Letter from Lady Sarah Spencer to her brother, the Hon. Robert Spencer, 28 February 1811

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

120–121

text excerpt

You would have been quite of my opinion about the other gay place I have been at, and that was the play, where I saw the two fashionable pieces, “The Knight of Snowdoun” and “Bluebeard.” The first is, or means to be, the “Lady of the Lake” brought before you—all your imagination, when reading it, embodied and represented on the stage. I expected to be made angry by it, but was much more angry than I expected to be. All that a frightful little stick of an actress as Ellen, with red hair and skinny arms, could do to spoil her part was done, together with hideous music; disgusting comic characters brought in—Allan Bane turned into a silly clown, and Fitz-James into a sighing, whining, soft swain. In short, a horrid caricature of the poem, which I must try to drive clean out of my head before I can read the book again, or I shall be quite sick. After this came “Bluebeard,” and, do you know, Bob, that certainly, since the first time I saw the playhouse, I never was so enchanted as at this dear “Bluebeard.” It is a mere spectacle; but such delicious music, such good acting, such magnificent decorations, and at the end such wonderful machinery as it consists of would, I am sure, have made a child of Sir Isaac Newton. I quite trembled with delight, and could hardly walk steady out of the box.

excerpt from 'Letter from Lady Sarah Spencer to her brother, the Hon. Robert Spencer, 28 February 1811' pp. 120–121 (242 words)

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