ABSTRACT
The representation of a new tragedy, written by an author of established poetical fame, is, alas! so great a novelty in our theatrical annals, that it was hailed by the few surviving amateurs of the drama as the commencement of a new æra in dramatic history. Remembering the failure of De Montfort, 1 we were not quite so sanguine in our prognostications as some of those ‘whose wish’, we fear, ‘was father to their thought’; and, on the contrary, had our opinion been asked after the second performance of the piece (which we witnessed in person) we should probably have predicted a less degree of success than that which it has actually since experienced. To say the truth, then, it is our firm persuasion that no important revolution can be effected in the present degraded state of the stage, so long as the monopoly of the theatres continues. Whenever a new theatre shall be established, of the old moderate dimensions, and devoted exclusively to the representation of such works as do honour to the national taste and genius, abandoning to the present magnificent houses those departments for which they are alone calculated, of broad farce and splendid spectacle, then, and not till then, we may hope to see a new æra of the drama which shall rival that of Elizabeth in warmth and vigour, without sacrificing the more correct attainments of a refined and critical age of poetry.
