enice Preserved" is now shelved as an
acting drama, but it was formerly received with extraordinary favour,
and is by no means deficient in poetic merit. Campbell, the poet,
speaks of it, in his life of Mrs. Siddons, as "a tragedy which so
constantly commands the tears of audiences that it would be a work of
supererogation for me to extol its tenderness. There may be dramas
where human character is depicted with subtler skill--though Belvidera
might rank among Shakespeare's creations; and 'Venice Preserved' may
not contain, like 'Macbeth' and 'Lear,' certain high conceptions which
exceed even the power of stage representation--but it is as full as a
tragedy can be of all the pathos that is transfusable into action."
Belvidera was one of Mrs. Siddons's greatest characters. Campbell
notes that "until the middle of the last century the ghosts of Jaffier
and Pierre used to come in upon the stage, haunting Belvidera in her
last agonies, which certainly require no aggravation from spectral
agency." The play was much condensed for presentment on the stage; but
it would not appear that Belvidera's dying speech, quoted above, was
interfered with. Boaden, in his memoir of the actress, expressly
commends Mrs. Siddons's delivery of the passage, "I'll dig, dig the
den up!" and the action which accompanied the words.

For the time ghosts had been only incidental to a performance;
by-and-by they were to become the main features and attractions of
stage representation. Still they had not escaped ridicule and
caricature. Fielding, in his burlesque tragedy of "Tom Thumb,"
introduced the audience to a scene between King Arthur and the ghost
of Gaffer Thumb. The king threatens to kill the ghost, and prepares to
execute his threat, when the apparition kindly explains to him, "I am
a ghost and am already dead." "Ye stars!" exclaims King Arthur, "'tis
well."

In his humorous notes to the published play, Fielding states, with
mock gravity: "Of all the particulars in which the modern stage falls
short of the ancient, there is none so much to be lamented as the
great scarcity of ghosts. Whence this proceeds I will not presume to
determine. Some are of opinion that the moderns are unequal to that
sublime sort of language which a ghost ought to speak. One says
ludicrously that ghosts are out of fashion; another that they are
properer for comedy; forgetting, I suppose, that Aristotle hath told
us that a ghost is the soul of tragedy," &c. &c. But