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Vol. 1. No. 4.
PUNCHINELLO
SATURDAY, APRIL 23, 1870.
PUBLISHED BY THE
PUNCHINELLO PUBLISHING COMPANY,
THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.
Booth's Theatre has become famous as the place where Mr. MOLLENHAUER nightly leads his admirable orchestra, and plays with exquisite skill and infinite tenderness his unrivalled violin solos.
A large and elderly audience enters the portals with subdued and mournful mien. The ushers, who, in imitation of Mr. BOOTH, do a little of the classic brow and curl business themselves, chew tobacco with an air of resigned melancholy, and spit upon the carpet, as though renouncing the pleasures of the world and the decencies of civilization.
At the first intermission of the orchestra, the curtain rises upon the three Weird Sisters. Mr. HIND is a Weird Sister, and he improves the opportunity to howl with a weirdness that draws an involuntary laugh from an irreverent young lady.
The play proceeds. An inarticulate person is brought in on a litter, who looks like a Tammany man whom some irate young Democrat has "put a head on." He indulges in an inarticulate speech, which is warmly applauded by the gallery. Then the Weird Sisters meet MACBETH and BANQUO on the heath, and Mr. HIND howls at them until the Worldly-Minded auditor blesses the memory of the Salem witch-burners. Then the King brevets MACBETH. Then Lady MACBETH reads a letter from her husband with the demonstrative energy of a Chicago Wild Woman reading the decree that divorces her from a kind and honorable husband. Then the King arrives, and MACBETH and his wife agree to kill him. Then the curtain falls, and Mr. MOLLENHAUER repays the Worldly-Minded Person for having stayed through the first act. Conversation is indulged in by the audience in subdued whispers.
And the Worldly-Minded Person, walking homeward, soliloquizes in some such strain as this: "BOOTH can't play MACBETH; for he neither looks nor understands the character. FANNY MORANT can't play LADY MACBETH as perfectly as it should be played; but she tries to do her best, and is quite respectable. Nobody else plays any part with common decency. But then the scenery is good; the Scottish nobility look sufficiently hungry and seedy, and MOLLENHAUER is superb."
"Well! BOOTH can't do every thing; and we ought not to expect it. A man who plays HAMLET as well as he does, can't possibly play MACBETH. As well might we ask TENNYSON to turn Ward politician. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for building MOLLENHAUER so splendid a theatre, and for giving us the best IAGO and the best HAMLET that we have ever seen, or ever shall see. And so, I for one am ready to forget and forgive when be fails as MACBETH, and does not succeed as ROMEO."
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