... There is some good writing in Mrs. Coffin's new comic domestic drama, brought out at the Strand Theatre on Saturday with the title of Run Wild but its characters are the too-familiar puppets of the st ...

... THE SEASON MORIBUND.-- The musical season is now in its death-throes. On Friday of this week Sir Charles Hallé announced the last of his recitals, and on Monday Beethoven's Messe Solennelle will close ...

... SELF-IMITATION, at least when conscious and deliberate, seldom means the repetition of a success. The rule certainly holds good of Mr. William Black's The Strange Adventures of a House Boat (3 vols. ...

... . THE Ninth Triennial Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace was completely successful, in spite of most uncongenial weather likely to interfere with the attendance of invalids and of suburban amateurs. The aggregate of visitors during the festival was 86,337, as against 85,474 at the festival in 1885. If we cannot claim Handel as one of our fellow countrymen, he is more honoured in England ...

... MESSRS. NOVELLO, EWER, AND CO.-- A very bright and melodious cantata for female voices is The Gleaner's Harvest, the poetry by Jetty Vogel, music by Charles Harford Lloyd. Being of a semi-religious ...

... The Ruinously Expensive Dinners and Entertainments now the fashion in Transatlantic society have disgusted moderate Americans, and one sensible lady in a Texan city determined to set her face against ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. MASKS AND FACES. IN comparison with the many sensational dramatic successes of the last thirty or forty years how few plays have we had which have taken a lasting hold upon the stage and the public. The Robertsons and Byrons or less brilliant writers have seized the spirit of the moment and ruled the fashion for a while in almost phenomenal wise. But the plays which seem ...

... Messrs. Reid Brothers. Youthful singers, as well as actors, are now so plentiful, that they run their elders very close. Little Red Riding Hood, an Operetta for Juveniles, libretto by George Cooper, ...

... THE OPERA.-- The Royal Italian Opera will close next Saturday, and with it the summer musical season of 1888 will come to an end. Aida will be given to-night (Saturday), and both Boïto's Mefistofele a ...

... MADAME SARAH BERNHARDT'S visits to London are one unbroken series of triumphs. Her performance in Theodora last year, sombre and depressing as was the play and the part, was received with enthusiasm; ...

... POSSIBLY thorough-going admirers of Mr. Henry James (there certainly are such people) will not be disposed to set very much store by his The Reverberator (2 vols.: Macmillan and Co.). But there is a ...

... . THE new play winch contrives to make a favourable impres sion at a matinée is not long nowadays before it gets promoted somewhere or another to an evening programme. It is only the other day that we had occasion to call attention to the merits of The Taper Chase, a light comedy by Mr. C. J. Thomas, tentatively produced at the Strand. This piece, which may be roughly described as a farcical ...