HOW well I can recall the effects produced upon my boyish imagination by the performance of an old melo-drama! — how, breathlessly I watched the assassins with their long daggers, and short swords, and gigantic pistols, creeping about the stage, to pizzicato music, in search of the good young man of the story, who was concealed behind a tree or a piece of ruin, but who would so recklessly expose himself to indulge in brief commentaries upon their movements; what terrible suspense I endured when the pale weird woman with the black hair, who passed all her life in moaning and cursing over some mysterious wrong, was attempting, to the tremulous wailings of the violins, the escape of the lovely captive from the robber's den; and how I could scarcely suppress a cry when the robber himself, all boots, buttons and pistols, suddenly barred their way! Then the great combat at the end, to the shrieking of fiddles, the blare of cornets, and the beating of drums, wherein the good young man fought two and sometimes three ruffians, and, although nearly overpowered more than once, ultimately succeeded in laying their black wigs low; then there was the rush on of the lovely captive, red fire and the apotheosis of virtue trampling upon vice. Very frequently there was a ghost, who appeared at opportune moments in lambent flames of blue fire, much to the terror of all the villains, and to the gratification of all the good people.

      The old melo-drama was strictly conventional; the robbers always wore dirty boots of untanned leather, jackets with many short tails and adorned with many buttons; long black hair and beards of burnt cork. It would be a curious ethnological inquisition to inquire into the origin of the old dramatic idea that wickedness is confined to black-haired people; since Lady Audley, however, there has been a run on red. There was no casuistry about the old melo-drama, no paltering with sin; vice and virtue were divided by impassable lines; trimming was impossible; you must be one thing or the other; poetical justice was always rigidly enforced, the triumph of wickedness was unknown in that world, and how anybody could be wicked when they knew that a terrible doom would inevitably overtake them, or how anybody could think of being otherwise than immaculately virtuous when they were so well rewarded for it, was one of those problems that could be referred only to the perversity of human nature.

      The name melo-drama, which signifies a play interspersed with vocal and instrumental music, was first applied by the Italians to what we now call opera, and between the earliest operas and the earliest melo-dramas there is a great resemblance; both took romantic and improbable stories for their plots, and the characters of both, in the most trying situations, would relieve their feelings by songs, duets, and concerted pieces. In the course of time the vocal introductions became fewer and fewer, until these were dispensed with altogether, and instrumental music alone was used to emphasise the action. The two earliest melo-dramas in the English language, "A Tale of Mystery," and "Deaf and Dumb," were written by the author of the "Road to Ruin," Thomas Holcroft; each has a dumb character and much of the action is carried on in pantomime; barons of the blackest dye of infamy, terrible assassins, virtuous and hospitable peasants, persecuted innocents, roaring torrents, thunder and lightning are the ingredients of these highly-flavoured stage dishes. Both were produced at the patent theatres and obtained such signal success that this species of dramatic composition became all the rage, and nearly every playwright of the day turned his attention to it.

      But it was the age of melo-drama; we had just been flooded with the grim and ghostly literature of Germany, and there was an insatiable appetite among the public for haunted castles, tyrant barons, mysterious freebooters. Scott was translating German ballads, Mrs. Radcliffe and her imitators were pouring forth copious streams of horror, and the stage, as usual, was by no means backward in following the public taste. And after all, it was but a natural reaction from the frigid, arid, lifeless, blank-verse tragedies, with their interminable speeches and utter lack. of interest, with which generations of playgoers had been bored or entertained. Let anyone buy a volume of these off one of the old book-stalls, where they still abound, and try to read a few pages, and he will then understand the eagerness with which a long-suffering public hailed any change which promised life, excitement, action, and which superseded the dreary classical stories — as rendered by eighteenth century dramatists — upon which every play-writer considered it his duty to try his 'prentice hand.

      Although Holcroft's two works preceded his attempts in the same line by several years, Matthew Gregory Lewis, the author of the once famous romance of "The Monk," was really the originator of the old melo-drama. "The Castle Spectre," produced at Drury Lane in 1797, crowded the theatre for sixty nights, a most marvellous run for those days, and was interpreted by some of the best actors of the period — John Kemble, Wroughton, Palmer, Bannister, Dowton, Mrs. Jordan being included in the cast. Spectres of the blue-fire school were then untried experiments in stage effect, and Sheridan, who was the manager at the time, was exceedingly dubious as to the reception the public might accord the ghost of the murdered Evelina, and tried very hard to induce the author to suppress it; but Lewis was obstinate, and the result justified his obstinacy; the ghost walked in her flame of blue fire, the audience were awe-inspired and delighted, and an apparition of some kind was considered henceforth essential to every romantic play. Earl Osmond became the type of conscience-haunted tyrants, of usurpers burdened with some awful secret and nightly pursued by the Nemesis of bad dreams, but whose chief pleasure during the day seemed to consist in ordering virtuous but abusive young men to be confined in dungeons beneath the castle moat; here also, in the person of Earl Reginald, we have the progenitor of many scores of captive fathers who have spent countless years, living, it would appear, like Othello's toad, "upon the vapours of a dungeon," and likewise many other conventional lay figures that linger in the minds of old playgoers. The language of "The Castle Spectre" is not so stilted as that of many of its successors; although written in that peculiar sentimental, vapid diction which obtained at the period, it is singularly bald and unmodulated prose. It is remarkable, perhaps, as containing one of the first protests against slavery heard upon the stage; the speech is put into the mouth of Hassan, one of the black myrmidons of Earl Osmond, and is a very favourable specimen of the style of the play:—

      "I have been dragged from my native land, from a wife who was everything to me, to whom I was everything! Twenty years have elapsed since these Christians tore me away; they trampled upon my heart, mocked my despair, and when in frantic terms I raved of Samba, laughed, and wondered how a negro's soul could feel! In that moment, when the last point of Africa faded from my view, when, as I stood on the vessel's deck, I felt that all I loved was to me lost for ever, in that bitter moment did I banish humanity from my heart. I tore from my arm the bracelet of Samba's hair; I gave to the sea the precious token, and while the high waves swiftly bore it from me, vowed, aloud, endless hatred to mankind. I have kept my oath, I will keep it." Some time ago "The Castle Spectre" was revived at one of the West End theatres in order to cast ridicule upon the plays of a past generation. It would have been about as logical to have given "Macbeth Travestie" as a specimen of Shakespeare. To understand the effect produced upon our ancestors by such representations we should have to reproduce all the conditions under which they witnessed them, an almost impossible undertaking — we must have the high-falutin exaggerated style of acting which the language demanded, actors especially trained to deliver it, and, above all, an audience to whom they could seriously appeal. Fifty years hence, when the dramatic style has entirely changed, some manager may revive a favourite drama of the present day, which will certainly appear equally ludicrous to our grandchildren.

      Another famous melo-drama written by Lewis, was "Rugantino," founded upon his own romance of "The Bravo of Venice;" which was taken from a German source, as, indeed, was the case more or less with all these productions. Does any reader remember that extraordinary spectral drama, "Raymond and Agnes, or the Bleeding Nun of Lindenberg," founded upon an episode in "The Monk"? A most astounding piece of diablerie, banditti, and creepiness. It is not so many years ago since it was played at the Haymarket" as an after-piece. Then there was "One o'Clock, or the Knight and the Wood Demon," also by Lewis. Only think of the title, and the expectations it would excite among an audience that delighted in horrors. This work by its numerous vocal pieces, choruses, songs, duets, fully justified the term melo-drama: I can remember it being a stock play in good provincial theatres.

      We should scarcely suspect the author of "Gilbert Gurney" and the "Berners Street Hoax," of being an imitator of Matthew Lewis, yet he was the author of two melo-dramas, one of which, "Tekeli," was very famous in its day, famous for its processions and "terrific" combats; the elder Hook composed some very tuneful music for it.

      One's theatrical recollections need not go very far back to remember "The Miller and his Men," and O'Keefe's "Castle of Andalusia" at the Haymarket; only a few years before his death Buckstone took the latter for his benefit; both were essentially operatic, and the beautiful music composed by Bishop for the former piece is not likely to be forgotten. The round "When the Wind Blows," and the sestette "Stay, Prithee Stay," are among that composer's most charming compositions; the blowing up of the windmill and the bandit millers was considered a great stage effect at the beginning of the present century, and probably excited as much wonder and admiration among our grandfathers as did the cave scene of the "Colleen Bawn," or the fire scene of the "Streets of London," among their descendants, a few years back. It was melo-drama that first brought in elaborate stage effects and gorgeous accessories, and during the so-called palmy days of the Kembles, while a few pairs of dingy "flats,' and a collection of dingy dresses that had done service for a generation, were considered good enough for "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," the managers of the great theatres lavished large sums upon real water, elephants, horses, supers, gorgeous scenery and dresses to illustrate such productions as "Timour the Tartar," the "Cataract of the Ganges," "Aladdin" — not the burlesque, but a veritable, serious drama — and turned the stage into the platform of a menagerie; and the classical houses were crowded to witness absurdities that a Whitechapel costermonger would not tolerate now-a-days. As an instance, we may quote the combat to music, in a drama entitled the "Dumb Maid of Genoa;" in this the combatants, each armed with a short, blunt, basket-hilted sword, timed every blow with the orchestra. Sometimes each note had its corresponding clash, at others the combatants had to rest their "minim rest," and engage only upon the beat of the bar. To see them chop at one another in what was technically called "the round eights," aiming and parrying blows while turning pirouettes, and performing other fantastic movements, and stabbing one another to strong "chords," was to see a thing beyond the power even of burlesque to travesty.

      As the minor theatres arose, melo-drama received a new impetus. Previous to the repeal of the Licensing Act of 1737, the two patent theatres in the winter, and the Haymarket in the summer, had the monopoly of what was called the legitimate drama, and the new houses could perform only such pieces as came under the designation of "Burlettas;" by which was understood any kind of play, each act of which contained a certain number of vocal pieces. These regulations brought forth a series of musical farces at the more fashionable houses, such as the Lyceum, and a number of strong dramas for audiences who loved more solid viands.

      The greatest of melo-dramatists, if quantity be the test, of this latter period was Edward Fitzball. For many years this indefatigable playwright supplied both major and minor houses, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Sadler's Wells, and the Surrey, with numberless spectacles, librettos, and dramas. His "Floating Beacon" was one of the earliest, if not the earliest nautical drama of the kind that T. P. Cooke familiarised our fathers with, especially written for the glorification of the British tar, and to show that virtue is not only morally but physically stronger than vice, since one virtuous sailor was always equal to half-a-dozen "piratical swabs." It was a wonderful sight to see one of those "terrific combats," which was always made a particular feature in the bill. With a sword in each hand, the Jack Junk or the Ben the Boatswain would attack any number of black-muzzled, long-haired, petticoat-trousered pirates, who, whatever their other failings might have been, were not deficient in courtesy, since they never objected to give their assailant breathing time. Then, with the most astounding confidence in his own quickness of eye and readiness of arm, he would sit upon the hilt of his sword, take out his tobacco-pouch, and refresh himself with a toothsome plug, all the time heaping upon his foes the most villainous epithets, which they endured with a patience truly pitiful; or if they advanced a step, down would come his sword upon one of their feet — a process he called cutting their corns; in fact, he played with them as a cat does with a mouse, certain the game was in his own hands.

      Another curious variety of the melo-drama was "the dog-piece," in which the avenging Nemesis of vice was canine instead of human. The first and most famous of these plays was the "Forest of Bondy; or the Dog of Montargis," founded upon a well-known and veritable French story, of which the following is a brief résumé:— Aubrey, a young officer who is in great favour with his general, is set upon in a lonely part of the forest by two comrades, Macaire and Landry, who are jealous of the preference shown him, and, after a furious resistance, is murdered. Aubrey has a fine Newfoundland dog, which attends him wherever he goes, but which the villains have enticed from his side and tied to a tree, while they have committed the crime. The act-drop falls upon the death of Aubrey; it rises again upon the farm house, where the young officer has been staying; on rushes the dog, who has contrived to break his bonds, he jumps over a stile and pulls at the handle of the bell. Out come the people, one with a lantern, which the dog seizes in his mouth, and then leads the way to the scene of the murder. Macaire and Landry are suspected, and in the last scene, while they are protesting their innocence, on springs the canine detective, who, recognising no law but lynch law, fastens upon the red pad that Landry has concealed beneath his throat; grasping the dog's neck, to make him hold tighter, he rushes round the stage, then rolls over and over, shrieks "Mussy, mussy!" — dog-men always pronounced the word so-but the faithful animal is inexorable, and the wretch expires in strong agonies. The new sensation was an immense success, and consequently dog-pieces and dog-men became as plentiful as blackberries. Some years ago, one of these latter, a man evidently of daring imagination, conceived the idea and carried it out, of altering "Hamlet" into a dog-piece. The melancholy Prince was attended wherever he went by a faithful "dawg," which had belonged to his father, and, in the last scene, he saved his master from embruing his own hands in blood by taking upon himself the office of Claudius's executioner. It must have been a novel spectacle to see the wicked king writhing under the fangs of a Newfoundland dog.

      Although resembling it in every point, except that the one dealt with vice and virtue as they appear in baronial halls, and the other with vice and virtue as they appear in peasants' cottages and the back slums of towns, the domestic drama can scarcely be considered to be an offshoot of the melo-drama; the former owes its origin rather to the sentimental comedy of the last century, in which the frivolities of high life were blended with a pathetic story of poor and persecuted virtue. The works of Cumberland and Colman the younger, Holcroft, and Mrs. Inchbald afford numerous specimens of this kind of composition; in the drama the comedy was eliminated or changed into vulgar buffoonery, and the action was carried on to musical accompaniment. Neither the tyrant baron and persecuted heroine of the "Monk" Lewis school, nor the Jack Junk and piratical swab of the Fitzball, were more absurd lay figures than the virtuous peasant and the pride of the village of the old domestic drama. Who does not remember that oppressively virtuous peasant, who never worked, but passed his whole time in preaching moral platitudes, who always carried a little bundle tied up in a cotton handkerchief — supposed to contain his wardrobe — at the end of his stick, who was ubiquitous when sweet Jessie or Rose was attacked by her enemy, the wicked squire? And oh that wicked squire in sticking-plaster, crinkly boots, black frock coat and riding-whip-he never moved without a riding-whip. Wicked as he was he certainly had a hard time of it; everybody was down upon him; the low comedy man bullied him; the chambermaid gave him her mind pretty freely, and sometimes her umbrella; the heroine overwhelmed him with high- flown denunciations, and the virtuous peasant belaboured him with his fists, and, what must have been a worse infliction, with his sermons; nevertheless he was of a hopeful disposition, but limited vocabulary. "Ha! foiled again! but it is no matter; a time will come, proud maiden," &c. — this was his invariable formula after every defeat. Then there was the father of the heroine, with an ovine head of hair to which he was constantly referring. The first act usually fell upon his cursing his innocent daughter, who had been lured away by a villain. Of course there was always a marriage certificate that turned up in the last scene, for there was no tampering with the proprieties, no Gallic tendencies were allowed, in these pieces, and if a magdalen was introduced, she was punished as relentlessly as even one of her own sex could desire. And the language of these plays! The village maidens spoke in stilted. heroics adorned with tropes and metaphors, and the simplest expressions were converted into fine periphrases. But the authors scarcely exceeded in this respect the absurd diction which the fashionable audiences of Drury Lane and Covent Garden had admired half a century earlier in the writings of Cumberland and Mrs. Inchbald. Fashion in language, like fashion in dress, always descends in the social scale, and the verbal elegancies of one generation, like its costume, are the mode of the alley long after they have been rejected by the fashionable world.

      The British public trembled, and wept, and laughed over these productions, and thought them very delightful until burlesque exposed their absurdities, and a terrific combat could be no longer witnessed without suggesting a Guy Faux figure with a sword under each arm — supposed to be through his body — looking out for a soft board to die upon, and afterwards coming to life again to join in a wild dance; the village maiden could no longer trip upon the stage without recalling the antics of Thorne and Terry, and a breakdown. The pride of the village and all her surroundings still flourish at certain suburban theatres, or at least at one, where the audience sympathise with them as deeply as ever. The last home of the old melo-drama, of the "Monk" Lewis school, west of Temple Bar, was the old Queen's, now the Prince of Wales's, which was known among actors by the suggestive name of the "Dust-hole." The titles alone of some of the dramas produced there are dramatic curiosities. I remember one which particularly struck me; it was "The Poison Tree of Java; or, the Spectre Bride and the Demon Nun." I witnessed its performance; I have no recollection of the plot, but I remember that the villain was hurled into the corner thirteen times during the three acts while attempting his nefarious designs, and that I lost all patience with him for not repenting and trying the paths of virtue, just by way of experiment, and if only to free himself from the visitation of such objectionable ghosts.

      With the "Colleen Bawn" Mr. Dion Boucicault introduced a new school of melo-drama, which has since been dubbed the sensational; in this the actor and the author are subordinated to the scene- painter, carpenter, and property man, and the situation is made to depend upon scenic instead of imaginative effects. What a wonderful hit that water-cave scene made, with its gauze waters, and double trap — which by the way, it is said, was the idea of the New York stage carpenter, and not of the author; then followed "The Octoroon," with the burning ship; "Arrah-na-Pogue," prettiest of Irish dramas, with the ingenious tower set; "The Streets of London," with the burning house; "After Dark," with the Underground Railway. But in these days, when the Meritts and Pettits and Simses have grasped the sceptre of the great Dion, all the sensational scenes just mentioned would no more than suffice for a single drama, so ravenous have we become for realistic horrors.

      Melo-drama, assuredly, is still one of the most popular forms of dramatic entertainment; it flourishes at Drury Lane, at the Princess's, at the Adelphi, and sometimes even at the Lyceum, to say nothing of the theatres it languishes at. But it is not the old melo-drama; it is sensational, but seldom romantic; it is realistic to an extreme, and its characters are certainly taken from life, though from a kind of life concerning the propriety of presenting which there may be various opinions; poetic justice is still fulfilled to the end, but vice and virtue get a little more mixed than it used to with the old writers. Fashions, however, change in stage art as well as in literature and everything else, and moralise as we will, we are all equally powerless to resist it; we can no more recall the old relish with which we read the books and witnessed the plays of our youth than we could recall the pride we took in the garments we wore at the time, which we then considered the height of elegance, and which we should now regard as the acme of hideousness. As an instance, not so many years had elapsed between the time that Charles Kean thrilled all London with the supernatural romance of the "Corsican Brothers," and that of its revival under Mr. Irving. Many of those who remembered the first production went to the Lyceum thinking that the old sensations excited by the rising of the ghost through the famous trap would be renewed; but with every disposition to be so impressed, the experiment was a failure; there was no thrill, the delusion never enthralled us; the peculiar mental condition that these effects had once appealed to had passed away, and but for the splendid mounting, which far surpassed all that had been seen before, and the fame of the management, the "Corsican Brothers" would have been a dead failure.

H. BARTON BAKER.