International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 8, August 19, 1850 - Various 2 стр.

On one side a very large and strong bridge has been erected leading from the street to the stage, to be used whenever the piece requires large bodies of cavalry to make their appearance, and there are machines that can convey persons with the swiftness of lightning down from the sky above the stage, a distance of 56 feet. A machine for which a ballet has been composed surpasses everything I ever saw in its size; it serves to transport eighty persons together on a seeming cloud from the roof to the foot-lights. I was astonished by it when I first beheld it although I had seen the machines of the grand opera at Paris: the second time I reflected that it alone cost 40,000 florins [$16,000].

Under the management of two Russian Generals, who have hitherto been at the head of the establishment, a vast deal has in this way been accomplished for mere external show.

The great Russian theatre of St. Petersburg has served for a model, and accordingly nothing has really been improved except that part of the performance which is farthest removed from genuine art, namely the ballet. That fact is that out of Paris the ballet is nowhere so splendid as in the great theater at Warsaw, not even at St. Petersburg, for the reason that the Russian is inferior to the Pole in physical beauty and grace. Heretofore the corps of the St. Petersburg ballet has twice been composed of Poles, but this arrangement has been abandoned as derogatory to the national honor. The sensual attractions of the ballet render it the most important thing in the theater. A great school for dancers has been established, where pupils may be found from three to eighteen years old. It is painful to see the little creatures, hardly weaned from their mothers' breaststwisted and tortured for the purposes of so doubtful an occupation as dancing. The school contains about two hundred pupils, all of whom occasionally appear together on the boards, in the ballet of Charis and Flora, for instance, when they receive a trifling compensation. For the rest the whole ballet corps are bound to daily practice.

The taste of the Russians has made prominent in the ballet exactly those peculiarities which are least to its credit. It must be pronounced exaggerated and lascivious. Aside from these faults, which may be overlooked as the custom of the country, we must admit that the dancing is uncommonly good.

The greater the care of the management for the ballet, the more injurious is its treatment of the drama. This is melancholy for the artists and especially those who have come to the imperial theater from the provinces, who are truly respectable and are equally good in comedy and tragedy. The former has been less shackled than the latter for the reason that it turns upon domestic life. But tragedy is most frightfully treated by the political censorship, so that a Polish poet can hardly expect to see his pieces performed on the stage of his native country. Hundreds of words and phrases such as freedom, avenging sword, slave, oppression, father-land, cannot be permitted and are stricken out. Accordingly nothing but the trumpery of mere penny-a-liners is brought forward, though this sometimes assumes an appearance of originality. These abortions remain on the stage only through the talent of the artists, the habit of the public to expect nothing beyond dullness and stupidity in the drama, and finally, the severe regulation which forbids any mark of disapprobation under pain of imprisonment. The best plays are translated from the French, but they are never the best of their kind. To please the Russians only those founded on civic life are chosen, and historical subjects are excluded. Princely personages are not allowed to be introduced on the stage, nor even high officers of state, such as ministers and generals. In former times the Emperor of China was once allowed to pass, but more recently the Bey of Tunis was struck out and converted into an African nobleman. A tragedy is inadmissible in any case, and should one be found with nothing objectionable but its name, it is called drama.

In such circumstances we would suppose that the actors would lose all interest in their profession. But this is not the case. At least the cultivated portion of the public at Warsaw never go to the theater to see a poetic work of art, but only to see and enjoy the skill of the performers. Of course there is no such thing as theatrical criticism at Warsaw; but everybody rejoices when the actors succeed in causing the wretchedness of the piece to be forgotten. The universal regret for the wretched little theater on the Krasinski place, where Suczkowska, afterward Mad. Halpert, founded her reputation in the character of the Maid of Orleans, is the best criticism on the present state of the drama.

The Russians take great delight in the most trivial pieces. Even Prince Paskiewich sometimes stays till the close of the last act. To judge by the direction of his opera-glass, which is never out of his hand, he has the fortune to discover poetry elsewhere than on the stage. In truth the Warsaw boxes are adorned by beautiful faces. Even the young princess Jablonowska is not the most lovely.

The arrangements of the Warsaw theaters are exactly like those of the Russian theater at St. Petersburg, but almost without exception, the pupils of the dramatic school, of whom seventeen have come upon the boards, have proved mere journeymen, and have been crowded aside by performers from the provincial cities. None of the eminent artists of late years have enjoyed the advantages of the school. The position of the actors at Warsaw is just the same as at St. Petersburg. The day after their first appearance they are regularly taken into duty as imperial officials, take an oath never to meddle with political affairs, nor join in any secret society, nor ever to pronounce on the stage anything more or anything else than what is in the stamped parts given them by the imperial management.

Actors' salaries at Warsaw are small in comparison with those of other countries. Forty or fifty silver rubles a month ($26 to $33) pass for a very respectable compensation, and even the very best performers rarely get beyond a thousand rubles a year ($650). Madame Halpert long had to put up with that salary till once Taglioni said to Prince Paskiewich that it was a shame for so magnificent an artist to be no better paid than a writer. Her salary was thereupon raised one-half, and subsequently by means of a similar mediation she succeeded in getting an addition of a thousand rubles yearly under the head of wardrobe expenses. This was a thing so extraordinary that the managing General declared that so enormous a compensation would never again be heard of in any imperial theatre. The pupils of the dramatic school receive eighteen rubles monthly, and, according to their performances, obtain permission every two years to ask an increase of salary. The period of service extends to twenty-five years, with the certainty of a yearly pension equal to the salary received at the close of the period.

For the artist this is a very important arrangement, which enables him to endure a thousand inconveniences.

There is no prospect of a better state of the Polish drama. Count Fedro may, in his comedies, employ the finest satire with a view to its restoration, but he will accomplish nothing so long as the Generals ride the theater as they would a war horse. On the other hand, no Russian drama has been established, because the conditions are wanting among the people. That is a vast empire, but poor in beauty; mighty in many things, but weak in artistic talents; powerful and prompt in destruction, but incapable spontaneously and of itself to create anything.

"DEATH'S JEST BOOK, OR THE FOOL'S TRAGEDY."

The Examiner, for July 20, contains an elaborate review, with numerous extracts, of a play just published under this title in London. "It is radiant," says the critic, "in almost every page with passion, fancy, or thought, set in the most apposite and exquisite language. We have but to discard, in reading it, the hope of any steady interest of story, or consistent development of character: and we shall find a most surprising succession of beautiful passages, unrivaled in sentiment and pathos, as well as in terseness, dignity, and picturesque vigor of language; in subtlety and power of passion, as well as in delicacy and strength of imagination; and as perfect and various, in modulation of verse, as the airy flights of Fletcher or Marlowe's mighty line.

For the artist this is a very important arrangement, which enables him to endure a thousand inconveniences.

There is no prospect of a better state of the Polish drama. Count Fedro may, in his comedies, employ the finest satire with a view to its restoration, but he will accomplish nothing so long as the Generals ride the theater as they would a war horse. On the other hand, no Russian drama has been established, because the conditions are wanting among the people. That is a vast empire, but poor in beauty; mighty in many things, but weak in artistic talents; powerful and prompt in destruction, but incapable spontaneously and of itself to create anything.

"DEATH'S JEST BOOK, OR THE FOOL'S TRAGEDY."

The Examiner, for July 20, contains an elaborate review, with numerous extracts, of a play just published under this title in London. "It is radiant," says the critic, "in almost every page with passion, fancy, or thought, set in the most apposite and exquisite language. We have but to discard, in reading it, the hope of any steady interest of story, or consistent development of character: and we shall find a most surprising succession of beautiful passages, unrivaled in sentiment and pathos, as well as in terseness, dignity, and picturesque vigor of language; in subtlety and power of passion, as well as in delicacy and strength of imagination; and as perfect and various, in modulation of verse, as the airy flights of Fletcher or Marlowe's mighty line.

"The whole range of the Elizabethan drama has not finer expression, nor does any single work of the period, out of Shakspeare, exhibit so many rich and precious bars of golden verse, side by side with such poverty and misery of character and plot. Nothing can be meaner than the design, nothing grander than the execution."

In conclusion, the Examiner observes"We are not acquainted with any living author who could have written the Fool's Tragedy; and, though the publication is unaccompanied by any hint of authorship, we believe that we are correct in stating it to be a posthumous production of the author of the Bride's Tragedy; Mr. Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Speaking of the latter production, now more than a quarter of a century ago, (Mr. Beddoes was then, we believe, a student at Pembroke College, Oxford, and a minor,) the Edinburgh Review ventured upon a prediction of future fame and achievement for the writer, which an ill-chosen and ill-directed subsequent career unhappily intercepted and baffled. But in proof of the noble natural gifts which suggested such anticipation, the production before us remains: and we may judge to what extent a more steady course and regular cultivation would have fertilized a soil, which, neglected and uncared for, has thrown out such a glorious growth of foliage and fruit as this Fool's Tragedy."

The following exquisite lyric is among the passages with which these judgments are sustained:

WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED

Praed, it has always seemed to us, was the cleverest writer in his way that has ever contributed to the English periodicals. His fugitive lyrics and arabesque romances, half sardonic and half sentimental, published with Hookham Frere's "Whistlecraft" and Macaulay's Roundhead Ballads, in Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and after the suspension of that work, for the most part in the annual souvenirs, are altogether unequaled in the class of compositions described as vers de societie.Who that has read "School and School Fellows", "Palinodia", "The Vicar", "Josephine", and a score of other pieces in the same vein, does not desire to possess all the author has left us, in a suitable edition? It has been frequently stated in the English journals that such a collection was to be published, under the direction of Praed's widow, but we have yet only the volume prepared by a lover of the poet some years ago for the Langleys, in this city. In the "Memoirs of Eminent Etonians," just printed by Mr. Edward Creasy, we have several waifs of Praed's that we believe will be new to all our readers. Here is a characteristic political rhyme:

VERSES

The following is a spirited version of a dramatic scene in the second book of the Annals of Tacitus:

ARMINIUS

CAMPBELL AND WASHINGTON IRVING