Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Oldskirt. This outlandish fellow has kept me capering about the park, after a parcel of live venison.

Act IV. Seene 1.

WHO WANTS A GUINEA?

A COMEDY,

En Five Aets,

BY GEORGE COLMAN, Esq.

+

PRINTED FROM THE ACTING COPY, WITH REMARKS,
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL.

To which are added,

A DESCRIPTION OF THE COSTUME,-CAST OF THE CHARACTERS,
ENTRANCES AND EXITS,

RELATIVE POSITIONS OF THE PER

FORMERS ON THE STAGE, AND THE WHOLE OF THE STAGE

BUSINESS.

As now performed at the

THEATRES ROYAL, LONDON.

EMBELLISHED WITH A FINE WOOD ENGRAVING,

By Mr. BONNER, from a Drawing taken in the Theatre, by
Mr. R. CRUIKSHANK.

LONDON:

JOHN CUMBERLAND, 19, LUDGATE HILL.

REMARKS.

Who wants a Œuinea?

"WHO wants a Guinea?" is one of those strange names that sends wit a wool-gathering, to discover what analogy it can possibly bear to the piece itself.-Yet,

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."

Those who have been puzzled with the name have been diverted with the comedy; and we should imagine the very pertinent question that the former asks, has been answered many hundred times by the laughers. Who wants a Guinea? Mr. Colman !-Who does not want a Guinea?

This is not one of the author's best productions. It is not taken from the French-noWare we aware that the principal character is derived from any embryo dramatist, as was the case in The Wags of Windsor. A manager who writes himself may become popular upon easy terms. Among the intolerable mass of dulness that is sent every season for his approval, sorne flashes of wit must occasionally illumine the drear opaque-some odds and ends of plot, character, and whim, may be met with

"In the dry desert of a thousand lines,"

to repay the tediousness of his journey :

"All these together in confusion thrown,
Well sprinkled with some nonsense of his own,
And some stale jests, by others thrown away,
May (George can answer for it!) make a play."

The plot of this comedy is unconnected, consisting of detached scenes of some humour, loosely linked together. The characters have no claim to originality; and the dialogue, except when high-flown sentiment is attempted, rises not above the meridian of farce. The jokes are good-in the same degree that wine is-because they are old. The bee's wing and Joe Miller are the sure criterions of their respective ages. Mr. Colman was rudely sarcastic on the late Mr. Kemble's love of old books, and with great propriety directed his satire against the very character Mr. Kemble was engaged to play: "Edward is all deep reading, and black letter; He shows it in his very chin.

'Scarce and curious,

Are baits his learning nibbles at. His brain

Is cramm'd with mouldy volumes, cramp and useless,
Like a librarian's lumber-room."

"The Modern Dunciad."

[ocr errors]

But did it never occur to Mr. Colman, that a passion for ancient pors was equally open to ridicule? Dr. Young says

"Unlearned men of books assume the care,

As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair."

This sarcasm, however, applies neither to Mr. Kemble's rage for black letter, nor to Mr. Colman's predilection for the puns of olden time. Mr. Kemble was a scholar, and turned his books to good account-Mr. Colman is a dramatist, and his writings bear sufficient proof that the quibbles of our forefathers have not been lost upon him.

There is much whim about Solomon Gandy, who, having taken a trip to Paris to drink Champagne, and to study the heads of the nation, returns, a very monkey, that had seen the world! We have only to imagine an ambitious barber, launched amidst the gayeties of the French capital, holding converse with his brother frisseurs, on the art and mystery of their craft-crying, “ Qui, oui,” like Sir Francis Wrongbead, when he should cry, "Non, non" -emulating their nods, shrugs, and grimaces-sputtering, to their unintelligible jargon, cockney English, and martyred French, till the nine parts of speech, singular, plural, nouns, and pronouns—

On their racks,

Scream like the winding of ten thousand jacks'

and we shall have Solomon Gundy drawn to the very life! Nor is the satire levelled at barbers only-it equally applies to a large proportion of our travelling cits, who, having escaped from the drudgery of the desk and the counter, sport Mi Lor Anglois, at the Hotel des Milles Colonnes; and, like Smollett's guests at the feast of the ancients, would scorch their throats with a barbecued hog, or swallow the Devil's own venison, a tiger stuffed with tenpenny nails, rather than not do (as the song says) as other folks do.

Mr.Fawcett was the original representative of this travelled coxcomb: his butterfly garments, powdered toupée, and abominable French, no gravity could withstand. The actor evidently enjoyed the character quite as much as the audience; and this mutual understanding produced a reciprocity of mirth that carried every thing before it. Liston is exceedingly droll in Solomon. Here his physionomy comes into fuli play; aided by a huge pyramid of frizzled hair, saturated with powder, an extraordinary superabundance of frill and ruffle, and a coat, the skirt of which is almost as taper as a monkey's tail. There is some amusing equivoque in the character of Oldskirt, the remnantdealer, who is mistaken by Torrent for a surveyor, come down from London to improve his estate. Equivoque (sometimes not over decent) is Mr. Colman's peculiar forte. Sir Larry possesses all the ludicrous hurry and confusion that have been imputed to his country. men, from time immemorial. If he has less verbal, he has quite as many practical bulls as the most blundering among them. His gayety partakes of extravagance, and his generosity of profuseness. The liberal man discriminates, while he bestows: the prodigal squanders away his wealth, and is continually the dupe of vulgar importunity, or roguish craft. With Sir Larry it is, ask and ye shall receive: and so inveterate has become his habit of dispensing, that we verily believe, by way of keeping his hand in, he would take money from his right-hand pocket, and put it into his left-like the tailor who always cabbaged a piece from the cloth intended for his own coat, lest by any remissness he should, on other occasions, make a slip in his practice. Yet Sir Larry is always sure to be on

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »