... HAYMAKKET THEATRE. At a Haymarket matinee last Wednesday Mr. Beerbolim Tree presented the revival of The Merry Wives of Windsor, lately given by him at the Crystal Palace aud at Brighton. Though Mr. Tree himself again essays the part of Falstaff, the cast is in other respects changed, as Miss Lingard now plays Mrs. Ford, and plays it with plenty of verve and humour, whilst Mr. Macklin is a ...

... . Coaching Days and Coaching Ways. By W. OUTRAM TRISTRAM. Illustrated by Herbert Railton and Hugh Thomson. London: Macmillan and Co. THE interesting series of papers which from time to time have been referred to with pleasure in our notices of the English Illustrated Magazine are here collated. Printed in large type, and studded with the admirable and finished pictures of Messrs. Railton and ...

... MUSIC. THE YEAR THAT'S AWA'. WHAT the infant new year may bring us hereafter, in the shape of additions to our musical treasures, is a secret that time alone can reveal; but we are in a position to estimate the musical results of the year that's awa', and possibly to derive from that estimate some wholesome instruction for our future guidance. There is much m the musical history ot the year ...

... CO VENT GARDEN THEATRE. The arrangement by which the proposed puntdmmie gave way to a circus performance under the direction of Messrs. Hengler would appear, despite the anything but favourable weather of the past few days, to have proved sufficiently suc cessful. A varied and interesting programme is provided, which, if it wants some of the sensational features of previous ventures here, is ...

... ALL the clubs engaged in the League Championship played on Saturday last, when there were some unusually close and exciting matches. Quite 9,000 people assembled on the Deep dale Ground to witness the contest between Preston North End and the Blackburn Hovers. The former was fully repre sented, but the Rovers were minus Beresford, Arthur, and Fecitt, though, when such substitutes as Holden and ...

... . WHEN, rather more than two hundred years ago, Mr. Pepys went to the theatre and saw Macbeth, he pronounced it not only excellently acted but a most excellent play for variety. Now variety is not, perhaps, the special charm that most playgoers would be disposed to associate with this particular tragedy, and yet it is not difficult to discover in the admirable arrangement and illustration ...

... . BY identifying himself with what may be called Shake spearian music, Sir Arthur Sullivan has earned the present gratitude of his fellow countrymen, and created for himself a means to fame more lasting than any his operas or his cantatas are likely to achieve. When Pinafore and The Mikado are for gotten and The Golden Legend has been relegated to the back ground with other hackneyed ...

... . IT is a simple-minded and rather old-fashoned little piece that the authors who write as Richard Henry have provided for curtain-raiser at the Gaiety. Variety, they say, is charm ing, and nothing could be more unlike the topical humours of Faust up to Date, the play of the evening here, than the homely interest of First Mute. In a couple of acts, First Mate illustrates the trouble brought ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. DRURY LANE PANTOMIME. THIS year's pantomime at Drury Lane ought surely to have been the literary success which it is not. That eminent author, Mr. Augustus Harris, and a dramatist no less illustrious than Mr. Harry Nicholls, have, it would appear from the programme, col laborated with Mr. E. L. Blanchard in the production of the work. What collaboration may mean ...

... . IT is not a very likely set of characters that Mr. F. W. Broughton introduces to us in his one-act comedy The Poet, which now precedes Joseph's Sweetheart at the Vaudeville: but granted their existence, their story and their manner of con versation are perhaps probable enough. To begin with, we have Miss Winifred Grey, a weak-minded damsel, who, to the distress of her sensible cousin, Kitty ...

... ROYALTY THEATEE. Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon, a comedy by MM. Labiche and Martin, which dates from the days of Geoffroy at the Gymnase, nearly thirty years ago, is M. Mayer's latest revival at the Royalty, and proves little, if any, the worse for wear. The central idea, like its central character, belongs to genuine comedy. The former is based upon the preference which most men have for ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE SILVER FALLS. IN its main idea The Silver Falls by Messrs. G. R. Sims and Henry Pettitt is almost an exact parallel of The Monk's Room by Mr. Lart. In both plays a young man of family has been deceived into marrying a foreign adventuress. In both plays the lady is promptly found out, but for the take of money and position insists upon maintaining her rights as a wife. ...