THE THEATRES.
A couple of comiterfeits—the current coin offarce—have this week is- sued from the dramatic mint, and passed off very pleasantly; one at the Haymarket, the other at the Lyceum. Tke False Mr. Pope is the super- scription of the Haymarket token of fun; and-its-comical image, sketched by Peake, is impressed with the broad strong stamp of Buckstonian buf- foonery. At the Lyceum, the quaint physiognomy of Meadows figures as the pretender Peter Jenkins; Keeley and his wife also lending their coun- tenance to the humorous device. Both pieces are the circulating medium of an abundance of merriment; and though the metal is none of the finest, nor the art of the best, let no critical pen stop the circulation of one of them by nailing it to the counter.
The: egend of The False Mr. Pope is this. An actor for a wager plays offs stage-jest upon his friends by passing off the little Churchwarden of Hammersmith as the great Bard of Twickenham; the facetiousness of the parish functionary doing duty for the wit of the 'satirist of the "Dun- clad." The Churchwarden's Cockney cottage represents the Poet's 'Villa; the famous " Temple" and " Grotto " being banished for the occasion by 'the 'contriver of the hoax, who himself enacts the part of Echo—since there was no possibility of burking the invisible nymph. The " false Ir. Pope" revels in a surfeit of adulation from a circle of " lion- hunters," who echo the bray of the ass in the lion's skin with roars of applause; the ladies responding with sighs of rapture, and submitting theirthair—and 'wigs—to a real:" rape of the lock," deliberately performed seith-ignoble scissors. The success of the scheme and the.triumph of the elated Churchwarden are crowned by his victory in a passage of wit with a crabbed critic and a scribbling captain; but his blushing honours are dearly paid:for by a cudgelling that he receives as the proxy of Pope. The prac- tical joke with which the deluded worshipers of the false divinity revenge themselves—dressing -up a sucking-pig in baby's clothes and passing it 'off as a foundling left at the door—is a sorry termination to the fun, and nearly ruined the piece; which ought to end with the first act.
dinoistone as the " false Mr. Pope " is irresistible: the idea of his rosy, round-featured phiz, with its comical twitch of the muscles and sly twinkle of the 'eye, representing the long, pale, sickly visage, and deep thoughtful look of the poet, is a good jest of itself; and he heightens the absurdity by encasing his cranium in a periwig of preposterous dimensions—a towering 'edifice of hair, resting on his shoulders and buttressed on his back. The other characters are capitally costumed and enacted; especially a surly old reritivofthe sthhimonian order, by Tilbury. The ladies look charmingly in their.jaunty hats and looped-up gowns; and Miss. P. Horton and Miss Julia 'Bennett 'threw all their vivacity into the performance.
Peter Jenkins, at the Lyceum, is a nonentity conjured up by the fertile lanqy of a woman to appease the jealous wrath of a suspicious husband: Amt :the phantom of her brain miluokily becomes embodied in the .person of a quondam admirer, whose unexpected -presence casts a shadow over the sunshine of the "cottage of love," as the new-married couple have chris- tened their bower of bliss. Meadows is the innocent marplot; 'Keeley the amoonseious cause of his appearance; and Wigan the infuriated husband— ;a Frenchman, admirably played. Mrs. Keeley is the peacemaker, who, ;besides teaching the art of "fibbing for a friend," fascinates her pupil into !being true to herself. Her way of.throwing out baits for a lover and hook- ing him into matrimony is as neat a specimen of female angling for a has- band as the annals of farce afford; and Keeley, the victim, suffers himself to,beraught with a fishlike pertinacity of purpose—gorging the bait, and dlotmdering about in an agony of helpless acquiescence. It is very amusing
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