all that splendor and pageantry, in which the luxurious prelates and nobles of Italy delighted. Among the givers of these dramatic fêtes, the Dukes of Ferrara shone

pre-eminent, and Hercules I. was the author. of an Italian translation of the Menæchmi, which was acted at Ferrara in 1486. Ariosto furnished the design for the theatre of the Court, which stood on the spot now occupied by the Chiesa Nuova; and "such," says Gibbon, "was the enthusiasm of the new Arts, that not one of the sons of Alfonso I did not disdain to speak a prologue on this stage.'

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But, among all the amateur actors of this period, he of whom the lovers of private theatricals have most reason to be proud, is the great Nicholas Machiavel,-he, the mighty searcher of courts, who stripped the leaves off the sceptre of tyrants, and showed the naked iron underneath. This author of the profoundest book ever written was not only a comic writer of first-rate power, but a comic actor, whose mimicry made Cardinals and Popes, (as he himself expresses it) "smascellarsi della risa." How delightedly might a historian of private theatres dwell on all the details of the correspondence between Guicciardini" and Machiavel, respecting the plan of the former to induce his friend to visit him at Modena, by getting up a representation of the Mandragora, for his amusement! The supper of Machiavel at Florence, with the cantatrice, la Barbera ;-his proposals to her to accompany him to the Carnival at Modena, and his anxiety for her assistance in the cast of his comedy,-all these little details derive a preciousness from the reputation of the men concerned in them, and from that charm which genius communicates to every thing connected with its name.

Nor was it only among the profane ones of the world that this rage for private acting dif fused itself. Even the recesses of the monastery and the convent were not sacred from the "soft infection," and the mask of Thalia was often in the same wardrobe with the cowl and the veil. The wit of Plautus was not thought to ocoarse for the lips of the monks of St. Stefano,78 and even the fair nuns of Venice were allowed to pour forth their souls in tragedy." As might be expected, however, some of these sequestered young actresses showed a disposi tion to convert their fictitious loves into real ones, and an order was accordingly issued,

prohibiting all such performances in convents, "per l'indécenza della rappresentazione e delle maschere," and restraining the poor stagestruck nuns, in future, to the innocent indulgence of a dull oratorio.

As this passion for private acting increased, new inventions and new luxuries were devised, to give a zest to the pursuit. The theatrical dilettanti of Vicenza, not content with their temporary stage in the Palazzo della ragione, applied to their brother academician, Palladio, to furnish them with the design of a theatre, worthy of the classic objects of their institution ;-"addattata ai loro geniali esercizi, fra quali v'era quello delle tragiche rappresentazioni."

In the beautiful structure which he planned for them, was performed, in the year 1585, the tragedy of Edipus; and the interest of the representation was, we are told, most touchingly increased by the circumstance of the sightless king being played by Luigi Groto, the "blind man of Adria," as he was called,himself a dramatic poet of no ordinary celebrity and power.

But it was not alone amid the pomp of a ducal hall, or surrounded by the forms of Palladian architecture, that these worshippers of the Drama indulged their devotions. That fine canopy, which the evening sky of Italy affords, not unfrequently formed their only theatre. For pastoral subjects, such as the Aminta and the Pastor Fido, the natural scenery of gardens and groves was thought to be the most appropriate; and vestiges of one of these rural theatres, in which the sweet dialogue of Ariosto and Tasso was recited by the "donne" and "cavalieri” of old, might, till very lately, be traced in the garden of the Villa Madama at Rome.

It is not within the scope of our present design to do more than merely intimate the many interesting details, into which a more extended research on this subject would lead. To the brilliant names, therefore, already mentioned as having thrown a lustre over the annals of private acting, we shall content ourselves with adding a few more, as they occur to our recollection, without attending very much to form in the enumeration, or dwelling, at any

great length, on the peculiar merits or histories of the personages.

Lorenzo de Medici, on the marriage of his daughter Maddalena, wrote a sacred drama, called "S. Giovanni e S. Paolo," which was performed in his palace, by his own children.

Cinthio, the novelist, to whom Shakspeare was indebted for some of his stories, had a private theatre, we are told, in his own house, where the most celebrated of all his own tragedies, "Orbacche," was performed, with splendid scenic decorations, before Hercules II., Duke of Ferrara.

About the same period, Luigi Cornaro, of vivacious celebrity, having not yet, we presume, taken to measuring his wine by ounces,

gave a dramatic fête under his own roof, at which one of the plays of L'Anguillara was performed.

Chiabrera, misnamed the Pindar of Italy. was one of a classic society at Rome, called "the Humorists," who devoted themselves (says Muratori) " to the composition and performance of beautiful and ingenious comedies." The Sala, in which their meetings were held, existed in the time of Muratori.

Beolco, one of the academic fraternity of the Infiammati, is said, by the historian of Padua, to have surpassed Plautus in composing comedies, and Roscius in representing them. The talent, indeed, of this Infiammato for acting, was thought worthy of being commemorated, even on his tomb:-" Nullis in scribendis agendisque comediis, ingenio, facundia, aut arte, secundo."

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Salvator Rosa was, it appears, a comic actor of infinite vivacity; and his personation of Formica, and of the Coviello of the ancient farces, is said to have thrown the Immortal City into convulsions of gayety. Another Neapolitan painter, of much less celebrity, Andria Belvedere, was, about the beginning of the 18th century, at the head of a society of theatrical amateurs at Naples, and diffused such a zeal for the drama among his fellow-citizens, that (says M. Amaury Duval)81 "l'on vit plusieurs seigneurs, par amour pour cet art, éléver dans leurs palais des théâtres particuliers."

The Duke Annibale Marchase, who resigned his government of Salerno in the year 1740,

and retired to the Monastery of the Holy Fathers of the Oratory at Naples," is said to have written his Sacred Dramas for the private theatre of that holy retreat, from whose performances the Oratorio, or Scriptural Opera, derives both its origin and name.

Coming down to a still later period, we find the "Serse" of Bettinelli acted, for the first time, in a private theatre at Verona; the principal character of the piece being performed by the Marquis Albergati, who was, himself, the author of various comedies, and so accomplished an actor, that Goldoni says of him, "non vi era in Italia comico ne dilettante chi rappresentasse al pari di lui gli eroi tragici e gli amorosi nelle commedie."

Lastly, we have Alfieri, the great boast of the Italian stage, performing in his own Antigone at Rome with the beautiful and majestic Duchess of Zagarolo-establishing afterwards his little theatre on the Lungo d'Arno, near the Ponte S. Trinita, at Florence, where he acted successively the parts of Filippo, Carlo, and Saul, in his own plays; and, finally, taking his leave for ever of the boards at the feast of the Illumination at Pisa, where (says the poet) ebbi la pueril vanagloria di andarvi, e là recitai per una sola volta, e per l'ultima, la mia diletta parte del Sául, e là rimasi, quanto al teatro, morto da Re."

In France, as well as in Italy, it was on the boards of private theatres that the first glimmerings, the "primus oriens," of the Drama appeared. The only difference was, that, in Italy, as we have seen, the originators of the art were scholars and nobles, while in France they were humble bourgeois and priests. "C'est à la lettre (says Suard) que l'on peut dire que nôtre comédie naquit dans le sein de l'Eglise." Excited by the example of those religious shows, which, in the fourteenth century, were exhibited in different parts of Europe by the pilgrims who had returned from the Holy Land, some pious citizens of Paris formed themselves into a society (on the model of the Christian Theatre, instituted by Gregory Nazianzene) for the purpose of improving upon these rude spectacles. Having established a sort of theatre at St. Maur, Dear Vincennes, they there continued for some

time to attract audiences of the faithful, and even to wean away crowds of good Christians from less amusing places of devotion.

Voltaire, who has thought proper, in an unusual fit of charity, to vindicate the scriptural dramas of this period from the charges of absurdity brought against them, assures us that they were performed with a solemnity not unworthy of their sacred subjects;—" il y avait (he says) sur le théâtre beaucoup plus de pompe et d'appareil que nous n'en avons jamais vus. La troupe bourgeoise était composée de plus de cent acteurs, indépendamment des assistans, des gagistes, et des machinistes."

The priests, naturally becoming a little jealous of these showy competitors, thought it the safest policy at length to court an alliance with them. The hours of prayer were altered so as to suit those of the theatre; reverend pens volunteered to dramatize new subjects from the Scriptures; and priests not only became managers of this devotional theatre, but condescended without scruple to appear as actors on its stage. It was not long, however, before this union between the Church and the Drama was dissolved; and it is perhaps on the principle of family quarrels being invariably the most violent, that actors and priests have continued on such deadly terms of hostility ever since.

The Drama, being thus disengaged from Religion, soon "stooped its wing" towards an humbler and more congenial region, and in the affairs of this world found its most legitimate quarry. A society of private actors, styling themselves "Enfans sans souci," was instituted about the beginning of the reign of Charles VI., and still flourished, after an interval of a hundred years, in the time of Marot, the poet. The professed object of their representations— which were called Sotties, or Sottises, and answered probably to our idea of farces—was to satirize good-humoredly the manners and vices of the age, and particularly those of the classes always most obnoxious, the nobility and higher clergy.

The most brilliant period of this merry fra ternity was under the gentle reign of Louis XII., who had the good sense to tolerate their sallies, even when directed against himself.