Quatro ad Blasit
We are still following sedulously in the French track—and, be it added, not in the best French track. Otez votre File, 11 vow plait—a thin, lengthy, wiry farce of the Palais Royal—has been put into English, with the title Take that Girl away, and, thus ticketed, has been produced at the Lyceum. The first ace shows us the ardent temperament of a romantic painter, who finds the iLpect of French beauty so adverse to the attention required for his artistic labours, that when the daughter of an opposite neighbour steps on the balcony to take the air, he impudently requests her father to "take 'ter away," and on a refusal, carries her off by main force himself. The second act shows us another peculiarity in the painter's character,—Lamely a chronic fickleness that borders on mono- mania. No sooner is he allowed to marry the lady whom he has vio- lently abducted, than he finds her disposition too docile for his taste, and avows a passion for her more impetuous younger sister. The rage of the elder sister at this capricious and heartless conduct restores the balance in her favour, and she becomes, as at first, the object of the worthless youth's affections.
MM. Marc Michel and Labiche, to whom (thanks to the agency of some intelligent English translator, name unknown) we are indebted for this banquet of pleasantry, have reduced the manufacture of lengthened extravaganza to a regular art, and we have not the slightest doubt that at a week's notice they could supply the director of the Palais Royal with a farce in any given number of acts, each act containing any given number of extraordinary situations. And for the Palais Royal they work ad- mirably ; for there they have an audience ready to laugh at a set of cha- racters who though dressed in the habiliments of the day are as fantastic as the creations of Hoffmann, and at an intrigue which, working out no moral purpose, palpably shows the tangling and disentangling power of
the author. But rarely do we find one of their prolix jokes obtain a per- manent footing in England. John Bull likes to feel more. interest in all dramatis persons; that do not belong to the region of harlegunuide ; and a set of grotesque puppets, that have no prototype in human nature andlappeal to no sympathy, amuse him but slightly, however ingenious may. be the com- plexities in which they are-involved. We .can fancy the Palais Royal au. dienee delighted at the audacities and caprices of the madcap artist in Otez votre Yale, a it coat plait, even if he had been represented by a less efficient actor than M. Levassor; but when we find the same adventures relished at the Lyceum, we ascribe the success wholly to the unwearied vivacity of Mr. Charles Mathews, which is always a pleasant spectacle.
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