The _Huguenot_, which has just died a lingering death at
BOOTH'S Theatre, is an aggravated case of dramatic misdemeanor on the
part of the author, since it is wantonly stretched out into five acts,
when it could properly be compressed into three. A strict compliance
with the old maxim, "_De mortuis nil desperandum nisi prius_," (I
haven't quite forgotten my Latin yet,) would oblige me to refrain from
abusing it, now that it is happily dead; but, as another proverb puts
it, "The law knows no necessity," and I therefore can do as I choose.
Here, then, is its corpse, exhumed as a warning to those who may be
about to witness any other of Mr. PHILLIPS'S dramas. I flatter myself
that the disinterested public will agree with me, that if all the
Huguenots were as tedious as Mr. WATTS PHILLIPS'S private _Huguenot_,
the massacre of St. BARTHOLOMEW was a pleasing manifestation of a very
natural and commendable indignation on the part of their much-suffering
fellow-citizens not of Protestant descent.
ACT I.--_Scene, a tavern in the outskirts of Paris_. RENE, _the
Huguenot, is pretending to sleep on an uncomfortable wooden bench. A
drunken villain insults a lovely gipsy_. RENE _gets up and kills him,
and escapes his pursuers by falling over a convenient precipice.
Curtain_.
Mr. WALLER. (_Soliloquizing behind the scene_.) "To-morrow I'll have a
comfortable bench to sleep on, if I have to take MACGONIGLE'S sofa. I
won't play RENE again if I have to lie for twenty minutes on that
infamous board bench!"
COMIC MAN.
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