His Name Is
Edwin, And He Is, Without Doubt, One Of The Best Actors Of All That
I Have Seen.
This school-master is in love with a certain country girl, whose
name is Cowslip, to whom he makes
A declaration of his passion in a
strange mythological, grammatical style and manner, and to whom,
among other fooleries, he sings, quite enraptured, the following
air, and seems to work himself at least up to such a transport of
passion as quite overpowers him. He begins, you will observe, with
the conjugation, and ends with the declensions and the genders; the
whole is inimitably droll:
"Amo, amas,
I love a lass,
She is so sweet and tender,
It is sweet Cowslip's Grace
In the Nominative Case.
And in the feminine Gender."
Those two sentences in particular, "in the Nominative Case," and "in
the feminine Gender," he affects to sing in a particularly
languishing air, as if confident that it was irresistible. This
Edwin, in all his comic characters, still preserves something so
inexpressibly good-tempered in his countenance, that notwithstanding
all his burlesques and even grotesque buffoonery, you cannot but be
pleased with him. I own, I felt myself doubly interested for every
character which he represented. Nothing could equal the tone and
countenance of self-satisfaction with which he answered one who
asked him whether he was a scholar? "Why, I was a master of
scholars." A Mrs. Webb represented a cheesemonger, and played the
part of a woman of the lower class so naturally as I have nowhere
else ever seen equalled. Her huge, fat, and lusty carcase, and the
whole of her external appearance seemed quite to be cut out for it.
Poor Edwin was obliged, as school-master, to sing himself almost
hoarse, as he sometimes was called on to repeat his declension and
conjugation songs two or three times, only because it pleased the
upper gallery, or "the gods," as the English call them, to roar out
"encore." Add to all this, he was farther forced to thank them with
a low bow for the great honour done him by their applause.
One of the highest comic touches in the piece seemed to me to
consist in a lie, which always became more and more enormous in the
mouths of those who told it again, during the whole of the piece.
This kept the audience in almost a continual fit of laughter. This
farce is not yet printed, or I really think I should be tempted to
venture to make a translation, or rather an imitation of it.
"The English Merchant, or the Scotchwoman," I have seen much better
performed abroad than it was here. Mr. Fleck, at Hamburg, in
particular, played the part of the English merchant with more
interest, truth, and propriety than one Aickin did here. He seemed
to me to fail totally in expressing the peculiar and original
character of Freeport; instead of which, by his measured step and
deliberate, affected manner of speaking, he converted him into a
mere fine gentleman.
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