the building of those minor theatres. In the very height of their popularity, the best comedians of the London stage, Munden, Fawcett, Quick, Edwin, Jack Johnstone, and their class, men of real ability and most remarkable public favouritism, had just L.14 a-week. Lewis, one of the most delightful of actors, had, as actor and manager, but L.20 a-week. And so late as 1812, Mathews, a man of genius, and one of the highest popular favourites, writes, in exultation of his proposed engagement at Covent Garden:-"Now, to my offer, which I think stupendous and magnificent, L.17 per week." John Kemble's great talents as actor and manager, and we shall never see his like again," in this twofold capacity, were regarded as handsomely paid at L.36 a-week. Miss O'Neill's salary, after she had obtained a decided stage reputation in Ireland, was considered as high, and was L.15 a-week at Covent Garden; and, after she had fully established it, never was more than L.25 a-week. Cooke, one of the most original of tragedians, and followed by all the town, until he ruined himself by his intemperance, had L.20 a-week. Mrs Jordan, the very soul of comedy, in the height of her attraction, had L.31, 10s. a-week. Dowton had L.12, and never more than L.20 aweek. Miss Stephens, the most captivating and most popular of English singers, had L.20 a-week. It is to be remembered that nearly all those actors were first-rate, a matter which it would be rather difficult to predicate of their successors; yet their demands seem to have risen in the most ridiculous disproportion, and the salary which twenty years ago was looked on as munificent for the week, is now almost regarded as beneath the pretensions of any tolerable actor for the day! For instance :-In 1822 Macready had L.20 a-week; in 1832 he obtained L.20; and in 1839 he had L.25 a-night. In 1832 Power had L.20 a week; in 1840 he has L.120 for the same period! In 1822 Farren had L.16 a-week; in 1840 he receives L.40 a-week. In 1822 Liston had L.17 a-week; he then sprung up to L.50 and L.60 a-week; and, finally, had L.20 a night. Miss Ellen Tree, certainly a pretty and popular actress, was engaged by the Drury Lane manager, when lessee of both theatres, to play at both for L.15 a-week. She

NO. CCXCVIII. VOL. XLVIII.

then went to America, returned after two seasons, and even after this rustication, she comes, demands, and actually obtains L.25 a-night!

If this be the law of theatres, the profession is a most capital one. We know nothing equal to it for easy emolument. Why should any man toil at the bar, break his heart over verse or prose, or fill his brains with Greek and Latin, or wear out his fingers with piano-keys or fiddlestrings, or dim his eyes with portrait painting, when the simple process of covering his face in the whitelead and rouge, and his person in tawdriness and tinsel, will furnish his outer man with all equipments for fortune? As for the labour of the brain, a few of the popular plays, got by heart, would supply him with all the material. He need never have an original thought in his life; he need never utter a syllable of his own, Shakspeare and Sheridan have got over all that difficulty for him; a tongue, two legs, and two arms accomplish the professional requisites, and he has forthwith only to make his investment at the rate of L.120 aweek. And all this, too, without reckoning their scamperings into the country in all directious, benefits, and a crowd of little contributory affairs, which ought to make estates, with a rapidity astonishing to a loan contractor.

Not that in all this exorbitancy we much blame the actors. Every man has a right to set upon his faculties what price he may think proper. Though we admit that where actors must sce a theatre running headlong into bankruptcy, and must know that some hundreds of unhappy work people and their families are devoted to ruin in consequence, it might not be very unsuitable to feeling or justice that they should show some moderation in their demands. But theirs is the way of the world, and the world will have its way; the generation will ask all that they can force, and force all that they can get. But why does the system go on for a moment?

No; the reason lies in the working of the Whig system. By the nonsense and knavery of the "free trade" cry, there have been established a crowd of theatrical hovels, to which the actor takes wing upon the first refusal of his most exorbitant demand. The manager of one of the great theatres

Q

must have a certain number of tolerable players to fill up his most ordinary performances; and he must pay them all, and keep them all, or else shut up his theatre. A formidable affair to one, who thus not merely forfeits the chances of the season, but leaves himself liable to an enormous rent without a shilling of return. In the old condition of things, the mediocre actor, though he had his choice of two theatres, (and certainly no complaint could be made of salaries amounting, for such men, to fourteen and twenty pounds a-week,) he had but two, and this brought him to reason. But he now marches off to the minor theatre, which, having but one actor of any name, can pay him a large salary for a week or a month; and in the mean time the manager of Covent Garden or Drury Lane must find a substitute, which may not be easy in the emergency, or must stop the performance, often at a ruinous waste, or must pay the demand, exorbitant and ridiculous as it is. We should not so much object even to this, if it were in the course of fair dealing; if some new style of attracting the public had been suddenly discovered, and managers and theatres were amassing unexpected fortunes; even if the talents of the individual actors had exhibited some singular development, and men of mediocrity had started into men of genius. But we all know that managers are now only a remove from madmen in being managers at all -that theatrical property is scarcely worth the parchments that transfer it -that the public income of theatres is a cipher, and that even the public taste for the theatres has been alienated and repelled by successive disgusts, until men of taste never think of it, and the higher ranks never reckon it among their customary amusements. Yet there comes an actor who, in the best days of his figure and faculties, played, and was rejoiced to play, for L.14 a-week, and says-" Unless you give me L.20 a-night I shall leave your theatre."

"Are you a better actor now than you were ten years ago?" says the manager.

"No-but unless you give me L.20 a-night I shall leave your theatre."

"Are you even a more popular actor than you were ten years ago?" says the manager."

"No-but unless you wish to shut up your theatre, I must have my demand."

"But the theatre cannot afford to pay it. It is extravagant, senseless, and insolent. If we go on at that rate we must be ruined," says the manager.

"Do as you like. I must have my L.50, my L.60, my L.120 a-week, or I go to the minor theatres, and leave you to make the best of your condition. Good morning to you."

We might disregard absurdities of this order, if they terminated only in the squabbles of managers and actors; but they are fatal to the much higher interest of the drama. The exorbitant salaries of the actors, thus sanctioned by the silly system of the day, turn the managers into beggars, and effectually and totally deprive them of all passion of encouraging true theatrical literature. The manager, stripped of every shilling by the demands of his company, must, of course, carry on his stage with the least literary expenditure that he can. He thus is driven to the trash of translations-pitiful borrowings from the German-or the still worse expedients of those deplorable and disgusting lives of thieves and harlots, which the growing vulgarity and vice of the abused press vomits out, as "reading for the people." Sheridan Knowles, and one or two others, have made some efforts; but what are one or two dramatists to sustain a national stage? When old Harris was manager of Covent Gar den, he made it a rule to have at least four new comedies every year. Selecting his writers among men well known to be capable of seizing on the public taste, he made arrangements with them adequate to their labour, and even to the common risk of things so dependent on popular caprice. The actors then had salaries suited to their merits; and the manager was thus enabled to appropriate sums to authorship, which none of his successors could offer, or ever hope to pay. George Colman received for his comedy of John Bull, L.1000. Morton received for his comedy of "Town and Country," L.1000. Mrs Inch bald received L.800 for "Wives as They Were." Reynolds received for two works, "The Blind Bargain," and "Out of Place," in the same season, L.1000.

All this is at an end, and must be, when an actor or actress who merely fills a character which must be filled by somebody, and who does not bring a shilling to the house by his personal presence, insists on fifteen or twenty pounds a-night, and must be paid it too, from the dearth of performers fitted for the great theatres-a dearth arising from their being scattered among the petty ones; yet every one knows that it is the drama which makes the stage-that one clever comedy would bring more popularity to the house than all the attractions of any one, or of all the actors now on the boards. A new "School for Scandal" would be worth, in mere pecuniary returns, all the talents of those £120 a-week people. Or, if such a work is not to be expected again, one of half its merits would be a phenomenon well worth all the zeal of managers to discover, and all the means of theatres to pay. A great tragedy would be invaluable-it might turn the whole theatrical tide, at once renew the public taste for the drama, kindle again the national pride in this most powerful and fertile province of literature; and, while it filled the sinking treasury of the house, change the broken character with the failing fortunes of the stage. But how is this to be done, when the manager is only the first pauper of his list, and the receipts of his performances are carried off in the pockets of the performers? We must acknowledge that, until we saw Mr Bunn's book, we had no idea of the enormity of those salaries. There are other evils, too, less to be named, but not less prominent, arising from the managerial difficulty of meeting those demands. The population of the lobbies and upper boxes, not merely humiliates the character of the house, but repels a large portion of the public from all approach to the theatre. Yet this deplorable source of income is suffered to exist, from the mere pressure of difficulties which crush the manager to the dust, and which he thinks (however unfitly) a justification for his meeting the emergency in any way that he can. Of sources like these we cannot approve under any circumstances, and we even see in them an additional cause of the misfortunes which are now breaking down the theatres; but they are the evident result of a system which was vaunted as

a new proof of the progress of the age; a system which, whether on the great scale or the little-whether dabbling in politics or plays-whether exerting its craft in perplexing the concerns of nations or the treasury of theatres-in bringing empires to decay or managers to the Queen's Bench, is, in all, equally wrongheaded and unprincipled, clamorous and shallow, ridiculous and ruinous,

Mr Bunn's experience of the life of a manager lets us into some aspects of human nature, which are as new as they are amusing. The world knows but little of actors, except as Richards and Charles Surfaces. Perhaps the more comic view would often be the actor behind the curtain.

"What is the conceit of an actor to the conceit of an author?" says he. "A wart to Ossa." An author is vain but upon one point; an actor is vain upon all. You can scarcely persuade the most crooked varlet that ever presented himself at the stage door for examination, that he is not the glass of fashion and the mould of form; or many a hound, who literally yelps out his notes, that he is not a second Rubini. You can impress on the minds of very few who have once crossed the stage, that the British nation, to a man, is not thinking of them morning, noon, and night. If any one manager had the intellect of all his colleagues together, there would be no competing with such people as these. The manager's dilemmas, in point of authorship, are at once trying and trivial.

There is a vast quantity of dramatic scribbling going on among classes of mankind, whose habits would seem totally at variance with the pursuit, and whose faculties are quite as much at variance. Dramas flow in upon the unlucky Aristarchus as thick as motes in sunshine, and as useless. "Of some hundreds of pieces sent in," says Mr Bunn, "sent in anonymously, while I was manager, but one was deemed fit for representation; and among those may be mentioned another, as an example, a tragedy of nearly six hundred pages, written by an author totally unknown. It was sent to me by one particular friend of mine, and strongly recommended by three others. The first was a moonlight scene, and in the opening soliloquy thereof, the hero, gazing on the unclouded glory of Diana, accused

her, despite her beauty and character, of intriguing (with whom, can the reader imagine?) with the man in the moon! I mention this little circumstance, merely to designate the difficult position of a manager in only one department of his vocation; for owing to my rejection of this pyramid, one of the friends in question has never spoken to me since.*

Theatres must be anxious things. The season of 1832, at Drury Lane, saw Kean and Macready engaged to play together; Mademoiselle Duvernay, a charming dancer and handsome girl, at the head of a complete corps de ballet, imported from France; and Malibran, (unquestionably a theatrical genius,) appearing in her favourite character of La Somnambula. America, too, furnished all that she could in a comedian, Mr Hackett. Yet this season, moute as the theatre was, closed with a loss. What then could bring a gain?

But of Hackett's engagement one or two anecdotes. Hackett, with no very evident display of judgment, intending to play in Colman's comedy of Who wants a Guinea, substituted a character which he called Solomon Swap, for the original Solomon Gundy-a change which gave general dissatis faction. Among other malecontents, Dowton sent the following opinion

"My dear Bunn,-Dall Yankee editions of Who wants a Guinea. Mr Hackett seems a civil man to me, and I wish to oblige him, if I can. So I am studying three lengths of his alterations. He is the only actor, bythe-by, that designedly cuts out all his jokes-perhaps it is the American fashion. Now, after this nonsense, give me an order for to-night.-Yours, W. D."

But this weighty affair, laughably enough, came under another, and a more indignant eye-Colman's, the author himself, their examiner of plays. Bunn enclosed Hackett's in terpolations to him for his license. The angry wit and author in one, answered him with official and lofty scorn: - "Sir,- In respect to the alterations made by Mr Hackett-a most appropriate name on the present occasion-were the established play of any living dramatist, except myself, so mutilated, I should express to the Lord Chamberlain the grossness and unfairness of the manager who en

couraged such a proceeding; but, as the character of Solomon Gundy was originally a part of my own writing, I shall request his Grace to license the rubbish' as you call it, which you have sent to me.- -Your obedient ser vant, G. COLMAN."

In 1833 the theatrical world sustained a loss which nothing within its round, then or since, could repair. Kean, exhausted by a long course of intemperance, and probably not much less wasted by remorse for his own incorrigible imprudence, died, almost on the stage. His last proceedings were characteristic of his weak and wayward career. He was under an engagement to play at Drury Lane, when, in the midst of it, he sent to ask the lessee, Captain Polhill, for a loan of L.500, which was to be worked out by subsequent performances. But his health was so broken, and his habits were so singular, that the captain did not altogether approve of this kind of security. Within two days after, Kean's name was announced "to appear at Covent Garden!" while a note was actually in the manager's hands, from his physician, stating the utter impossibility of his appearing at all, from a violent attack of gout. The opinion of counsel was taken by the aggrieved manager, as to obtaining an injunction to prohibit this breach of engagement, but legal proceedings were finally declined; and, in the mean time, unfortunate Kean, making an effort to come forward in Othello, dropped down in the second act, and was conveyed to the bed from which, we believe, he

never rose.

Kean was an extraordinary actor, and an extraordinary man. Without any advantages of education, and, perhaps, with all the disadvantages that could beset a birth and youth of poverty and desertion-for he seems never to have known who his father was, and even his mother's identity was doubtful-he yet struggled through difficulties that might have destroyed a mind of less energy, until he struggled into triumphant success. Embarked in the most desperate of all professions for the unknown, and toiling for years in the lowest and most unknown grade of that profession, he yet evidently felt something of that consciousness, from the beginning, which has been so often discoverable in the lives of men destined to be remem

bered.

With no recommendation of person a low and meagre figure, a Jewish physiognomy, and a stifled and husky voice he seemed to be excluded by Nature from all chance of personating tragedy; the grim expression of his countenance, and the sullen sound of his voice, prohibited comedy; yet, at his first step on the London stage, he was acknowleged to be the founder of a new school-to give new meaning to some of the highest characters of Shakspeare: to refresh the feelings, and change the worship of those who had for a quarter of a century bowed down to the supremacy of the Kembles; and, finally, to pour a new and most welcome flood of wealth into the long-exhausted treasury of the theatre. This wonder was worked by the true operator of all earthly wonders-energy. The Kemble school was majestic and magnificent. Kean was his school alone, for it had neither founder nor follower but himself; and its spirit was vividness, poignancy, and intensity. If Kemble could have added ardour to his majesty, he would have been perfect. If Kean could have added dignity to his decision, he, too, would have been perfect. But the style of Kemble was fitter for the triumphs of the Greek theatre-the style of Kean was formed to carry all before it on the English stage. Intensity is every thing with the English mind. Its simple habits love reality; the strength of its feelings makes it turn away from splendid artifice; the clearness of its understanding marks where the motive is, and the conduct that ought to follow it, and gives its heart cordially to nothing but the truth. But we now speak rather of Kean's style, than of Kean. He was often a most imperfect representative of that style. Feeble health, vulgar caprice, or determined indolence, often impaired his conception. He was even a singularly unequal actor. Powerful in one scene, worthless in the next; but suddenly starting into the full development of his genius, and with eyes of fire, and tones of passion, exercising full mastery over the soul.

Even diplomacy has its share in perplexing theatres. The manager had translated M. Scribe's Bertrand and Raton, which he calls an admirable play-an opinion in which we by no means coincide, so far as M. Scribe is concerned. The play passed through

the formidable hands of the examiner unscathed; but, it having been at length slowly discovered by the vicechamberlain (Paris being then some thousands of miles off) that the principal character," Bertrand," was written at Talleyrand, and Talleyrand being at that moment ambassador in London, the license was refused; we presume, through fear of a French invasion. It might have been deemed rather strange, that the play which could not affect Talleyrand in Paris, should sting him to mortal rage in London; or that, while the original was harmless, the translation should be enough to inflame two nations into war. But so it was the feelings of the ambassador were to be guarded against the wit of his countryman for the safety of the British empire, and the play was forbidden. The manager, however, having the double interest of translator and manager, fought out the affair; and after an exchange of bullets, in which, happily, no injury was done on either side, the seconds having declared the honour of both parties to be perfectly unstained, the principals made their bow to each other, and the matter was amicably arranged. It was finally agreed that the dress of Farren, in Count Bertrand, was to be submitted to the Vice-Chamberlain; who, on conferring with the Foreign Office, and ascertaining that there was nothing directly hostile in the cut of the coat and breeches, and that the wig was not shaped like a manifesto, and dressed with gunpowder, was to issue his license accordingly. A drawing of the coat and breeches, or the vestures themselves, in due season appeared before the proper authorities, and the permission was given. But Lord Chamberlainsclever fellows as they always are-are not always a match for actors. the night of the play, Lords Grey and Palmerston, the heads of the Ministry and the Foreign Office, with probably all the tails that could squeeze themselves into the boxes, came from Downing Street, expressly to be present at the affair. quite a ministerial crisis. The horror of the noble lords, and the tenfold horror of all their subalterns, may be conceived, when Farren came forward

On

It was

Talleyrand to the life. The fact was, that the subtilty of the actor had outwitted the simplicity of the Cabinet.