ABSTRACT
SADLER’S WELLS.—The re-production of Mr. Browning’s fine drama The Blot in the ’Scutcheon was on Monday an exciting incident to the admirers of this gentleman’s genius. The play is an attempt to give a poetic interest to a melodramatic subject. The circumstances attending the original production under Mr. Macready’s management at Drury Lane were thought, at the time, to be peculiarly illustrative of the relative positions of poet and manager-little to the credit of the latter and not to the profit of the first. Without committing ourselves here to either side of the question, we may be permitted to approve of the act of justice now rendered to the dramatist in thus granting him, though at the distance of many years, a new trial. The experiment perfectly succeeded. The play, as now acted, commanded well deserved applause; though we believe its interest to be of too painful a sort to permit its having a long run. The chief merit of the piece lies in the second act; where Thorold, Lord Tresham (Mr. Phelps) seated in his library listens to the disclosure made by his faithful domestic, old Gerard (Mr. Graham), that his only sister, Mildred Tresham (Miss Cooper), has given access at night to a stranger. Hereupon, the young nobleman sends for his sister; and after impressing her with the sense of a brother’s love and the importance of the fact that the honour of the house depends on them, the sole survivors of the family,—he first darkly and hesitatingly hints at, and at last decidedly and plainly accuses her with, her transgression. Great are his wonder and indignation to hear her confess it,—yet declare her willingness to wed his friend, Henry, Earl Mertoun (Mr. Dickinson). Mad with anger, he calls his friends into the chamber, curses Mildred in their presence, and thus leaves her. Her cousin, Guendolin Tresham (Miss Huddart), suspects a mystery; and soon learns, by woman’s instinct, that the favoured lover and the expected bridegroom are the same person. Meantime, the wrathful brother has come upon the spot where the Earl had been accustomed to gain furtive entrance to his mistress’s apartment; and there finding the betrayer of his sister’s honour drags him forward and, without allowing explanation, mortally wounds him. Mildred’s death and his own follow, as the culminating sequel of this rash deed. Mr. Phelp’s acting in Lord Thorold was of such excellence as to deserve especial analysis. The whole of the library scene in particular was admirable. The uneasy, irritable, suppressed feeling-the doubt-the conviction-the tenderness-the irascibility-the overwhelming
discordant with the feeling of the text; and she has besides no notion of the intermediate action by which the points of character are to be brought out. Hers, accordingly, was a literal reading,—not an interpretation of the part. Mr. Dickinson, on the other hand, was frequently too violent, and committed again the indiscretions which we have already charged against him. The vehemence of his attachment excited no little laughter in the pit. With these drawbacks, the piece was both excellently mounted and well acted; giving satisfaction to a numerous though not overflowing audience.
