Were it the mute affection of a brute, eyes With a sound frame and pious-she remains Nathan. You, my good brother, But take it with thee to the tomb. As yet which belonged to Leonard, which be took from his bosom, when they were Arabic: this he goes for. Recha is now burying him at Askalon, written full, in sent to the palace in obedience to Sittab, and the treasure from Egypt arrives, which relieves all Saladin's embarrassments. The book which the friar communicates relieves Nathan from his fear, and from the burthen of secresy. He meets the Templar on his way to the palace, who honestly tells him all he had done, scrupling as little to acknowledge the fault as he had done to commit it; and who urges him to give him Recha, whether she be his daughter or no, christian or Jewess. He seems so perfectly convinced, that bad vows are better broken than kept, Alone can feel what deeds the man who that his own seems never to occur to his trusts In God can gain upon himself. Friar. You seem Affected, and your eye-balls swim in water. But you will not have known that a few days Woman and child; that among these, my With seven hopeful sons were found, who all fled to, Were burnt alive. Just God! Friar. Ah, I believe you. came, She spake with gentle voice-And yet God is Is not more difficult to exercise rose and call'd out--God, I will—I will, Friar. Nathan, you are a christian! Yes, mind. Nathan replies, that thanks to the patriarch, he now knows who she is, and into whose hands to deliver her, for she has a brother, whom they shall see at the palace. Recha has been made miserable on the way by Daya. The good bigot, fearing that there is some intention of marrying her to a Moslem, has taken her into a ruined church, and there told her that she has been baptized, and is not Nathan's daughter. Saladin comforts her by saying he will be her father, and hints as a farther comfort, that he will give her to the Templar; but when he is about to do this Nathan forbids. The book has explained all; Leonard of Filnek was the father both of the Templar and Recha; Conrade of Stauffen was their mother's brother, who adopted the boy; Leonard was no German, the Persian was his favourite language; and the book confirms what the reader as well as Saladin may now suspect, that he was Assad, who had turned christian as easily as his son is now disposed to turn Turk. As a story this play is exceedingly interesting; as a drama it is every way faulty; it never agitates, it rarely affects. The gentle stimulus of curiosity is more delightful than stronger emotions to us who are " falling into the sere, the yellow leaf;" but it is the young who are the of the drama, and they require to be agimost frequent and most eager spectators lerated on an English stage in this age of tated and affected. It would not be toorthodoxy: in Germany, it is considered as Lessing's masterpiece,, and is frequently, represented as compressed by Schiller. The dialogue needs compression, which The friar recollects that he has a book would give it the vigour that it wants. You are a christian-never was a better. Nathan. Heaven bless us-What makes me to you a christian Makes you to me a Jew.” The purport of the play is obvious. Lessing's writings had raised an outcry against him for infidelity, and this was written in favour of toleration. The purport was good, but the writer has too openly discovered the unfairness of a partizan. All his characters are philosophers of his own school, all indifferentists, except the old woman, and the patriarch who is made a villain and he most unphilosophically represents the three religions as equally favourable to the happiness of mankind, in defiance of history and experience. A few Arabic words, and a few allusions to Arabic customs, give but a poor shadow of verisimilitude to a drama which represents Jews, christians, and Mamalukes, in the age of the crusades, talking like Lessing and Moses Mendelsohn. : There is a second part called the Monk of Lebanon, which we should wish to see Englished: of the present translator it is praise enough here to say, that the transla tion of Burger's Ellenore is his, the best translation in our language. The book has a singular appearance to an English eye, the lines not beginning with capitals, a peculiarity which we recollect in no other English book except the same author's version of the Iphigenia in Tauris of Goethe. German plays have been depreciated even more absurdly than they were at one time overvalued. Pizarro, indeed, is a disgrace to the age and country which can tolerate it; but we ought not to forget that we have appropriated the folly of that most despicable of all despicable dramas, and that it is "English gilt on German gingerbread." The whole of Schiller's works, and the whole of Goethe's, deserve to be translated: but let not the translators of Nathan and of Wallenstein thus employ themselves again; they have higher calls. ART. III.-Sacred Dramas. SACRED dramas would be more useful for the amusement of the people on the sabbath-day, than sacred music is for that of the higher classes; and if there be no objection to the one, there surely can be none to the other. In the savage state man loves total indolence; if his passions be not roused, he likes to lie in the sun and sleep like a dog: but it' is the effect of civilization to make even those in the lowest ranks who feel none of its blessings, impatient of listlessness and craving after sensation. The policy of the church should be to fill up those hours of leisure which it has created, and which By J. COLLET. Svo. are now chosen for the campaigns of its antagonists. Open a Sunday-theatre: a good Samson among the Philistines would be the best champion against the united calvinists; and the itinerants might preach about fire and brimstone to empty benches, while their former congregations crowded to see it raining down upon Sodom. But in thus recommending sacred dramas, we do not mean to recommend these of Mr. John Collett, unless it should be thought advisable to represent them as afterpieces for the sake of sending the audience home sleepy. ART. IV.-The Natural Son; a Tragedy. 8vo. pp. 111. WE cannot compliment Mr. Mason on the success of his suit to the mournfulest of the Nine; few are the chosen geniuses on whom the tragic muse sheds her propitious smiles, and Mr. Mason is not of the elected number. The story itself of this dramatic piece is not very interesting, nor is it rendered more so by the extrinsic aid of poetic ornament. The cha raeters are feebly pourtrayed, although they are supported with sufficient con. sistency: the sentiments and the language want dignity and elevation. Horace Wal pole's Countess of Narbonne seems to be shadowed in the character of the marchioness de Eboli; but we have all the bitterness of her repentance without any proportion of her guilt. ART. V.-The Lady of the Rock; a Melo-Drame, in two Acts, as it is performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. By THOMAS HOLCROFT. 8vo. pp. 31. THE story of this afterpiece, with "She relates that one of the Macleans, of some slight alterations, is taken from a Duart, was married to a handsome and amisingular and striking occurrence related as able, but, unhappily, a barren sister of Ara fact by the hon. Mrs. Murray, in her gyle; that, in those days, barrenness was a Guide to the Western Highlands of Scot-high crime in a husband's eyes; that Maclean, being determined on her destruction, ordered land. ruffians to convey her secretly to a place now called the Lady's Rock, which stood nearly opposite to his castle, on a promontory in Mall; that she was seen by mariners, who saved and conveyed her to her brother at Inverary; that her husband made a grand mock funeral, wrote disconsolate letters to her relations, and went in deep mourning to Inverary, to his brother-in-law, lamenting, with every show of grief, the irreparable loss he had sustained: that Argyle said little, but sent for his sister, whose sudden appearance electrified the husband; that, being a mild and amiable man, Argyle took no revenge, except by commanding Maclean to depart instantly, humanely advising him to avoid his brother Donald; and that Sir Donald Campbell afterward stabbed Maclean, in a street at Edinburgh, when he was eighty years of age." In our critique on Mrs. Murray's work, we hinted that this story might be dramatized with very powerful effect by a skilful writer: at this suggestion Mr. Holcroft undertook the task, and has executed it with as much success, perhaps, as the confined limits of an afterpiece would admit. The alterations made in the story are these: Dugald, a younger brother of Maclean, infuses into his mind suspicions of his wife's infidelity: barrenness being no longer considered as a crime, a modern audience would not en dure to see it punished with a most frightful death. Dugald, a consummate villain, ambitious to inherit his brother's title and possessions, and enamoured of his virtuous wife, who, we must suppose, had resisted his criminal solicitations, takes this terrible revenge; he feeds the flame of jealousy with great skill and caution: "Lord Mac. I would be sure. The thought is maddening-the crime infernal But the punishment is dreadful, therefore I would be sure. Dugald. That is what I have always said. Be sure. We should else be devils For in this tragedy I, alas! am compelled to be an actor. But a brother! An elder brother! The head of our house and clan! Shall I stand by and patiently see his honour violated? Lord. She has such an angel look of innocence! Dug. 'Tis true! Oh, she has! 'Twas that first seduced you mean, that so won your affections as to make you forget the everlasting hatred, and revenge, we all have vowed to absent Cambell; and which I can't avoid but feel in part to all his clan. Lord. Dugald, I sometimes fearDug. You have cause-Be careful of me. I would not too far trust myself.-My eyes and ears perhaps deceive ine, and, at the times when I have told you what I heard and saw, it may have been a dream: but then observe a waking dream, and every day as 'twere repeated. Lord. Oh!-'Tis true! Too true! they? I think I have each proper sense, but Dug. Eyes and ears? Pshaw! What are so does every mauiac. Ay, ay-Beware! Act cautiously-Ere I would be a-Faugh! -A woman's toca mere convenience, spreading myself the adulterer's cloakLrother-These are all lies that I inventBetter a brother were suspected than a wife. Women have no passions, nor Absurd! Nothing ever passes in their minds but imoBrother, you know me; be not rash. cence and chastity! Angelic creatures! Lord. "I am mad with doubly doubting." Dugald, in order to complete his pur Poses, drugs with poison a cup of wine, which he intended for his brother, but which by mistake he drinks himself. In his last moments he confesses his complicated villainy, and does justice to the spotless purity of lady Maclean's charac ter, who is now restored to her repentant and adoring husband. The fisherman whom Dugald applied to in order to convey the devoted lady to the rock, spurns at the bribe, and afterwards, suspecting the meditated murder, saves her life at the peril of his own; it is a well-drawn character. The piece altogether reads with interest, and acts with spirit. ART. VI.-To Marry or Not to Marry: a Comedy. By MRS. INCHBALD. WE fear that Mrs. Inchbald will not add much to her celebrity by this comedy: the persona dramatis are, almost without exception, not characters but caricatures. Mr. Willowear and lady Susan Courtly have no prototype, we venture to say, in the gayest and most unthinking circles. The deadly and long-nurtured revenge of Lavensworth is hardly human. Hester, indeed, is an interesting, bewitching little rogue, and her interview with sir Oswin Mortland in the fourth act shows that Mrs. Inchbald can delineate with skill and delicacy the budding passion. A few touches of nature are here and there dis coverable, which make us the more regret that Mrs. Inchbald should have attempted a satirical representation, to which she is incompetent, of manners in fashionable life. ART. VII.-Too many Cooks: a Musical Farce in Two Acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden. By JAMES KENNEY, Author of Raising the Wind, &c. IT must not be concealed that the gravity of our muscles, "albeit unused to the laughing' mood," was strangely discomposed by the dry humour of this farce, which we recommend to the perusal of any gentleman who happens to be attacked by a fit of the spleen. ART. VIII.-The Blind Bargain; or Hear it Out: a Comedy in Five Acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden. By FREDERICK REYNOLDS. AS the audience at Covent-Garden duty to read it out; but rarely has our could sit to hear it out, we felt it a double patience been put to a severer trial. ART. IX.-The Honest Soldier. A Comedy. WORSE and worse; dullness and vulgarity interspersed with indecent allusions. ART. X.-The Honey Moon: a Comedy in Five Acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane. By the Late JOHN TOBIN, Esq. That keep him going!-What! Eugenio! Rolando. I am alone, and wish THOUGH composed of shreds and patches, this is a striking fancy-dress, put together with skill, and worked up with taste. Shakspeare's Taming of the Shrew, and Much ado about Nothing, supply the characters, and occasionally we trace the sentiments. The story is taken from the former, Catherine and Petruchio being represented in Juliana and the duke of Aranza. Rolando is another Benedick, but his tender-hearted Zamora has less of Now, woman's wit, assist me! (Sings.) Beatrice in her disposition than the roguish volatile Volante. The story is too well known to need being related. The dialogue is animated, witty or sentimental as occasion requires; the language is pregnant with imagery, and the measure employed is the heroic. We give a specimen from the third act: Rolando, of "most rare qualities, a happy wit and independent spirit," though a settled woman-hater, has been followed to the wars by Zamora in the disguise of a page. The wars being over, he is a disbanded soldier without pay, and obliged to give his faithful follower a reluctant notice to quit his service. "Rolando. 'Sdeath, that a reasonable thinking man Should leave his friend and bottle for a woman! Here is the Count, now, who, in other mat- Has a true judgment, only seeth his blood Immortal man is but a shuttlecock, One of your songs to bear me company. SONG.-ZAMORA. In vain the tears of anguish flow, In vain I mourn, in vain I sigh; That I must live for him, or die. In noble hearts, to waken love. My altering form, my waning bloom, What refuge, but the silent tomb! Rolando. It is a mournful ditty, yet 'tis pleasing! Zamora. It was, indeed, a melancholy From which I learnt it. Yet so far I remember-Now my heart- 'Twas of a gentleman-a soldier, sir, 'Twas strange. Rolando. With words? why, then he must invent a language Rolando. Strange! 'twas impossible! At Which yet the learned have no glimpses of the first blush, A palpable and most transparent lie! Zamora. Fasting and fustigation may do something; I've heard that death will quiet some of them; But words?-mere words?-cool'd by the breath of man !—— He may preach tame a howling wilderness; Silence à full-mouth'd battery with snowballs; Quench fire with oil; with his repelling breath Puff back the northern blast; whistle 'gainst thunder: These things are feasible-But still a woman Count. to him The struggle 'twixt her passion and her Sounds like a fiddle in a concert, always ART. XI.-The School of Reform: or How to Rule a Husband: a Comedy, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden. By THOMAS MORTON, Esq. “WELL, Ladies! say, what think you of At least 'tis new-talking we've found wont my plan; Is silence the true way to conquer man? please him; Then follow my advice-be dumb—and tease hin." Epilogue. |