R430218D. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon.
John Bull, 18 February 1843, pp. 108–109.
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 6.
Drury-Lane.—The new play and farce which were produced here on Saturday evening went off successfully: the latter, indeed, triumphantly. The first, named A Blot on the ’Scutcheon, is a tragedy in three acts, and so far an improvement on modern tragedies, by wanting the two additional acts, which, according to the conventional rule, are necessary to fill up the complement of a legitimate piece of the kind, and which, but too often, like needless Alexandrines, “drag their slow length along.” In compliment, we presume, rather to the acknowledged talent of the writer, Mr. Browning, the author of Paracelsus, than to any extraordinary merit in the piece itself, our daily contemporaries devoted more than usual study and care to a consideration of is merits and demerits. We believe it often occurs that the less there is to write about, the more abundantly is there written. The plot of the piece is told in few words. A maiden and a youth, both in the early dawn of life, have met, loved, and sinned. The first act shows the youth a suitor, accepted by the family. He scales the maiden’s window at night, as he had often done before, and pictures their future happiness; but she shrinks from meeting him in the presence of her family, who know not of her guilt, assuming the look of innocence, and receiving him as a stranger, and forebodes an unhappy termination of their loves. They part: it being fixed that they shall meet again by stealth the next night. Her brother, informed by an old retainer that a stranger visits his sister nightly, upbraids her with it. She confesses, but does not reveal who the stranger is. Accordingly the brother lies in wait the following night, meets the lover, discovers that the lover and honourable suitor are one; but, unrestrained by the discovery, slays him. An interview with the sister follows. She dies broken-hearted, and her [p. 109→] brother, having taken poison, dies directly after. the dramatis personæ are six. Three die; just one to an act.
The play is far from agreeable. You are required to believe the erring maiden as pure—as extreme youth, simplicity, and contrition can make the erring; yet, contrary to the natural suggestions of a pure-minded woman, about to redeem her errors as far as humanly possible, she consents to a stealthy meeting with her lover, though marriage is about to relieve her from the necessity of concealment. Here is the radical defect of the piece. It has other faults in plenty; but this is its crowning blot and sin.
Phelps acts the part which was evidently designed for Macready, that of the brother, and acts it well. Anderson has but little to do in the lover, and does that little gracefully. Miss Faucit is the heroine.
The language has occasional power; but it is the quick situation and novel construction of the piece, taking you like a bold, unfinished sketch, which has secured The Blot in the ’Scutcheon the temporary success with which it has met.
The farce, thanks to Keeley, is a true farce—what Jonathan would call, a regular screamer. It is hight The Thumping Legacy; the legacy being a bequest to a cockney of a family property in Corsica. Thither Keeley, unconscious of the “benefit” in store for him, flies on the wings of expectation, and finds the bequest to be—a death-feud, a clannish quarrel transmitted duly and punctually when there is nothing else to transmit. How he gets out of [t]he embarrassment, in justice to him and the author, Mr. Maddison Morton, we leave to be seen. But to see Keeley before he gets out of it, is the greater treat of the two.
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. V. A Blot in the ’Scutcheon (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1843.
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