These consist of a half-dozen of Hanoverian Whigs, who
enter, duly decorated with an equal number of hats of every variety of
cock and cockade. The heroine seems to have engaged herself here as
waitress, on purpose to meet her persecutor, _Sir Gregory_, and her late
lover, _Jack Ketch_. What comes of this rencontre it is impossible to make
out, for a general _melee_ ensues, caused by a discovery of the plot;
which is by no means a gunpowder plot; for although a file of soldiers
present their arms for several minutes full at the conspirators, not a
single musket goes off. Perhaps gunpowder was expensive in the reign of
George the First. _Jack Ketch_ ends the act with a dream--an _apropos
finale_, for we caught several of our neighbours napping. The scene in
which this vision takes place is the crowning result of the painter's
researches amongst the "best authorities;" it being no less than "a garret
in Grub-street, _in which the great Daniel De Foe composed his romance of
Robinson Crusoe!!_"
A fishing-party--whose dulness is relieved by a suicide--opens the last
act: one of the anglers having finished a comic song--which from its
extreme gravity forms an appropriate dirge to the forthcoming
felo-de-se--goes off with his companion to leave the water clear for
_Barbara Allen_, who enters, takes an affecting leave of her laird lover,
and straightway drowns herself.
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