In the domestic dramas of Mr. Mark Lemon, who does
not very fre- quently come before the public now, there is this important qualification— geniality. To produce his pathos, he does not devise any very intricate perplexity of wo, and his comic characters are somewhat of a bygone school; but he writes as if he sympathized with the grief and the mirth of his created personages, and he rarely misses his effect. Through a want of this geniality, some of our wittiest dramatists produce a cold sensation while they excite applause by their brilliancy. There is something ar- tistic in a sustained irony, but love of subject is almost an essential for one who would work on masses. The drama, by Mr. Lemon, recently produced at the New Strand Theatre, is aptly named Hearts are Trumps; the title setting forth both the senti- ment and the circumstances of the story. A blackleg of the gaming-table, who lives by " trumps," has still " heart" enough to be very fond of an only daughter, whom he brings up in respectability, and also in ignorance of his evil profession. A fellow " leg," whom he has affronted, dispels this blissful ignorance; and the father becomes disgusted with his profession, OD finding himself engaged in a conspiracy to plunder an honest gentleman who offers wealth and happiness to his daughter. The early part of the drama is weak; and the comic relief, produced by a countryman of the " Emery " breed, and his sweetheart, a London maid-servant, is worked on a very old principle, though the jokes gain a freshness from the quality of geniality to which we have alluded. The last scene is a model of theatrical ingenuity. The daughter is made to enter the gaming- house at the moment when her father is engaged in a quarrel, which has arisen from his zeal in endeavouring to save her lover; and thus we have a tableau in which the most varied emotions are simulta- neously exhibited by a number of different personages. Mrs. Stirling and Mr. Farren bring out this situation admirably. The daughter for a moment seems revolted by her father's position; and the reactionary move- ment, with which she clings to him when the temporary estrangement has passed, is really pathetic. Mr. Leigh Murray as the bad man of the piece —the brazened, heartless, vindictive gamester—plays exceedingly well in a line of character to which he is not accustomed. By the way, it is charac- teristic of the author's goodnatured mode of treating a subject, that he makes even the villain of his tale confess that, after all, "hearts are trumps,"— that is to say, that a good heart is the best endowment. The Yorkshire line of business is that to which Mr. Compton especially belonged when he first came before a London public, and he is just at home in the comic countryman of Mr. Lemon's drama.
By the closing of the Lyceum on Monday last, and of the Haymarket in the week preceding, the little theatre in the Strand loses two competitors„ and may therefore anticipate a period of success; especially when the Adelphi company moves to the Haymarket, there to remain pending the term of autumnal repair.
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