R530501A. Colombe’s Birthday.
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 1 May 1853, p. 8.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 396.
Jeremy Taylor’s Sermon on the Wedding Ring has just as much of the true dramatic element in it as Robert Browning’s Colombe’s Birthday, introduced to the Haymarket audience on Monday. Mr. Browning is a poet, whose fame has been, and will be, of slow growth; but it will strike deep root, and be of majestic proportions. Now, Colombe’s Birthday—with many lovely poetic things gleaming through the tissue of the story—is all too delicate for stage development; it is in no sense practically dramatic. We question if the greatest, the subtlest genius of an actress could impart stage interest to Colombe. What, then, must it be with Miss Faucitt; whose affectations seem to increase with her years? Always of a false and artificial school, her acting on Monday night surpassed herself in the unreal. If there was no ingenuous, no impulsive nature, there was the frigid simulation of the most dainty, the most melting, and most fragile womanhood:—
“A creature all too sweet and good
For human nature’s daily food.”
We confess that we prefer heroines of warm flesh and warmer blood, and not heroines made of pound cake or modelled of blancmange. And then Colombe, in the page of the poet, is such a young thing—such a budding flower! But we suppose in stage-matters the indignation of the ancient Juliet will always hold as good and justifiable. “Here,” said the superseded actress, “here have I been playing Juliet five-and-thirty years, and the manager takes the part from me to give to a chit of a thing not above eighteen!” Colombe’s Birthday fell coldly upon the audience: not much unlike in its effect to one of our late April showers. Folks shivered, when they should have glowed.
Reviewed:
Colombe’s Birthday (RB), performance, London, 25 April 1853.
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