Webster has been confined to his room;
Macready has suspended every engagement for Drury-lane; and the managers
of Covent Garden have gone the atrocious length of engaging sibilants and
ammunition from the neighbouring market, to pelt the Syncretics off the
stage! Them we leave to their dirty work and their repentance, while we
proceed to _our_ "delightful task."
To prove that the "mantle of the Elizabethan poets seems to have fallen
upon Mr. Stephens" (_Opinions_, p. 11), that the "Hungarian Daughter" is
quite as good as Knowles's best plays (_Id._ p. 4, _in two places_), that
"it is equal to Goethe" (_Id._ p. 11), that "in after years the name of
Mr. S. will be amongst those which have given light and glory to their
country" (_Id._ p. 10); to prove, in short, the truth of a hundred other
laudations collected and printed by this modest author, we shall quote a
few passages from his play, and illustrate his genius by pointing out
their beauties--an office much needed, particularly by certain dullards,
the magazine of whose souls are not combustible enough to take fire at the
electric sparks shot forth _up_ out of the depths of George Stephens's
unfathomable genius!
The first gem that sparkles in the play, is where _Isabella_, the Queen
Dowager of Hungary, with a degree of delicacy highly becoming a matron,
makes desperate love to _Castaldo_, an Austrian ambassador. In the midst
of her ravings she breaks off, to give such a description of a
steeple-chase as Nimrod has never equalled.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25