VOL. III., No. 17.

The price of yearly subscription to THE THEATRE is three dollars in advance. The Editor solicits contributions from the readers of THE THEATRE, and suggests that old play-bills, and scraps relating to the stage, notes, news and items appertaining to the different arts, would be acceptable. It is the desire of the Editor to establish a widely-circulated magazine, and to further that end every good idea will be acted upon so far as possible. Care is always taken not to needlessly destroy valuable manuscript. All articles appearing in THE THEATRE are written especially for it unless credited otherwise.

ENTRE NOUS.

IN the last number of Harper's Weekly is published the reply of M. Coquelin to an article by Mr. Irving, which recently appeared in the Nineteenth Century. The great French actor, says he cannot admit that Charles I. be made to walk and to talk like Mr. Irving's Mathias in "The Bells," like Hamlet and also like Iago. He also declares that his Mephistopheles is like his Romeo. Mr. Irving cited Kean as "who sometimes" passed from one character to another with little more external variation than was suggested by a corked mustache. M. Coquelin regards this as the perfection of art and adds:

'On the stage, Kean, in order to pass from Romeo to Richard III., did not limit himself to so summary an exterior modification; and the second is that even in drawing rooms he did not remain the same man in the two roles. I guarantee that his voice changed; that, ardent and passionate in Romeo, it became sarcastic and crafty to express Richard; that in the same way his breast, instead of being broad, manly, throbbing, shrank up; that his shoulder grew humpy; that his attitude became cringing, and that when de drew himself up it was with the movements of a serpent. And this, I imagine, did not impair the poetry of Shakespeare.'

Now Mr. Irving said to M. Coquelin : "You affirm that a hideous soul should have a hideous body, and that Mephistopheles should therefore be represented as an image of deformity; a conception, scarcely in harmony with

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the enlightenment of our age, and as primative as the orthodoxy which used to insist that the devil wore horns and a tail."

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Then M. Coquelin replies:

"What have we to do here with the enlightenment of our age? Was Mephistopheles a personage of our times? Is it my fault if the middle ages, which created the character, made him deformed, obeying therein an old human tendency of which there still remains something, whatever Mr. Irving may say to the contrary? Is it my fault if Goethe conformed with the legend? For in plain words Mephisto's cloven foot is mentioned twenty times in 'Faust," and his walk must evidently be affected by this peculiarity. Does not Marguerite conceive a horror of him on account of his ugliness? I did not find it contrary to the spirit of the role when I saw Levinsky represent Mephistopheles with a slight hump on his back; not because, as Mr. Irving thinks, a hump is to my mind a symbol of cynicism,' but because, according to popular prejudices. It always emplies wit and often malice, two characteristics which cannot be denied to Mephisto."

M. Coquelin then proceeds to bring Mr. Irving to task for annihilating the role of Faust and says that the piece does what Mephisto does not-it limps.

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It seems to me that theoretically M. Coquelin is not far wrong. But Mr. Irving does not, however, attempt to follow the traditions in every way, and his representation of Mephistopheles is most agreeable as it is.

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ON Saturday night Mr. Irving gave his performance of "Jingle," a sketch that particularly suits him, and which had not been seen before in New York. His portrait in that character, published in this number of THE THEATRE will be looked at with interest. I wish Mr. Irving would include "The Lyons Mail" in his New York programme. I think that shows his abilities more than anything else he does. I understand that his Digby Grant in "Two Roses" is a remarkably fine piece of acting.

A friend at my elbow who saw him do this before he became famous, thinks he has never done anything better.

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THE caustic critic of London Truth is very severe about "Our Mary's" performance of the dual roles of Hermione and Perdita in "The Winter's Tale." Miss Anderson's ideas of tragedy are not to the Truth man's taste at all. He declares that it consists of two deep chest notes, which she keeps concealed until suddenly, to everybody's surprise, she "lets them out with a bang." Further he says Miss Anderson's Hermione is "uninteresting and commonplace," and her Perdita “sprightly and unimaginative." But when "Gur Mary" began to pose for the Truth man, she touched even his adamantine breast, as will be seen by the following burst of eulogy:

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But in the art of posture she is unrivaled. Finer by far than anything she has ever done before is the attitude of the actress when, at the conclusion of a thunderstorm, she hears that her boy Mammilius is dead. If a sculptor could produce in marble anything like that effect he would make a fortune. By a clever twist Miss Anderson gets her white veil stretched as a covering at the back of the head, and forming a background for a face blanched with terror. The form is half recumbent here; then suddenly lifting herself up to her full height, the veil is dropped over the face of agony, and the marble statue falls upon the floor. This lady's admirers have over and over again raved about her beauty as the statue Galatea, but they have never seen such sculptured attitudes as these. If she could only act as well as she can attitudinize, she would be greater than Rachel, for nature has given her gifts denied to her most brilliant predecessors.

army, and when desirous of a change declares war with her neighbors and gets her husband killed. The successor to her heart succeeds to the command of her army, and in turn faces the foe and dies. This is carried out to a rather tiresome length, enlivened, however, by the absurd dilemmas into which each lover falls through his previous amatory engagements. I wouldn't like to offer a prize to the persons guessing the source from which the author of "The Begum" got his plot. However, the "Grand Duchess" is clever enough to provoke endless imitation, but the author of "The Begum "might have colored his imitation with a little more in

genuity and respect for the feelings of experienced playgoers.

CAN anybody tell me the difference between a comic opera, an opera comique, an opera bouffe, and a comedy opera. Wagner tried with some success to teach the world the difference between a music drama and a grand opera, and a hearing of "Tannhäuser," for instance, immediately after a performance of "Il Trovatore," illustrates the great composer's meaning clearly enough. But where is the distinction between what Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan call a comic opera, and that which Messrs. Cellier and Stephenson describe as a "comedy opera?" This struggling after originality is surely a senseless waste of time. If Mr. Stevenson had devoted the hours spent in inventing a description for "Dorothy " to improvise some of his original jokes, and eliminating a score or so of his "chestnuts," the theatrical world would not have been bothered by such a meaningless mystification as "comedy opera." If "Dorothy" were properly described it would simply be called a "burlesque," just as "Adonis," ""The Corsair " and similar works are; but there is a pretentiousness about this "comedy opera" business which would be nauseous were it not supremely ridiculous.

It is to be regretted that art is so frequently desecrated in this way.

THIS is a sentence from the Buffalo Courier of November 6th. It told of a conscien