ADELPHI THEATRE. We have already given a slight sketch of this happy dramatic adaptation from Dickens's admirable "romance of real life;" we will now proceed to illustrate it, more through the graphical agency of our artist, than by anything we could ourselves indite. Of the production itself, from which the theatrical representation has emanated, we have nothing to say, but "plaudit" from beginning to end: it exhibits the author not only as a caricaturist, but a philanthropist, a satirist, and, unlike the censors of old. a moralist. Neither Horace, Juvenal, nor Persius, could "touch the pitch" they wanted to make appear more black, "without defiling their own fingers;" but Dickens is never corrupted by his subject; he stands aloof and "shoots Vice as well as Folly" when it obtrudes itself upon his universal surveillance, with —
An arrow shot by Virtue — barb'd by Wit.
Related Material
- Scene from The Christmas Carol, at the Adelphi Theatre. From Edward Stirling's adaptation.
- Edward Stirling's "A Christmas Carol; or, Past, Present, and Future, A Burletta in Three Staves" (1844, in collaboration with Charles Dickens)
- Poster for Edward Stirling's "A Christmas Carol; or, Past, Present, and Future" at The Theatre Royal, New Adelphi (2 January 160)
- Theatres in Victorian London: The Adelphi (Strand)
- John Leech's Christmas Present with Ignorance and Want — "The Second of the Three Spirits," 119 (1843)
Bibliography
"Adelphi." [second review of Stirling's Carol] Illustrated London News, no. 94, Vol. IV (Saturday, 17 February, 1844), p. 109.
Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being A Ghost Story of Christmas. Illustrated by John Leech. London: Chapman and Hall, 1843.
Illustrated London News 4 (January-June 1844). Online version at the Hathi Triust Digital Library of a copy in the University of Michigan Library.
Patten, Robert L. Chapter 6, "Marley Was Dead." Dickens, Death, and Christmas. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 74-126. ISBN 978-0-19-286266-2. [Review]
Stirling, Edward. A Christmas Carol. Adelphi: 5 February, 1844. The Lord Chamberlain's Collection, MS. 42972 ff. 798-829. Licensed 27/01/1844.
Created 17 June 2019
Last modified 2 June 2024