and, in compliance with a wish almost universally expressed, he repeated his entertainment. At Glasgow there had also been Concerts, and Mr. Braham was invited from thence to assist at the Edinburgh Festival.

It has been determined to hold the York Festival next summer, and the preparations are upon such a scale as most probably to exceed all other counties. The band will number six hundred performers; and the greatest pains will be taken to procure novelty and excellence. Expense seems the least matter of consideration with the committee, and this is the way to ensure the looked-for reward. They who deal with the public must now deal liberally. The magnificent Assembly Rooms, upon which six thousand pounds are to be expended, will then be opened. The morning performances will be in the Minster. It is intended that Mr. Greatorex should conduct the morning, Sir George Smart the evening Concerts.

There has never been so complete an apparent pause in the preparations for public music in London as at this moment. The fate of the Opera is become even darker and more involved than ever, by the crisis in the affairs of the principal proprietor, Mr. Chambers. If the world is rightly informed, Mr. Ebers is under a positive contract to pay a rent of ten thousand pounds for the next season, whether the house be opened or not, as well as some not less positive engagements with Signor Garcia and other principal performers. If this be true, individual interest will combine with the general desire of the fashionable world. We cannot, indeed, imagine the metropolis without an Italian Opera, after the time and money that has been spent, in planting and fixing the taste; and, above all, when to frequent the King's Theatre is, perhaps, the strongest public habit (if we may use such a term) of the fashionable world. Luxury among the great in this country is now carried to such an excess, that not one, but thousands of English, would contribute as largely as the Royal sensualist, who offered a largess for the invention of a new pleasure. No establishment in this country touches so many in

terests, so many feelings, so many hopes, so many fears. If an Asmodeus could develope the strange anomalies of pleasure and of pain,of fresh delight and past recollections

of innocency indulging its newest hopes, and of vice plotting its darkest intrigues,-the results of this magnificent exhibition of splendour and art,-of intellectual and technical power, when applied to such multifarious combinations of excitement and of passion, as are here displayed; it would afford a speculation to rejoice a fiend. No! too many senses are to be gratified, and too many passions indulged, and too many interests upheld in this, the largest Metropolitan mart of pleasure and iniquity, to allow of its suspension through the operation of slight causes. How the funds are to be raised to re-open the King's Theatre, it is not so easy to foresee, but that it will be re-opened there is scarcely any danger in prophesying. The fittest person to manage the stage department is, probably, Mr. Ayrton, who we happen to know was not long since engaged in some negociations concerning the direction of the house. At present the rumour is, that the property will come to sale, and that it is now contended for (probably only ad interim) by one committee of noblemen, and another of the booksellers who have been engaged in the commerce of tickets and boxes. The decision must probably soon be made, otherwise there will be no adequate time to collect the membra disjecta of this shattered fabric. Parliament, however, meets late, and a month may be thus deducted from the usual season; but if, on the other hand, a dissolution takes place early, as it is thought will be the case, that season will be but a very short one at the best. The example of former years demonstrates that no time can be lost with impunity, so far as profit is concerned. The best thing that could perhaps arise out of this complication of distress, would be the satisfaction of all matters concerning the house, and the liquidation of all claims under the sweeping powers of a commission. It would be alike a benefit to future managers, the proprietors, and the public. While the property is liable to such incessant

with taste and even novelty. The air, which is an old and worthy favourite, is treated with much taste.

Mr. Cianchettini has a Fantasia for the Pianoforte upon the Preghiera in Zelmira. The florid manner of this composer is a little subdued in this instance, and his forbearance is repaid by greater chastity of style and regular accent. Perhaps even

here his modulations are redundant, but in many instances they are very effective.

The arrangements are a selection from Pietro l'Eremita as a duet, by Webbe, for the Pianoforte; select movements by Himmel, also as duets by Haigh, and the 15th Book of Mr. Bochsa's selections from Rossini's operas, containing Ricciardo e Zoraide.

COVENT GARDEN THEATRE.

A Woman never Vext; or, the Widow of Cornhill.

THE Taste of the town has at length had one chance offered it of escape from a violent fate on that public scaffold, the stage;-and from the way in which the offer has been met, one would almost be induced to hope that "a disgraceful end" might be avoided, and that, duly penitent for the sinful past, the poor reprieved Taste was about to commence a wellordered life for the future. The revival of a comedy from the pen of one of Will Shakspeare's playmates was a thing scarcely to be looked for in these distempered times,--in these days of Dapples and Ducrows! these days of talking birds, flying horses, and hell fire!-It seems, however, that the managers of Covent-Garden, warned from the cattle madness by the failure of Elliston's Tale of Enchantment; and, it may be, touched with some respect for the character which their theatre gained in John Kemble's reign by its classic revivals,-have determined on trying to work one of the old mines, and though the first attempt has not been attended with an absolute Mexican result, the success has indisputably proved that the ore will repay the working. It has for a considerable period been conceived by the managers of the great theatres that comedy was not worth its keep, -that wit was of no more value in the market than broken glass or old rags, -and that to command success wonders must be piled upon wonders,that Buffon's Natural History must be studied as the only Dramatist's

Guide. Your two-legged monsters were held to be gone by, and the "coat and breeches comedies" fit only to be cast aside like old garmentsand in their stead, elephants, horses, dogs, stags," and such small deer,” were only brought up to the stage. Our national theatres became Noah's arks, wherein all creeping things were assembled—and it has been fully believed that the town came to the play only with a couple of eyes, and that the two ears were enjoying sinecure places on the sides of the head. The revival of Rowley's play certainly promises better things in managers, and, a taste for better things in the town. Farley has had his day, and he will not object to giving tin foil and red fire a little rest.

William Rowley lived in the reign of James I. and was of the Cambridge University. He was on friendly and authorly terms with Middleton, Massinger, and Webster, all of them undoubtedly poets of a higher genius than himself,-and for shares in several partnership plays, performances not uncommon in the golden days of those famous men, Rowley might put in his claim. He also acted on the stage, though, like most authors, his dramatic power lay rather in his pen than in his person. The best productions to which Rowley's name appears, are generally those which he wrote in conjunction with others, such as "The Spanish Gipsey," and "The Changeling," in which he was assisted by Middleton:-and there is therefore some ground for supposing that to Middleton much is owing. A man of a fair capacity, in habits of love,

and friending with such men as Fletcher, Webster, Middleton, and Ford, the last a poet of matchless pathos, could not but catch the trick of writing, and of writing well-that Rowley was rather an imitator than a man of original genius, appears from the similarity which his unaided plays bear to the plays of his friends. About twenty productions hold his name,and the play in question, produced somewhere about 1630, was, we believe, his first-born, and perhaps his best single Drama.

The original title of the play is "A New Wonder,-A Woman never Vext," but for some unaccountable reason the title is altered in the play as it is acted. The widow is a lady of fair face and fortune,-one who has had happy hours! and none else, -as a maid, a wife, and widow ;indeed, so surfeited is she of good fortune, that she wishes for a grief to give life a fillip. Seeing a gay gentleman, one Stephen Foster, revelling at a dicing house, she makes love to him, and offers her hand, if he will pledge himself to disperse her wealth and bring her to beggary. Stephen marries her and at once be comes reformed from gaming and drinking he betakes himself to a careful husbandry of her fortune and her happiness and in the end becomes Sheriff of London. Stephen Foster has, at the opening of a play, a Brother Foster (not a Foster-brother) wealthy, and wedded to a rare shrew. The son of the rich Foster succours Stephen in Ludgate prison, when he is in ruin and ill fame, and for this, sparred on by the termagant motherin-law, old Foster drives his boy with malignant hate from his house. Stephen when rich takes the boy, Robert, into his affection and care; and Foster and his wife are crazed at the success of the uncle and their child. Towards the end of the play the ship ventures of old Foster fail at sea, and the mouth of the Thames swallows up his wealth;-then the son visits his father in Ludgate, as he had visited his uncle, and Stephen, in pretended malice, pursues Robert for expending his money on his enemy. The play ends, however, with a generous payment by Stephen of his brother's debts, and a fair union

of the long severed families. There is an under plot of love, in which a Miss Jane Brown, the daughter of a merchant, is wooed by a prose Sir Toby Belch, ycleped Sir Godfrey Speedwell, and a simpleton called Mr. Innocent Lambskin;-but the girl's heart is of course sought and won by Robert Foster. The Knight and his feeble little friend are fools both, and debtors to the widow, who with a generosity only known in 1630, accepts a composition of two shillings in the pound from her debtors, without pursuing them with latitat or bill of Middlesex through all the cold avenues of the King's Bench prison and the Insolvent Court.

In the old play, the widow tells of having lost her wedding-ring while crossing the Thames, and lo! even on the word, a servant brings in a fish from market containing the ring. This incident was borrowed from an anecdote preserved in Fuller's Worthies of one Citizen Anderson, who while talking on Newcastle bridge with a friend, dropped his ring which he was fingering into the river, and recovered it from a fish caught from the same river. There is much of the marvellous and but little of the dramatic in this incident, and therefore its omission in the acted play is judicious.

The plot, which is simple enough, is partly historical. Sir Stephen Foster, son of Mr. Foster, Stockfishmonger, was Sheriff of London, in 1444, and Lord Mayor in 1454. Speaking of Ludgate, Strype says.

"There happened to be a prisoner there, one Stephen Foster, who (as poor men are at this day) was a cryer at the grate, to beg the benevolent charities of pious and commisserate benefactors that passed by. As he was doing his doleful office, a rich widow of London hearing his complaint, enquired of him what would release him ? To which he answered, Twenty pound; which she in charity expended; and clearing him out of prison, entertained him in her service; who, afterward falling into the way of merchandize, and increasing as well Dame Agnes, and married her. in wealth as courage, wooed his mistress,

"Her riches and his industry brought him both great wealth and honour, being afterwards no less than Sir Stephen Foster, Lord Mayor of the honourable City of London: yet whilst he lived in this great

honour and dignity, he forgot not the place of his captivity; but mindful of the sad and irksome place wherein poor men were imprisoned, bethought himself of enlarging it, to make it a little more delightful and pleasant for those who in aftertimes should be imprisoned and shut up therein. And, in order thereunto, acquainted his lady with this his pious purpose and intention, in whom likewise he found so affable and willing a mind to do good to the poor, that she promised to expend as much as he should do for the carrying on of the work; and having possessions adjoining thereunto, they caused to be erected and built the rooms and places following, that is to say, the paper house, the porch, the watchhall, the upper and lower lumbries, the cellar, the long ward, and the chapel for divine service; in which chapel is an inscription on the wall, containing these

words:

"This chapel was erected and ordained for the divine worship and service of God, by the Right Honourable Sir Stephen Foster, Knight, some time Lord Maior of this honourable city, and by Dame Agnes his wife, for the use and godly exercise of the prisoners in this prison of Ludgate, Anno 1454.

"He likewise gave maintenance for a preaching minister," and "ordained what he had so built, with that little which was before, should be free for all freemen, and that they, providing their own bedding, should pay nothing at their departure for lodging or chamber-rent."

This worthy Knight, whose memory should be married to that of Cat-Whittington, deserved his fortune--for it is not now, in these treadmill days, the fashion to make prisons "a little more delightful and pleasant" for those who are to abide in them. In speaking of Ludgate prison, Stow says:

"The said quadrant strongly builded of stone, by the before-named Stephen Foster,

and Agnes his wife, contayneth a large

walking place by grounde, the like roome it hath over it for lodgings, and over all a fayre leades to walke upon, well imbattayled, all for ease of prisoners, to the ende they shoulde have lodging and water free without charge: as by certaine verses grauen in copper, and fixed on the said quadrant, I have read in forme following: Deuout soules that passe this way,

for Stephen Foster late mayor, hartely

So that for lodging and water prisoners here nought pay,

as their keepers shall answere at dreadfull domes day.

"This plate, and one other of his armes, be fixed over the entrie of the said quataken downe with the old gate, I caused to drant, but the verses being unhappily turned inward to the wall, the like in effect is graven outward in prose, declaring him light occasion (as a maydens heade in a to be a fishmonger, because some upon a glasse window) had fabuled him to bee a mercer, and to have begged there at Ludgate."

It is well remarked by the editor of Old English Plays, to whom Mr. Planche (the patron of the present comedy) is, with ourselves, indebted for much interesting information, that the play is filled with gross anachronisms; but we will warrant that an audience would not think it wrong if Falstaff, Sir William Curtis, and Anne Bullein, were produced on the stage at one time as contemporaries.

There is little poetry in the play, and less wit. The widow, perhaps, speaks fairly, and there are some good popular lines about prisons and liberty, which come sounding from the boards with good effect; but the talk of the widow's clown is homespun enough, and the dialogue is, taken generally, rather in the costume than in the true spirit of the age of Fletcher and Ford. Mr. Planche has endeavoured, in various into poetry; and, to this end, he has places, to pamper up the language introduced the following very passable imitation of the old style.

Rob. (Aside, L.) Can she be mortal? I
have read of shapes
Like that, in legends of the olden days-
Rapt and inspired! Such a form she wore,
The beautiful imaginings of men,

The nymph of Elis, whom the river god
Through earth and ocean follow'd-or
The fond, ill-fated girl of Babylon!
young Thisbe,

How fair her forehead is! and that soft cheek

Wherein the bashful blood seems loath to dwell

Lest it should stain such purity! her eyes, How bright, and yet how full of gentleness! Fit lamps for such a shrine! what heart may 'scape

The silken meshes of yon nut brown hair, That clusters round her neck, like a dark vine,