第117章 FRENCH DRAMAS AND MELODRAMAS(5)

Then we have Kean, at a place called the Trou de Charbon, the "Coal Hole," where, to the edification of the public, he engages in a fisty combat with a notorious boxer.This scene was received by the audience with loud exclamations of delight, and commented on, by the journals, as a faultless picture of English manners."The Coal Hole" being on the banks of the Thames, a nobleman--LORDMELBOURN!--has chosen the tavern as a rendezvous for a gang of pirates, who are to have their ship in waiting, in order to carry off a young lady with whom his lordship is enamored.It need not be said that Kean arrives at the nick of time, saves the innocent Meess Anna, and exposes the infamy of the Peer.A violent tirade against noblemen ensues, and Lord Melbourn slinks away, disappointed, to meditate revenge.Kean's triumphs continue through all the acts:

the Ambassadress falls madly in love with him; the Prince becomes furious at his ill success, and the Ambassador dreadfully jealous.

They pursue Kean to his dressing-room at the theatre; where, unluckily, the Ambassadress herself has taken refuge.Dreadful quarrels ensue; the tragedian grows suddenly mad upon the stage, and so cruelly insults the Prince of Wales that his Royal Highness determines to send HIM TO BOTANY BAY.His sentence, however, is commuted to banishment to New York; whither, of course, Miss Anna accompanies him; rewarding him, previously, with her hand and twenty thousand a year!

This wonderful performance was gravely received and admired by the people of Paris: the piece was considered to be decidedly moral, because the popular candidate was made to triumph throughout, and to triumph in the most virtuous manner; for, according to the French code of morals, success among women is, at once, the proof and the reward of virtue.

The sacred personage introduced in Dumas's play behind a cloud, figures bodily in the piece of the Massacre of the Innocents, represented at Paris last year.She appears under a different name, but the costume is exactly that of Carlo Dolce's Madonna; and an ingenious fable is arranged, the interest of which hangs upon the grand Massacre of the Innocents, perpetrated in the fifth act.

One of the chief characters is Jean le Precurseur, who threatens woe to Herod and his race, and is beheaded by orders of that sovereign.

In the Festin de Balthazar, we are similarly introduced to Daniel, and the first scene is laid by the waters of Babylon, where a certain number of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer enters, exclaiming, "Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jerusalem," and the request is refused in the language of the Psalm.Belshazzar's Feast is given in a grand tableau, after Martin's picture.That painter, in like manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge.Vast numbers of schoolboys and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight in them.

The famous Juif Errant, at the theatre of the Porte St.Martin, was the first of the kind, and its prodigious success, no doubt, occasioned the number of imitations which the other theatres have produced.

The taste of such exhibitions, of course, every English person will question; but we must remember the manners of the people among whom they are popular; and, if I may be allowed to hazard such an opinion, there is in every one of these Boulevard mysteries, a kind of rude moral.The Boulevard writers don't pretend to "tabernacles"and divine gifts, like Madame Sand and Dumas before mentioned.If they take a story from the sacred books, they garble it without mercy, and take sad liberties with the text; but they do not deal in descriptions of the agreeably wicked, or ask pity and admiration for tender-hearted criminals and philanthropic murderers, as their betters do.Vice is vice on the Boulevard; and it is fine to hear the audience, as a tyrant king roars out cruel sentences of death, or a bereaved mother pleads for the life of her child, making their remarks on the circumstances of the scene."Ah, le gredin!" growls an indignant countryman."Quel monstre!" says a grisette, in a fury.You see very fat old men crying like babies, and, like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar.Actors and audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially are the former affected, that at Franconi's, where the battles of the Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks of the mimic army as in the real imperial legions.After a man has served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted to be an officer--an acting officer.If he conducts himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division;if ill, he is degraded to the ranks again; or, worst degradation of all, drafted into a regiment of Cossacks or Austrians.Cossacks is the lowest depth, however; nay, it is said that the men who perform these Cossack parts receive higher wages than the mimic grenadiers and old guard.They will not consent to be beaten every night, even in play; to be pursued in hundreds, by a handful of French; to fight against their beloved Emperor.Surely there is fine hearty virtue in this, and pleasant child-like simplicity.

So that while the drama of Victor Hugo, Dumas, and the enlightened classes, is profoundly immoral and absurd, the DRAMA of the common people is absurd, if you will, but good and right-hearted.I have made notes of one or two of these pieces, which all have good feeling and kindness in them, and which turn, as the reader will see, upon one or two favorite points of popular morality.A drama that obtained a vast success at the Porte Saint Martin was "La Duchesse de la Vauballiere." The Duchess is the daughter of a poor farmer, who was carried off in the first place, and then married by M.le Duc de la Vauballiere, a terrible roue, the farmer's landlord, and the intimate friend of Philippe d'Orleans, the Regent of France.