ON "DON GIOVANNI," A PANTOMIME ACTED AT DRURY LANE THEATRE. Don Giovanni after having been wire drawn for many years past at the neighbour theatres, made a pet of at the Surrey, and fiddled away to hell at the Italian Opera, has found its way into the Drury-lane pantomime for the Christmas of 1817-18. Your great antiquaries now would pronounce his whole history from the day of his birth to this present, not omitting the gradual changing of his hair from flaxen to black, nor any little choice conversation or riddle-me-ree between him and his nursery maid on the day he was breeched; nor how fond he was of rabbits, and pigeons, and cockchaffers, and moo-cows, and hunt the slipper, nor how he volunteered among the little tambour workers for weeks and weeks, so breathing in an intoxicating air, sucking in poison from a sampler, and forgetting himself at a red morocco slipper. Unfortunate Don! unthinkingly didst thou treasure up the forms of things in thine imagination -the storm, the fatal storm was mustering by little and little till it burst to the utter astonishment of a certain fair playmate. Then were his eyes opened, he forgot his kite, his top, and what is more his knitting needles-for now that happy time was gone where with a luxurious patience he would frame and fashion delicately a pair of garters for a being made of light. Aye happy and yet not happy was that May morning on which the young Giovanni and the fair Silentilla walked forth-but this is no place for a fairy tale; suffice it to say, that in consequence, has the poor youth been thrown into Tartarus from every stage in Europe, to the great delight of greater part of the male audience from a spirit of rivalry, jealousy, and certain other things which do haunt the heads and hearts of men, and to the retrospective compassion of the more soft and pitying spectators: he has, say they 66 Bought golden opinions— Which s[h]ould be worn now in their newest gloss, In the course of the pantomime Punch and Judy with their family were introduced: an illustrious house, of which the pranks and witty squeaking are more popular than Giovanni himself; and it would not be an useless or uninstructive speculation to enquire why and wherefore. In the first place if the Don is well made, Punch is ill made; if the Rake has a dozen mistresses, Punch has his Judy, who has the charms of a dozen in her summed up-if the former has a confident stamp, the latter has the neatest jerk of the left leg; if the former has his quizzing glass the latter has his ladle. The Commentators have started a variety of frivolous objections to this entertaining hunchback; those of Stephanio one turns from disgusted, seeing that in his discourse concerning the wife Judy, he has punned upon the word Lemon. Malonius has objected to the bit of black ribbon which confines his pigtail, calling it an unapt contrast to the white powder, and saying moreover that it is a plagiarism from the chess board, the origin of which and that of the Punch family he thinks intimately connected. Theobaldio, Warburtonio, and many more make such like stands against all common sense and decency, with a blind sort of pertin[a]city, as if they were to seal the book of fame and remain unassailable by after critics. To answer these gentlemen separately would be to count the grains in a bushel of corn: to have a doubt of their vanity would be to take a hawk for a handsaw. One particular however may as well be noticed. Much cavilling has arisen concerning which of the ruined damsels shed the most tears, and to settle this matter we must turn, as naturally as horse to manger, towards tradition, from which we glean that three had black eyes, one blue, three hazel, six grey, and eight brown; is there any thing to be resolved on from this? One almost fears to say again we find from the secret memoirs of a lady-bird, the measurement the crique and breadth of their respective dimples: some ten, some twenty, some thirty paces across yet this affords no clew to anything like probability. One of them, however, we learn, was in a few particulars distinct from the rest, and she we think must have been the most tearful unfortunate. Her finger nails were touched with the faintest crimson, like the heart of a maiden's blush; and if you did not suddenly snatch her into your vision, you might suppose that the fair roundure of her fingers reached back to heaven and faded into the milky way. She never plucked a lily but once. As to the pantomime, be it good or bad, a child should write a critique upon it. We were pleased knowing how much better it ought to be-a child's is the eulogy—and that not merely in pantomimes. VOL. III. |