What legitimate thing has not been tried in
connexion with all those splendid plays that
come within the category of the Legitimate
Drama? What is left to any man who would
make an effect with those plays, but to twist the
truth aside in efforts after novelty, to make
indeed new points by much straining, but points
that have only newness to recommend them,
and which are not borne out by the commonsense
view of the dramatist's text? All the
old parts have been performed as well as they
can be. Is it encouraging for an actress of
ability to work on in the hope, at best, of being
one day almost as good a Mrs. Haller as Miss
O'Neil; or for an actor to study and study with
perhaps the glorious prospect of hearing one day
"that some of his points remind one of the
performance of the elder Kean, only of course
there is not that force, that passion," &c.?

No, people cannot work with, such an end
in view as that, and so the talent of the time is
urged in another direction, and flows in a
different channel.

Closely on the decline of the Legitimate
Drama has followed the full development of the
Sensation School. Its full development, not its
origin. That must date very much further back.
For not to mention such sensation elements as
were allowed in the most legitimate plays—and
it must be owned that the sleep-walking of
Lady Macbeth, the closet scene in Hamlet, and
some few others, were rather of a sensational
character—without mentioning this union of
the two schools, so to speak, there are other
instances of sensation which may be adduced,
bearing a date long anterior to the time when
the term, in its present sense, was first
introduced into our dictionary. While yet the
Legitimate Drama was in full swing; while
one set of audiences were sitting on the Drury
benches, admiring the actor who stirred their
very hearts within them, and the man who
had purged the theatre of the abominations
which had formerly disgraced it—while
Macready was delighting one audience at Drury
Lane, and another was revelling in brilliant
repartee, humour, powder, patches, and Sheridan,
at the Haymarket—it must never be
forgotten that in the old Adelphi, dirty,
uncomfortable, and popular, sensation dramas were
being performed nightly to overflowing audiences.
It would be difficult to conceive anything
more sensational than one of those old Adelphi
melodramas, such as Victorine, or the Wreck
Ashore. There was a sensation-scene in that
last play, where the two women were left alone
in the cottage, and the vagabond, seen for a
moment by the flash of the lightning at the
window, began working at the latch; that was
as full of sensation as the dramatist could make
it. That new white latch working up and down
will be forgotten by no one who has once seen
it. It was wonderful.

Why should we not have sensation scenes?
To look on at one, is to be present at a
transaction of the extremest and most
absorbing interest. You look on while certain
individuals, in whose fortunes you have been
gradually interested, more or less, pass through
dangers of the most appalling kind, and are
rescued at the eleventh hour and the fifty-ninth
minute in some totally novel and unexpected
manner. This you look on at, all the time with
a sub-current of thought somewhere in your
mind, which tells you, first, that it is not real,
and, secondly, that it will be sure to come right,
and so you are kept from any undue misery, and
from any real apprehension about the fate of the
personages over whom the sword of Damocles is
hanging.

To trace the origin of the Sensation Drama
would be no very difficult matter, if a man chose
to set about it. The first germ of it is to be
found in the highest of all dramatic schools.
That germ has been continually tended and
cultivated in succeeding ages, till the time came when
that wondrous school of French playwrights
appeared, and taking the powerful young shoot in
hand, developed it with infinite skill and culture,
lopping and pruning it at the same time with
considerable self-denial and discreetness. But
lopped and pruned as it was, it certainly showed,
and showed to immense advantage too, in the
French drama at its best period.

How many years ago was it that a certain
French company came over to this town, and
getting possession of the Theatre Royal, Drury
Lane, announced for representation a dramatised
version of Monte-Cristo, which was to take two
nights in the acting? In the middle of that
play—that is to say, at the end of the first
night's performance—there was a sensation-
scene, the exciting nature of which could hardly
be surpassed. In front of the stage was a
sort of quay, bounded on the side furthest from
the audience by a dwarf wall. Beyond this, was
the sea, and at one side was seen a great high
promontory of rock with some of the fortifications
of the Chateau d'lf cresting it. The story
is known to everybody, of the prisoner
supposed to be dead, sewn up in the sack, and
thrown into the sea. The sack with its
contents was carried across the stage by the two
jailers, and slowly and laboriously taken to the
top of the rock. Once, twice, it was swung,
backwards and forwards between them, and
then, from that great height, down it went into
the abyss below. The jailers retired, and then,
after a long and terrible pause, two hands
appeared grasping and clutching the coping-stone
of the dwarf wall that edged the quay. This
was all. You saw the two hands, you knew
that the man was safe, and the curtain went
down. Surely this was a sensation-scene. Yet
it must be twelve or fifteen years since I saw it.

This plant which the French playwriters
cultivated with such care and pruned so
judiciously, has now, perhaps, run a little wild. This,
which the great authorities looked upon as only
one element in the composition of a drama, is
now, perhaps, too much regarded as the only
thing to be thought of. This is all. Perhaps,
it may be urged, that there is something of
monotony in the prevalent ideas of our modern