Page:Papers on Literature and Art (Fuller).djvu/368

182

.—We have received a letter from a correspondent in Philadelphia, touching the new play produced in that city on Monday evening last:

, Tuesday, May 5, 1846.&emsp; Mr. Murdoch’s new play of Witchcraft was performed last evening at the Walnut street theatre, to one of the most crowded houses of the season. The play had been prominently announced and spoken of in several of the morning papers, and had evidently created great expectation in advance. Tier above tier, from the orchestra to the gallery, rose the vast surface of heads. Here we thought was the material to try fully the new play. If it could hold the attention of this crowded body, it would be a success far beyond the approval of the few packed critical friends who generally attend on such occasions. The critics were not wanting either; the intellect of Philadelphia was well represented on the occasion. The curtain rose on a woodland scene in old Salem, and presently Mr. Murdoch appeared in his character of Gideon Bedish. He was never dressed or looked to greater advantage than in his closely fitting russet coat; his attitudes were after his manner exceedingly graceful, his voice music itself. In scene after scene, in every act, he drew down repeated applause, as he delivered one passage after another of singular poetic beauty, or fierce indignant eloquence.

It was evident from the first moment that the play was wholly unlike the ordinary efforts under the name of the “American Drama.” It was bold, confident, original in illustration, and in the incidents and developments of the plot. The stage situations were new. The confirmation of Gideon’s doubts of his mother’s guilt of witchcraft at the crisis of the play by a species of sacred divination, an augury from a chance opened passage of the Bible, and the solemn introduction of a child to confront the accused in the grand trial scene, as they were managed, were proofs of undoubted genius on the part of the author.—The play was sown all over with the happiest poetical expressions, not merely in the leading parts, but with an unaccustomed prodigality on the part of a modern dramatist were thrown away, for stage purposes, on the lips even of the supernumeraries. Take such lines as these in the mouth of the mother, as she solves one of the perplexities of the piece—her apparent guilt; not that of witchcraft, but the life-long remorse for the murder of her husband in a duel, whom she might have saved by declaring her innocence, which she was too proud to prove:

or this illustration, finely delivered by Murdoch, of the dark silent approach of the superstition upon the soul—