Beresford, one could accept with entire pleasure if one could understand so winning and sensible a person having so little influence with her sister, or being so easily baffled by circumstances. Perhaps a sympathetic actress might have made the ungrateful part of Mrs. Macdonald not quite repulsive, not quite impossible. At present Mrs. Macdonald makes the impression, not of an interesting victim of passion, but of a personage morbid and perverse; and every scene between her and Victor de Riel is a misery. Victor de Riel is not ill acted; on the contrary, this exotic 'amant' is well acted-too well. The fatal likeness to the 'similis turpissima bestia nobis,' which so struck Alfieri in the passion-driven Frenchman, forces itself upon the mind; and the more passionate the love-making, the more that likeness forces itself on us. Why should cool-headed people hide their conviction that this sort of drama is detestable, even though the journals of society' call to one another, deep to deep, Edmund' to 'Henry,' that it is very good? One can imagine the grim colleague of Henry' surveying the 'society' which enjoys this half-true, factitious, and debilitating art, and waving Henry' aside while he himself cries sternly to their common constituents, the Northampton populace, Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire !'

May 25, 1883.

AN OLD PLAYGOER.

AN OLD PLAYGOER AT THE

LYCEUM

HISTORY tells us that the Sultanas of the famous Sultan Oulougbeb would not hear the philosophical romance of Zadig, but preferred to it an interminable succession of idle tales. How can you prefer,' asked the sage Sultan, a heap of stories utterly irrational, and which have nothing in them?' The Sultanas answered, 'It is just on that very account that we prefer them.' (C'est précisément pour cela que nous les aimons.')

By what magic does Mr. Irving induce the Sultanas to listen to Shakspeare? From the utterances of Captain Crichton, Mrs. Beresford, and Mrs. Macdonald, how does he manage to wile them away to the talk of Benedick and Beatrice of Benedick, capable of looking pale 'with anger, with sickness, or with hunger, not with love'; of Beatrice, upon my knees every morning and evening that God may send me no husband'? The truth is, in a community so large as ours you may hope to get a demand

for almost anything-not only for Impulse at the St. James's, or for the Biography of Mr. Archer and the Early Days of Mr. Marwood among visitors to Epsom, but even for the fantastic-Mr. Labouchere would add, the tiresome-comedy of Shakspeare at the Lyceum. Fantastic, at all events, it is. It belongs to a world of fantasy; not to our world, palpitating with actuality, of Captain Crichtons, and Fred Archers, and Marwoods. It so belongs to a world of fantasy that often we have difficulty in following it. 'He sets up his bills here in Messina, and challenged Cupid at the flight; and my uncle's fool, uncle's fool, reading the challenge, subscribed for Cupid, and challenged him at the bird-bolt.' Who understands without a commentary? Even where the wit is more evident and we can follow it, it is still the wit of another world from ours, a world of fantasy. He that hath a beard is more than a youth; and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me; and he that is less than a man, I am not for him; therefore I will take even sixpence in earnest of the bearward, and lead his apes into hell.'

But Mr. Labouchere deals hardly with himself in refusing to enter this Shakspearian world because it is a world of fantasy. Art refreshes us, art liberates us, precisely in carrying us into such a world, and enabling us to find pleasure there. He who will not be carried there loses a

great deal. For his own sake Mr. Labouchere should away to St. Peter for the heavens' with Beatrice; should let it be revealed to him 'where the batchelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.' With his care for seating his colleague and for reconstructing society, can he live as merry as the day is long now?

So salutary is it to be carried into a world of fantasy that I doubt whether even the comedy of Congreve and Wycherley, presented to us at the present day by good artists, would do us harm. I would not take the responsibility of recommending its revival, but I doubt its doing harm, and I feel sure of its doing less harm than pieces such as Heartsease and Impulse. And the reason is that Wycherley's comedy places us in what is for us now a world wholly of fantasy, and that in such a world, with a good critic and with good actors, we are not likely to come to much harm. Such a world's main appeal is to our imagination; it calls into play our imagination rather than our senses. How much more is this true of the ideal comedy of Shakspeare, and of a world so airy, radiant, and spiritual as that of Much Ado about Nothing!

But

One must rejoice, therefore, at seeing the Sultanas and society listening to Shakspeare's comedy; it is good for them to be there. how does Mr. Irving bring them? natural inclination is certainly more for a constant

Their

succession of idle tales' like the Dame aux Camélias or Impulse. True; but there is at the same time something in human nature which works for Shakspeare's comedy, and against such comedy as the Dame aux Camélias or Impulse; something prompting us to live by our soul and imagination rather than by our senses. Undoubtedly there is; the existence of this something is the ground of all hope, and must never, in our impatience at men's perversions, be forgotten. But to come into play it needs evocation and encouragement; how does Mr. Irving evoke it?

It is not enough to say that Much Ado about Nothing, in itself beautiful, is beautifully put upon the stage, and that of ideal comedy this greatly heightens the charm. It is true, but more than this is requisite to bring the Sultanas. It is not enough to say that the piece is acted with an evenness, a general level of merit, which was not to be found five-and-twenty years ago, when a Claudio so good as Mr. Forbes Robertson, or a Don Pedro so good as Mr. Terriss, would have been almost impossible. This also is true, but it would not suffice to bring the Sultanas. It cannot even be said that they are brought because certain leading or famous characters in the piece are given with a perfection hitherto unknown. The aged eyes of an 'Old Playgoer' have seen the elder Farren and Keeley in the parts of Dogberry and Verges.