A NEW THING'Uncle Tom's Cabin' has been dramatized, and draws nightly large houses at the National of New York. The representation is gotten up 'well,' and the New York Herald declares that it is received with rounds of applause. 'Negro traders,' it says, 'with their long whips, cut and slash their poor slaves about the stage for mere pastime, and a gang of poor wretches, handcuffed to a chain which holds them all in marching order, two by two, are thrashed like cattle to quicken their pace. Uncle Tom is scourged by the trader, who has bought him, for 'whining' at his bad luck. A reward is posted up, offering four hundred dollars for the runaway, Edward Wilmot, (who, as well as his wife, is nearly white,) the reward to be paid upon 'his recovery, or upon proof that he has been killed.' But Wilmot shoots down his pursuers in real Christian style, as fast as they come, and after many marvelous escapes, and many fine ranting abolition speeches, (generally preceding his dead shots,) he is liberated as we have described.' And this is received with rounds of applause in New York nightly. How the play is written we cannot say; what its mode of action we are unable to determine; but the plot of Mrs. Stowe is followed, except that Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe are set free. The small bills set forth the incidents of the play thus:- Act 1 — Exterior of Uncle Tom's Cabin on Shelby's Plantation; Negro Celebration, Chorus; 'Nigga in de Cornfield;' Kentucky Breakdown Dance; Innocence Protected; Slave Dealers on hand; Come then to the Feast; the Mother's Appeal; Capture of Morna; Interior of Uncle Tom's Cabin; Midnight Escape; Tom driven from his Cabin; Search of the Traders; Miraculous Escape of Morna and her Child; Offering Prayer; the Negroes Hope; Affecting Tableau. Act 2 — Family Excitement; Dark Threatenings; Ohio River frozen over; Snow Storm; Flight of Morna and her Child; Pursuit of the Traders; Desperate Resolve and Escape of Morna on Floating Ice; Mountain Torrent and Ravine; Cave of Crazy Mag; Chase of Edward; Maniac's Protection; Desperate Encounter of Edward and Traders on the Bridge; Fall of Springer down the Roaring Torrent; Negro Chorus, 'We Darkies Hoe the Corn;' Meeting of Edward and Morna; Escape over Mountain Rocks. Act 3 — Roadside Inn; Advertisement Extraordinary; the Slave Auctioneer; Rencontre between Edward and Slave Dealers; Interposition of Crazy Mag; Arrival from the West Indies; Singular Discovery; Mountain Dell; Recognition of the Lost Mother; Repentance and Remorse; Return of Tom; The Log Cabin in its Pride; Freedom of Edward and Morna, &c. Strange, is it not? A few years since, and the crowd at the National would have mobbed an anti-slavery speaker. Now it cheers—'rounds of applause,' we are told, follow the representation of the play nightly, and, at the most popular theatre in New York, no play has had such a run as Uncle Tom. New York Herald says— 'We would advise all concerned, to drop the play of Uncle Tom's Cabin at once and forever. The thing is in bad taste, is not according to good faith to the Constitution, or consistent with either of the two Baltimore platforms; and is calculated, if persisted in, to become a firebrand of the most dangerous character tot he peace of the whole country.' Bennett is a Satanic wag. The gravity with which he affects to regard such a play as 'not according to good faith to the Constitution, or consistent with either of the two Baltimore platforms,' is inimitable as a stroke of satire. |