The carpenter, the tailor,
and joiner, it was thought, would hit the galleries. The young
ladies in love would interest the side-boxes; and Robin Goodfellow
and his companions excite a lively fellow-feeling in the children
from school. There would be two courts, an empire within an empire,
the Athenian and the Fairy King and Queen, with their attendants,
and with all their finery. What an opportunity for processions, for
the sound of trumpets and glittering of spears! What a fluttering of
urchins' painted wings; what a delightful profusion of gauze clouds
and airy spirits floating on them!
Alas, the experiment has been tried, and has failed; not through the
fault of Mr. Kean, who did not play the part of Bottom, nor of Mr.
Liston, who did, and who played it well, but from the nature of
things. The Midsummer Night's Dream, when acted, is converted from a
delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the
play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand; but the
spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled.--Poetry and the stage do
not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this
instance fails not only of effect, but of decorum. The IDEAL can
have no place upon the stage, which is a picture without
perspective; everything there is in the foreground. That which was
merely an airy shape, a dream, a passing thought, immediately
becomes an unmanageable reality.
Pages:
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162