LETTER-NO. I.

"Nov. 27, 1825.

"DEAR SIR-I read Lady Teazle' last night, and again this morning, with great attention; I do not see the slightest difficulty to myself in performing the part. My view of her character is still the same. She appears to me anything but a fine lady; indeed, there is not a single line in the whole play which describes her either as a beautiful or an elegant woman; but, on the contrary, as having been, six months before, a girl of limited education, and of the most homely habits.

"Now, if I could reconcile it to my

common sense, that such a person could acquire the fashionable elegance of high life in so short a period, I hope it is no vain boast to say, that having had the good fortune to be received for many years past into society far above my rank in life; and having, therefore, had the best opportunity of observing the manners of the best orders, I must be a sad bungler in my art if I could not, at least, convey some notion of those manners in the personation of Lady Teazle;' but this, I repeat, is contrary to my commonsense view of her character. Still, the town has been so long accustomed to consider her, through the representation of Miss Farren, and all her successors in the part, in this, and in no other light, that I should really tremble to attempt my simple reading of her character, from the dread of drawing on myself a severity of criticism which I have ever had the good fortune to escape; and perhaps a censure from the public, who have hitherto received me with so much kindness, as considering I have never ventured beyond the limits of my humble abilities. After saying so much, I must leave it to the wise heads, who have suggested this hazard to me, to determine whether the business of the Theatre is in such a position as to make the effort essential to its interests, in which case, and in which case alone, I could be induced, though with fear and trembling, but by particular desire,' to put on feathers and white satin, and make a fool of myself. I am, dear sir, your obedient faithful servant,

"F. M. KELLY."

ing Lady Teazle, I have ventured to look at all the papers this morning, and though the generality of them are highly flattering and indulgent, yet there are two which (as, indeed, I expected would have been the case with all) accuse me of folly and presumption in undertaking the character; there appears also to have been a feeling (which is extremely painful to me) that Mrs Davison has been displaced for my advancement to one of

her characters. Now, as I cannot tell them (what you told me) that Mrs Davison has given up the part, and that you have pressed me against my own judgment into the performance of it, I do hope and request that you will take the trouble to write a line to the Editor of The Morning Herald and The New Times to exonerate me from the charge of having sought to obtrude myself on the public in a character which is entirely out of my line, and which I was never ambitious to fill. I am, dear sir, your obedient faithful servant,

"F. M. KELLY.”

The modesty of these letters disarms ill-nature, but it strengthens opposi

tion.

It is to be regretted, that reading the character as she did, and knowing as she must, that in such a character as Lady Teazle, so read, she is absolutely without a rival, Miss Kelly should have insinuated a doubt, that in the performance of a part, which in making it in some sort a new one, she would make in some sort her own, she could fail to be ultimately and triumphantly successful.

To perform a part in a favourite play, with a new reading, is always a perilous enterprize. There is prejudice in favour of old associations. It is like presenting to us the person of an old friend, with his face in a mask. The mask may be far handsomer than the visage it conceals, but we do not look upon it with equal pleasure. It the delineation of the character by the is therefore, necessary, not only that poet shall be of a doubtful kind, leaving room for various readings, and that the new conception shall be in itself natural and just,-but there is

Drury Lane."

LETTER-No. II.

"Henrietta Street, Dec. 2. "DEAR SIR-In my great anxiety to ascertain how far I was right in my anticipation of the consequence of my play

or great popularity in the performer. It is fortunate for those who think that varieties of this sort constitute one of the chief charms of dramatic literature, and one of the qualities too which give it a pre-eminence among the imitative arts, that all these cir

cumstances combine in the attempt made by Miss Kelly, to give a new personation of Lady Teazle.

It is one of the peculiarities (as some will have it one of the faults) of the School for Scandal, that its Dramatis Personæ present a constellation of talent not to be expected in real life among a company, could such be found, which in all other respects might be precisely similar. Trip shares the wit as well as the extravagance of his mas ter. Moses possesses, in no mean degree, the dry sententious humour of Mr Premium." Sir Benjamin Backbite, whose manners and conduct are those of a silly and malicious block head, has at times the conversation of a polished wit. Even Maria, who is supposed to be little better than a child, is a serious and pithy moralist. In short, Sheridan chose to infuse (or what is more probable, unconsciously infused) into all his characters, even the lowest, a portion of his own fire; so that the whole resembles a set of brilliants, some false and some genuine, in which those of the least value are such good counterfeits that they sparkle as brightly as the purest.

Of all the characters, however, that of Lady Teazle is the most remarkable for the inconsistency between her powers of dialogue and her education. She was "bred wholly in the country," and "had never known luxury beyond one silk gown, or dissipation beyond the annual gala of a race-ball." Six or seven months only have elapsed since Sir Peter found her "the daughter of a poor country squire,"-" sitting at her tambour, in a linen gown, a bunch of keys at her side, and her hair combed smoothly over a roll."By her own confession, “her evening employments were to draw patterns for ruffles, which she had not materials to make up,—play at Pope Joan with the curate,-read a sermon to her aunt Deborah,-or, perhaps, be stuck up at an old spinnet, and thrum her father to sleep after a fox-chase." Nay, although she stoutly denies it, there is much reason to believe, that she was sometimes "glad to take a ride out behind the butler upon the old docked coach-horse." Yet, after the short interval of half-a-year, this simple, rustic girl is represented as possessing powers of conversation which would lead one to suppose, that, besides being endowed with extraordi

nary natural talents, she had for years mixed as an intimate associate with the finest wits of the most polished society.

If the whole conduct, and all the expressions of Lady Teazle throughout the play were in accordance with the style of her conversation in the far greater part of what she says, the actress who would personate her could have no option. She must be represented as a woman of fashion. The transformation supposed in such a character might be little short of a prodigy; yet it would be a prodigy admitted upon the stage in deference to the genius which produced it, and for the sake of those delightful attractions encompassing it, that would overbalance the defect arising from its gross improbability. But we find scattered up and down in the part of Lady Teazle many striking traits, which make her character as doubtful a riddle, and as fair a subject for various readings, as any within the whole range of the drama. In the third or fourth speech she makes on her first appearance upon the stage, the pouting simplicity of the country-girl seems to break out through all the levity of her newly-assumed manners. I question if there be a married lady in May fair who would be guilty of the following sentiment: Lord, Sir Peter, am I to blame that flowers don't blow in cold weather? you must blame the climate, and not me. sure, for my part, I wish it was spring all the year round, and that roses grew under our feet!"-The whole scene in the third act, in which she wheedles the old gentleman out of two hundred pounds, and joins in a resolution never more to quarrel, and then so warmly sustains her share in a vehement dispute, and at last leaves her husband half in badinage, half in anger, is, in almost every line, quite as well suited to display the character of a rural beauty made a coquet by marriage, as that of a pettish fine lady. But the admirable scene in the library,-that part of it I mean in which she lends an ear, apparently not an unwilling one, to the oily, but most glaringly-palpable sophistry of Joseph Surface, and even once or twice answers it in a manner equally silly and serious, shows, even in this violation of strict probability, that the author never contemplated the total destruc

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tion, in so short a time, of the simplicity of character impressed by her country education. No one who had ever "known life," or had put on, wholly, the manners and habits of the town, would have listened for one moment to the speeches of Joseph as arguments, unless indeed with a predisposition to comply, which would require no argument at all. The mere fact, indeed, of her having consented to visit a man who professed himself her admirer, in his own house, in the middle of the day, and under circumstances of so little concealment, that, in addition to the prying scrutiny of servants, all their motions were liable to be watched by the "maiden lady of curious temper" from the opposite windows,-shows, that she had not yet learned that art of mixing caution with boldness of conduct, which is the first lesson taught by the world to a gay woman, on her entrance into life, and which is much more easily and speedily acquired than the graces of fashionable manners.

But there is another consideration that must not be overlooked in estimating the characters of this play. There is nothing in the whole piece from w we are obliged to conclude, that the society in which Lady Teazle is supposed to move, is by any means a circle of high fashion. Lady Sneerwell is the widow of a city knight," "wounded in the early part of her life by the envenomed tongue of slander," as she herself terms it; but yet bearing, according to her own frank avowal, a " ruined reputation." Crabtree, with all his pleasantry, is at times coarse and vulgar; and Sir Benjamin, who is evidently meant to be the man of fashion of the set, in the scene of the first act, in which he banters Joseph on the misfortunes of his brother, and in that scene of the last, in which he worries Sir Peter on the subject of his domestic troubles, is guilty, not so much of fashionable impudence, as of downright rudeness and ill-breeding. The truth is, that we are apt to form a very exaggerated estimate of the rank in which the members of the scandalous college are to be supposed to move, from the brilliancy and point of their dialogue, and the elegant turn of its periods. A close examination of the play must, I think, convince any one, that it is quite consistent with the plot to conVOL. XIX.

sider this precious circle of associates as composed of persons not wholly excluded from good society, but admitted there by sufferance only, and rather from a fear of active malice than upon a footing of equality. Such knots of people exist at all times. They are felt, and they feel themselves, as intruders in the company of their superiors, whom they envy for their riches or rank, or hate for their virtues. With just enough of understanding to work mischief, sufficient education to talk with flippancy, and sufficient activity of temper to need some employment, they mix in the society which tolerates them, though they know they are the objects of disgust and scorn, and then seek to indemnify themselves for their own conscious debasement, by ruining the fair fame which they can never hope

to share.

This is the true spirit of scandal, and such are ever its habitual votaries. And, for my part, I am inclined to place amidst Sheridan's highest achievements in this unrivalled drama, the close intimacy which he has represented as subsisting among the members of this gang of detractors, and the apparent distance at which they are held by the rest of their acquaintance. Even Joseph Surface, though for his own purposes he employs the aid of one of them, keeps a good deal aloof from their society. It is remarkable that, (except in the instance of Lady Teazle, who ridicules her own relations most unmercifully while she is under the influence of the bite of the tribe,) though they all mention the names of several acquaintances, none of them ever alludes to any intimacy enjoyed out of their own set: And they are spoken of in various parts of the play by Sir Peter, by Rowley, and by Sir Oliver, in the light not only of malicious, but of disreputable characters.

But perhaps the most decisive evidence, that the original conception of the author corresponded with the reading now given by Miss Kelly to his play, is to be found in that curious piece of literary history furnished us by Mr Moore in his Life of Sheridan, in which the whole progress of incubation is developed, from the first germ of the School for Scandal to its bursting from the shell, full-fledged, in all its present gaudy, but nicely adjusted plumage. I am far from con 2 C

tending, that the notions of an author concerning his own productions ought to be adopted as an invariable standard for judging the plot and character of any works of invention. We have a right to deal with his performance, as we find it, and to decide upon the persons introduced as the agents of its design, according to their own conduct and language. But though an author must not be relied on as an infallible commentator upon his own works, he may surely be employed as a witness entitled to some respect when speaking of characters with which he had a very early and a very intimate acquaintance. A parent may be liable to partiality or mistake in his opinion of the habits and disposition of his offspring, but he is tolerably good authority on such points, notwithstanding.

Sheridan has indeed left no express comments upon this part of his literary family; but it is clear from the traces which appear of their first state of existence, that he by no means contemplated making Lady Teazle a finished fine lady. This will appear from the slightest perusal of the first scene of the first act, as it stood in the poet's original rough sketch, and as it is quoted by Mr Moore in his chapter on the School for Scandal. There is, with abundance of wit and point, an air of coarseness throughout, which must, I think, strike any one that compares it with the same scene as it was afterwards fined down to its present admirable polish. Sir Peter, indeed, in his soliloquy, calls his wife

tomed as she was, to the extravagance of a town life. And as to the lady herself, her language is in one or two places so little measured, that her sarcasms barely stop short at the safe side of abuse. Upon the whole, it is abundantly evident, that Sheridan intended to represent the plagues and follies of an old country gentleman and his young country wife, coming to live in town for the gratification of the lady, with little previous knowledge (on her part none) of its modes or its society; and falling insensibly to an intimacy, dearly paid for, with a small coterie, who are obliged to content themselves with a place in the outskirts of fashion. Sir Peter's conversation, it is true, is that of a man who had once known the world; but he betrays his disgust and contempt of the frivolities of the town, in terms that strongly savour of the sentiments of a man who had long retired from it.

Indeed, as to the diction, generally, of the whole play, it is obvious, that whatever was Sheridan's design respecting the principal personages, his execution throughout exceeded any conceptions he could have originally formed. I before alluded to the powers of dialogue displayed by such a pair of gentlemen as Trip and Moses; and we now know that the elaborate polish bestowed by the author upon almost every sentence of this comedy, was considered by himself as at least liable to objection, if it did not amount to an actual blemish. Of all things, therefore, it is most absurd, in criticising the School for Scandal, to form conclusions concerning the rank which its characters ought to be represented as holding, by urging the design of the author, and inferring. that design from the style of dialogue which he decreed that those characters should use.

Opposed to the speculations here advanced, is one fact, which, with the tribe of critics already referred to, seems quite decisive of the question. All the actresses, from Mrs Abington, downwards, who have appeared in Lady Teazle, have, it is alleged, sought to represent her clothed with the practised and habitual graces of a thorough woman of fashion. The acting of Miss Farren, in particular, the most distinguished of Mrs Abington's followers, is appealed to as having fixed the cast of the character, by a style of performance which so long delighted the lovers of pure and genuine comedy. The fact is undoubtedly true, that such has hitherto been usually, perhaps invariably, the reading of Lady Teazle. But that players, like lawyers, are to be bound by precedents, is strange doctrine. According to this school of criticism, (if it be consistent with itself,) Kemble ought never to have played at all, since it was not in his nature to play exactly like Garrick,-Kean ought to have been denounced for his departure, in Richard, from the example of one who had been for twenty years the favourite interpreter of Shakspeare, and Miss O'Neill's Belvidera ought to have been hissed off the stage, upon which Siddons had wrought her prodigies in that character-prodigies the more wonderful, because it was a character almost wholly opposed to her own peculiar genius.

Variety in representation is an essential attribute of the drama. That any two performers should play the same part exactly alike, is almost a physical impossibility. Such is the ambiguity, or rather the pliancy of language, that the same words, pronounced by different persons, will, unless they contain mere statement or reasoning, always affect an audience differently. The look and the voice, which can never be the same, however close the natural resemblance, or however exact the imitation, must for ever produce associations in the spectator and listener, corresponding to the difference in what is seen and heard. Munden's reading of Sir Peter Teazle was the same with that of Mr W. Farren, yet no two performances can be more distinct than theirs of that character. Indeed, this diversity is one of the principal charms of dramatic representation. We witness the acting of

different performers in a favourite part with feelings somewhat similar to those with which we visit a favourite landscape at different seasons. In spring, in summer, and in autumn,-on sunny and on gloomy days,-Nature puts on different dresses; still she is altera et eadem-her aspect changes, but she is still the same. And we would be robbed of half the pleasure which the drama affords us, were it possible for some stiff pedantic rules to gain sway in its representation, prohibiting all departure from some established standard-(something like the brass gallon of the Commissioners under the new Act for regulating weights and measures)-fixing the meaning of every character in every play, and prescribing the looks, the tones, and the gestures, without which the performance must be adjudged counterfeit.

But, besides all this, two very sufficient reasons may be given why Lady Teazle has been hitherto represented as a fine lady. In the first place, the talents requisite for giving to the part that mixture of qualities for which I have contended, are much more rare than those which enable an actress to personate a mere wayward woman of fashion. And, in the next place, whatever may have been the cause of it, so the fact has been, that all the actresses of note who have appeared in this character, were distinguished performers in that line of acting to which the part of Lady Teazle has been usually supposed to belong. They were all, in their days, the most remarkable fine ladies of the stage. In playing the part according to any other reading, they would have risked their reputation, by encountering a difficulty which their habitual style of performance by no means fitted them for surmounting; and it is no offence, I hope, towards such of them as survive, to say, that to resign the eclat of being for three hours admired by three thousand people, as exhibiting a finished pattern of the manners of the haut ton, would be a self-denial so enormous, as no woman, and certainly no actress, could in fairness be expected to practise.

And now, before I conclude, let me be indulged with addressing a word or two upon the difficulties to which Miss Kelly's reading of the School for Scandal subjects Lady Teazle's representative, and upon those rare endowments which Miss Kelly herself pos