The night sits on this gloomy heart—
I see an Indian on a hill top standing,
Part of the silent fixedness of things;
He breaks the mighty calm, wherein he stood
Slow striding down the mountain’s side.
Swifter and darker as he nears us we regard him,
Flashing and red, woe’s living thunder cloud,
And now, and now, he bends above us—
Dusk murder in the very person of itself—
So creeps this hideous witchcraft on me.
Or such bits of description as the following, a perfect picture in the limits of a sentence:
You recollect old Tituba, the shrivelled squaw,
Who wigwamed gloomily by the wood’s edge
Some summers past—
or so perfect an illustration as this of the gathering suspicions of his mother’s life in Gideon’s conversation—
Ever in his speech
There lived and moved as in the river stream
The fish, darkly and yet swift gliding
Old Ambla’s form,
Yet these were not the chief merits, but accessories only to the dramatic action; they never came to interrupt, but to aid the character and story. The longer single passages, or any just exhibition of the dialogue, would lead me beyond the limits of a letter.
In the general style of the acting—leading parts were taken by Mrs. Wallack, our old favourite Richings, and a very successful comical tipstaff by Chapman—and especially in the grouping and stage appointments no American play that we have seen has appeared to equal advantage. The scenery had been drawn on the spot at Salem, and Mr. Murdoch had been accompanied in his researches for the dress and costume of the period by Rev. Mr. Upham, the author of a book on the Salem Witchcraft. The bill states the costumes to have been “taken from portraits, paintings, &c. in possession of the Salem Historical Library association.” The Deacon, a Justice, an old goodwife were admirable.
We have rarely witnessed a performance where the interest excited was better sustained. The uproarious elements in the pit and galleries, of which we were fearful, were subdued to perfect silence; the laugh at the comic characters, the Deacon’s bloated presumption and Chapman’s comicalities, was quickly changed to the earnest or pathetic as Gideon or the Mother entered the scene. It was a long and satisfactory study. At the close, Mr. Murdoch was loudly called for, made a short speech to the effect that he rejoiced in the warm reception he had received that evening; that he attributed this solely to the merits of the unknown American author, who did not wish to be known as a dramatic writer, and for whom he had pledged to maintain, and would strictly, the anonymous.
