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“When this favourite play I am speaking of, from its being too frequently acted, was worn out, and came to be deserted by the town, upon the sudden death of Monfort, who had played Alexander with success, for several years, the part was given to Betterton, which, under this great disadvantage of the satiety it had given, he immediately revived with so new a lustre, that for three days together it filled the house; and had his then declining strength been equal to the fatigue the action gave him, it probably might have doubled its success; an uncommon instance of the power and intrinsic merit of an actor. This I mention not only to prove what irresistible pleasure may arise from a judicious elocution, with scarce sense to assist it; but to show you too, that though Betterton never wanted fire, and force, when his character demanded it; yet, where it was not demanded, he never prostituted his power to the low ambition of a false applause. And further, that when, from a too advanced age, he resigned that toilsome part of Alexander, the play, for many years after never was able to impose upon the public; and I look upon his so particularly supporting the false fire and extravagancies of that character, to be a more surprizing proof of his skill, than his being eminent in those of Shakspeare; because there, truth and nature coming to his assistance he had not the same difficulties to combat, and consequently, we must be less amazed at his success, where we are more able to account for it.

(To be continued.)

DRAMATIC CENSOR

I have always considered those combinations which are formed in the playhouse as acts of fraud or cruelty: He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public; He that hisses in malice or in sport is an oppressor and a robber.

Dr. Johnson’s Idler, No. 25.

PHILADELPHIA THEATRE

All those plays are well known. From the peculiar circumstances attending their performance they call for a share of particular attention, which would otherwise be superfluous. Where there is something new, and much to be admired, it would be inexcusable to be niggard of our labour, even were the labour painful, which in this instance it is not. The performance of Master Payne pleased us so much that we have often since derived great enjoyment from the recollection of it; and to retrace upon paper the opinions with which it impressed us, we now sit down with feelings very different from those, which, at one time, we expected to accompany the task. Without the least hesitation we confess, that when we were assured it would become our duty to examine that young gentleman’s pretensions, and compare his sterling value with the general estimate of it, as reported from other parts of the union, we felt greatly perplexed. On one hand strict critical justice with the pledge which is given in our motto, imperiously forbidding us to applaud him who does not deserve it, stared us in the face with a peremptory inhibition from sacrificing truth to ceremony, or prostrating our judgment before the feet of public prejudice: while, on the other we were aware that nothing is so obstinate as error – that fashionable idolatry is of all things the most incorrigible by argument, and the least susceptible of conviction – that while the dog-star of favouritism is vertical over a people, there is no reasoning with them to effect; and that all the efforts of common sense are but given to the wind, if employed to undeceive them, till the brain fever has spent itself, and the public mind has settled down to a state of rest. We had heard Master Payne’s performances spoken of in a style which quite overset our faith. Not one with whom we conversed about him spoke within the bounds of reason: few indeed seemed to understand the subject, or, if they did, to view it with the sober eye of plain common rationality. The opinions of some carried their own condemnation in their obvious extravagance; and hyperbolical admiration fairly ran itself out of breath in speaking of the wonders of this cisatlantic young Roscius.

While we knew that half of what was said was utterly impossible, we thought it due to candor to believe that such a general opinion could not exist without some little foundation; that in all likelihood the boy had merit, considerable for his years and means, to which his puerility might have given a peculiar recommendation, and that when he came to be unloaded by time and public reflection of that injurious burthen of idolatrous praise, which to our thinking had all the bad effects of calumny, we should be able to find at bottom something that could be applauded without impairing our veracity, deceiving the public, or joining the multitude in burning the vile incense of flattery under the boy’s nose, and hiding him from the world and from himself in a cloud of pernicious adulation.

But how to encounter this reigning humour was the question: to render his reasoning efficacious, the critic must take care not to make it unpalatable. And here the general taste seemed to be in direct opposition to our reason and experience; for we had not yet (even in the case of young Betty, with the aggregate authority of England, Ireland, and Scotland in his favour) been free from scepticism: the Roscio-mania contagion had not yet infected us quite so much: in a word, we had no faith in miracles, nor could we, in either the one case or the other, screw up our credulity to any sort of unison with the pitch of the multitude. We shall not readily forget the mixed sensations of concern and risibility with which, day after day, from the first annunciation of Master Payne’s expected appearance at Philadelphia, we were obliged to listen to the misjudging applause of his panegyrists. There is a narrowness of heart, and a nudity of mind too common in our nature, under the impulse of which few people can bring themselves to do homage to one person without magnifying their incense by the depreciation of some other. According to these a favourite has not his proper station, till all others are put below him; as if there was no merit positive, but all was good but by comparison. In this temper there certainly is at least as much malice to one as kindness to the other: but an honourable and beneficent wisdom gives other laws for human direction, and dictates that in the house of merit there are not only many stories, but many apartments in each story: and that every man may be fairly adjudicated all the praise he deserves without thrusting others down into the ground floor to make room for him. Yet not one in twenty could we find to praise Master Payne, without doing it at the expense of others. “He is superior to Cooper,” said one; “he speaks better than Fennell,” said a second: these sagacious observations too, are rarely accompanied by a modest qualification, such as “I think,” or “it is my opinion” – but nailed down with a peremptory is. This is the mere naked offspring of a muddy or unfinished mind, which, for want of discrimination to point out the particular beauties it affects to admire, accomplishes its will by a sweeping wholesale term of comparison, more injurious to him they praise than to him they slight. Nay, so far has this been carried, that some who never were out of the limits of this union have, by a kind of telescopical discernment, viewed Cooke and Kemble in comparison with their new favourite, and found them quite deficient. We cannot readily forget one circumstance: a person said to another in our hearing at the playhouse, “You have been in England, sir, don’t you think Master Payne superior to young Betty?” “I don’t know, sir, having never seen Master Betty,” answered the man; “I think he is very much superior,” replied the former – “You have seen Master Betty then, sir,” said the latter; “No, I never did,” returned he that asked the first question, “but I am sure of it – I have heard a person that was in England say so!!” – This was the pure effusion of a mind subdued to prostration by wonder. In England this was carried to such lengths, that the panegyrists of young Betty seemed to vie with each other in fanatical admiration of that truly extraordinary boy. One, in a public print, went so far as to assert, that Mr. Fox (who, as well as Mr. Pitt, was at young Betty’s benefit when he played Hamlet) declared the performance was little, if at all, inferior to that of his deceased friend Garrick. With the very same breath in which we read the paragraph we declared it to be a falsehood. Mr. Fox had too much judgment to institute the comparison – Mr. Fox had too much benignity to utter such a malicious libel upon that noble boy.

These considerations naturally augmented our anxiety, and we did most heartily wish, if it were possible, to be relieved from the task of giving an opinion of Master Payne. For in addition to his youthfulness, we knew that he wanted many advantages which young Betty possessed. The infant Roscius of England, had, from his very infancy, been in a state of the best discipline; being from the time he was five years of age, daily exercised in recitation of poetry, by his mother, who shone in private theatricals; and having been afterwards prepared for the stage, and hourly tutored by Mr. Hough, an excellent preceptor. By his father too, who is one of the best fencers in Europe, he was improved in gracefulness of attitude – and nature had uncommonly endowed him for the reception of those instructions. Of such means of improvement Master Payne was wholly destitute, for there was not a man that we could hear of in America who was at once capable and willing to instruct him. Self-dependent and self-taught as he must be, we could see no feasible means by which he could evolve his powers, be they what they might, to adequate effect for the stage. We deemed it scarcely possible that he could have got rid of the innumerable provincialisms which must cling to his youth: and we laid our account at the best with meeting a fine forward boy who would speak, perhaps not very well either, by rote; and taking the most prominent favourite actor of his day, as a model, be a mere childish imitator. We considered that when young people do any thing with an excellence disproportioned to their years, they are viewed through a magnifying medium; and that being once seen to approach to the perfection of eminent adults, they are, by a transition sufficiently easy to a wondering mind, readily concluded to excel them. Thus Betty was said to surpass Kemble and Cooke; and thus young Payne was roundly asserted to surpass Cooper and Fennell. Such were the feelings and opinions with which we met Master Payne on his first appearance, for which the tragedy of Douglas was judiciously selected; and we own that the first impression he made upon our minds was favourable to his talents in this way: He appeared to be just of that age which we should think least advantageous to him; too young to enforce approbation by robust manly exertion of talents; too far advanced to win over the judgment by tenderness; or by a manifest disproportion between his age and his efforts, to excite that astonishment which, however shortlived, is, while it lasts, despotic over the understanding. Labouring, therefore, under most of the disadvantages without any of the advantages of puerility, candor and common sense pronounced at once that much less of the estimation in which he was held, was to be ascribed to his boyishness, and of course much more to his talents than we had been led to imagine. If, therefore, he got through the character handsomely, and still carried the usual applause along with him, we directly conceived that there would be just ground for thinking it not entirely the result of prejudice, nor by any means undeserved.

At his entrance he seemed a little intimidated, as if he were dubious of his reception; nor could he for some minutes devest himself of that feeling, though he was received with the most flattering welcome; – this transient perturbation gave a very pleasing effect to his first words; and when he said, “My name is Norval,” he uttered it with a pause which seemed to be the effect of the modest diffidence natural to such a character upon being introduced into a higher presence than he had ever before approached. Had this been the effect of art it would have been fine – perhaps it was – but we thought it was accidental.

The utter impossibility of a beardless boy of sixteen or seventeen years, at all assimilating to the character of a warrior and mighty slayer of men, is of itself an insuperable obstacle to the complete personification of certain characters by a young gentleman of the age and stature of Master Payne. He might speak them with strict propriety – he might act them with feeling and spirit; but had he the general genius of Garrick – the energies of Mossop – the beauty of Barry, the elocution of Sheridan, and the art of Kemble, he could not with the feminine face and voice, and the unfinished person inseparable from such tender years, personate them: nor so long as he is seen or heard can the perception of his nonage be excluded, or he be thought to represent that character, to the formation of which, not gristle, nor fair, round soft lineaments, but huge bone and muscle, well-knit joints, knotty limbs, and the hard face of Mars are necessary. If we find, as we do in many great works of criticism, objections made to the performance of several characters by actors of high renown merely for their deficiency in personal appearance – if the externals of Mr. Garrick are stated by his warmest panegyrists as unfitting him for characters of dignity or heroism, even to his exclusion from Faulconbridge, Hotspur, &c. and if we find that the greatest admirers of Barry considered the harmony and softness of his features, as reducing his Macbeth, Pierre, &c. to poor lukewarm efforts, how can it be expected that a boy, just started from childhood, should present a true picture of a warrior or a philosopher? We premise this for the purpose of having it understood that what we are to say of Master Payne is to be subject to these deductions, and that in the praise which it is but just to bestow upon him, we exclude all idea of external resemblance to the characters. Of the mental powers, the informing spirit, the genius, the feeling which he now discloses, and the rich promise they afford of future greatness – of these it is, we profess to speak: further we cannot go without insincerity, untruth, and manifest absurdity.

As might have been expected from Master Payne’s limited means of stage instruction, he several times discovered want of judgment. In the speech in which Norval tells his story, he trespassed on propriety in his efforts to throw an air of martial ardor into his expressions; by suddenly changing the key and raising the tone of his voice, and speaking with increased rapidity the words that more immediately related to fighting, erecting them into a kind of alto relievo above the level of the rest; particularly in “I had heard of battles,” &c. “We fought and conquered,” &c. all which is a narrative that should be delivered with humility, and a strict avoidance of any thing like vainglory, or egotism, studiously softening down, with modest air, those details of his own prowess which the author has necessarily given to the character.

Had Master Payne had a Hough to instruct him, or a Cooke for his model, he would have escaped the error into which he fell in that part of the fourth act in which Norval describes the hermit who instructed him: he would have known that acting what he narrates is highly improper – indeed absurd; as it is acting in the first person, and speaking in the third at one and the same time. While he repeated the words

 
– Cut the figures of the marshall’d hosts,
Described the motions, and explain’d the use
Of the deep column, and the lengthened line,
The square, the crescent, and the phalanx firm,
 

Master Payne cut those figures, and described the square and the crescent with his hands – a great error! A better lesson cannot be offered to a young actor on this subject than may be found in the novel of Peregrine Pickle, in which doctor Smollet ridicules Quin the player for acting narrative in Zanga.

Master Payne would find it his interest to avoid as much as may be, long declamatory speeches, till his organs are enlarged and confirmed. But in those parts in which Douglas discloses his lofty spirit, and no less in all the pathetic parts, he far exceeded expectation, and deserved all the applause he received.

 
Oh, tell me who and where’s my mother!
Oppressed by a base world, perhaps she bends
Beneath the weight of other ills than grief,
And, desolate, implores of Heaven the aid
Her son should give —
Oh, tell me her condition.
 

There was, in his delivering these lines, an expression of tenderness which appealed forcibly to the heart; and was rendered still more striking by the abrupt transition to his sword,

 
Can the sword —
Who shall resist me in a parent’s cause?
 

which he executed with a felicity that nothing but consummate genius could accomplish. Again he blazed out with the true spirit in the following lines:

 
The blood of Douglas will protect itself.
Then let yon false Glenalvon beware of me.
 

That part, however, in which he disclosed not only exquisite feeling but a soundness of judgment that would do honour to an experienced actor, was where Glenalvon taunts him, for the purpose of rousing his spirit to resentment. In that speech particularly which begins,

 
Sir, I have been accustomed all my days
To hear and speak the plain and simple truth.
 

The suppression of his indignation in this and the succeeding passages – the climax of passion marked in his face, his tone and his action, when he says to himself

 
If this were told! —
 

the gradation thence to

 
Hast thou no fears for thy presumptuous self?
 

till at last he flames into ungovernable rage in

 
Did I not fear to freeze thy shallow valour,
And make thee sink too soon beneath my sword,
I’d tell thee – what thou art – I know thee well.
 

was altogether a string of beauties such as it rarely falls to the lot of the critic to commemorate. Had age and personal hardihood been added, it would have defied the cavils of the most churlish criticism, and deprived even enmity of all pretence to censure.

The next striking beauty he disclosed was in his reply to Randolph, when the latter offers his arbitration between him and Glenalvon.

 
Nay, my good lord, though I revere you much,
My cause I plead not, nor demand your judgment.
 

The cold peremptory dignity he threw into these words was beautifully conceived, and executed in a masterly manner: nor was he less successful in the transition to an expression of poignant but smothered sensibility in the next line:

 
I blush to speak: I will not, cannot speak
Th’ opprobrious words that I from him have borne.
 

His delivery of this and all the other lines of the speech that followed it, deserved the thunders of applause with which it was greeted – it was, indeed, admirable.

In impassioned feeling lies Master Payne’s strength. Hence his last scene was deeply affecting. Though we could well have spared that Kembleian dying trope, his rising up and falling again. It is because we seriously respect Master Payne’s talents that we make this remark: clap-traps and stage trick of every kind cannot be too studiously avoided by persons of real parts.

It would be injustice to omit one passage —

 
Just as my arm had mastered Randolph’s sword
The villain came behind me – but I slew him.
 

In the break, the pause, and the last four words he was inimitably fine.

In Master Payne’s performance of this character we perceived many faults, which call for his own correction. They are, we think, such as he has it in his power to get rid of. As they are general and pervade all his performances, we reserve our observations upon them till we close the course of criticism we are to bestow upon him, when we mean to sum up our opinion of his general talents. Meantime we beg leave to remind him that Mr. Garrick himself, after he had been near forty years upon the stage, often shut himself up for days together restudying and rehearsing parts he had acted with applause a hundred times before. Sat sapienti.

Nature has bestowed upon this young gentleman a countenance of no common order. Its expression has not yet unfolded itself; but we entertain no doubt that when manhood and diligent professional exercise shall have brought the muscles of his face into full relief, and strengthened its lines, it will be powerfully capable of all the inflexions necessary for a general player. At present the character of his physiognomy is perfectly discernible only upon a near view. When he advances towards the front of the stage, the lines may be perceived from that part of the pit and boxes which are near the orchestra; even then the shades are so very much softened by youth, and the parts so rounded, and so utterly free from acute angles, that they can, as yet, but faintly express strong, turbulent emotions, or display the furious passions. In a boy of his age, this, so far from being a defect, is a beauty, the reverse of which would be unnatural; and if it were a defect, every day that passes over his head would remedy it. What is now wanting in muscular expression, is in a great measure supplied by his eye, which glows with animation, and intelligence, and at times speaks the language of a soul really impassioned. Upon a close view, when apart from the factitious aids and incumbrances of stage-lights, costume, and paint, he must be a shallow-sighted physiognomist who would not at the first glance be struck by Master Payne’s countenance. A more extraordinary mixture of softness and intelligence never were associated in a human face. The forehead is particularly fine; Lavater would say that genius and energy were enthroned there; and over the whole, though yet quite boyish, there is a strong expression of what is called manliness; by which is to be understood, not present, but the indications of future manliness. How strongly and distinctly this is characterised in the boy’s face, may be collected from an anecdote which, exclusive of its application to this subject, we think well worth relating on account of the other party concerned in it.

A day or two before Master Payne left Philadelphia he and a friend of his walking in a remote part of the city, were encountered by a strange old woman, who requested alms with an earnestness which exacted attention. The gentleman who was in company with our youth, and from whom we deliver the story, being an Irishman, instantly recognizing in the petitioner, an unhappy countrywoman, stopped, surveyed her with more than cursory regard, and put his hand into his pocket in order to give her money. As there was in her aspect that which bespoke something that had once been better accommodated, and had claims above a common mendicant, he was searching in his pocket for a suitable piece of silver, when the generous boy outstripping him, put unostentatiously, into the old lady’s hand some pieces of silver. She viewed them – drew back – gazed upon him for some seconds with a fixed look of wonder, delight and affection, then lifting up her eyes to heaven, in a tone of voice, and with a solemnity which no words can express, exclaimed, “May the great God of heaven shower down his blessings on your infant years, and manly face!” Quickness of conception beyond all other people is now allowed, even by the English, to be characteristic of the people of Ireland, once considered by those of the sister kingdom as the Bæotians of Britain; and we are disposed to concur with the Irish gentleman, who, in his exultation and honest prejudice said, “that the woman might be known to be Irish from her warm gratitude, her quick discernment, and her elegant extemporaneous compliment.” In fact, if Edmund Burke himself, who exceeded all mankind in the quickness and elegance of complimentary replies, had been considering the matter a whole hour, he could not have uttered anything to surpass it.

Of Master Payne’s person we cannot speak (nor do we hope) so favourably as of his face. And we much fear that he will not undergo the pain of mending it by abstinence from indulgence. Early hours, active or even hard exercise, particularly of the gymnastic kind, and diligent unremitting study are as indispensable to his fame, if he means to be a player, as food or drink are to his support. In general his action is elegant – his attitudes bold and striking; but of the former he sometimes uses too much, and in his appropriation of the latter he is not always sufficiently discriminating. This was particularly observable in his performance of Frederick in Lover’s Vows – a character in which we shall have occasion to speak of him, and with great praise in a future number. His walk too, which in his own unaffected natural gait is not exceptionable, he frequently spoils by a kind of pushing step, at open war with dignity of deportment. It would be well for this young gentleman if he had never seen Mr. Cooper. Perhaps he will be startled at this; and flatters himself that he never imitates that gentleman. We can readily conceive him to think so even at the moment he is doing it. To imitate another, it is not necessary to intend to do so. Every day of their lives men imitate without the intervention of the will. The manners of an admired, or much-observed individual, insensibly root themselves in a young person’s habits – he draws them into his system, as he does the atmosphere which surrounds him. We doubt very much whether Mr. Cooper himself would not be surprised if he knew how much he imitates Kemble. Though seemingly a paradox, we firmly rely upon it – Mr. Cooper may be aiming at Cooke, when he is by old habitual taint really hitting Kemble.¹ On this subject of imitation much is to be said. Kemble rose when every bright luminary of the stage had set. Being the best of his day, in the metropolis, he has become the standard of acting to the young and inexperienced; more from pride than want of judgment he goes wrong; his system of acting is radically vitious; but as it makes labour pass as a substitute for genius, by transferring expression from its natural organs to the limbs, and making attitude and action the chief representatives of the passions and the feelings, it not only fascinates because it catches the eye, but is adopted because extremely convenient to the vast majority of young adventurers on the stage, who, possessing neither the feelings fit for the profession, nor the organs, nor the genius to express them if they had, are glad to find a substitute for both. Hence the system of Mr. Kemble has spread like a plague – infected the growing race of actors, mixed itself with the very life-blood of the art, and extended its contagion through every new branch, even to the very last year’s bud. Thus Mr. Kemble is imitated by those who never saw him. Let us tell Master Payne that it is the very worst school he could go to, this of the statuary. It is as much inferior to the old one – to that of Garrick, Barry, Mossop, and nature, as the block of marble from which the Farnesian Hercules was hewed, is to the god himself. Of its superiority we need urge no farther proof than that of Mr. Cooke, who, though assuredly inferior to several of the old stock, and groaning under unexampled intemperance, has in spite of every impediment which artful jealousy and envy of his talents could raise against him, risen so high in public estimation, that even when just reeking from offences which would not have been endured in Garrick or Barry, his return is hailed with shouts, as if it were a national triumph. And why? – because he is of the old school, and scorns the cajolery of statue-attitude and stage-trick.

We speak thus freely to Master Payne because we think he has talents worth the interposition of criticism, and if we speak at all, must speak the whole truth. The praise we give him might well be distrusted, if from any false delicacy we slurred over his defects and errors. The most dangerous rock in his way will be adulation. Sincerely we wish him to be assured that those who mix their applause with a proper alloy of censure are his best friends. Indiscriminate flatterers are no better than the snake which besmears its prey with slime, only to gorge it the more easily.

On reviewing what we have written, we find no observation on Master Payne’s voice, in which nature has been very bountiful to him. We heard him a few times, with no little pain strain it out of its compass. He need not do so; since, judiciously managed, it is equal to all the purposes of his profession. Those are dangerous experiments, by which he may spoil a voice naturally clear, melodious, and of tolerable compass. His pronunciation is at times hurtful to a very nice ear. He is not to imagine that he has spoken as he ought when he has uttered words as they are pronounced in general conversation. There are some, and high ones too, who will say “good boy” when they mean “goodbye;” and it would not be at all impossible to hear a very fine lady say that she was daown in taown, to buy a gaown. We do not accuse Master Payne of this; but at times a little of the a cheats the o of its good old round rights; so distantly however, as not to be noticed except by a very accurate ear – but he ought not to let any ear discover it.

To the correct orthoepist, several persons on the stage give offence in the pronunciation of the pronoun possessive my – speaking it in all cases with the full open y, as it would rhyme to fly, which should only be when it is put in contradistinction to thy or his, or any other pronoun possessive: in all other cases it should be sounded like me. This is a pure Americanism, not practised in any other place where the English language is spoken, and, so far as it goes, deprives the word of a quality of nice distinctness.