... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. SOCIETY'S VERDICT. ROYALTY has its drawbacks after all. The Prince of Wales attended the first performance of Society's Verdict, and-- more unfortunate than some of the dramatic critics-- was obliged to sit the representation out. The evening wa a dismal one in every way --there was absolutely no relief. In the depressing auditorium-- darkened as soon as the cur tain rose ...

... , THE EXPLORER, AT THE LYRIC THEATRE. A MAN may not marry his grandmother-- and several other ladies-- but ought he to marry a young person whose much-beloved brother he has in cold blood ordered to go out and get killed? Of course, the motives of this amateur judge, who some thousands of miles away from the Old Bailey takes the law into his own hands, are of the nicest; it would be wrong to ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITTC. MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, AT THE LYRIC THEATRE. MR. CHARLES MANNERS was encouraged by the good reception of the Merry Wives of Windsor to make a speech. Why do people make speeches? They only convince those who are already of the same opinion! Why, particularly, do actor-managers make speeches at the last moment when everybody wants to get away? And alter the speeches have ...

... BOUND THE THEATRES. By Vedette. IT is only a few days ago that I was wondering whether the leading West End managers had not been making a mistake in arranging for so early a summer cloture this year. And now, as I write, I find the thermometer doing its best, at any rate for the moment, to justify the policy of those who have closed their doors, and to make one feel very doubtful as to the ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE POCKET MISS HERCULES, AT THE NEW ROYALTY THEATRE. MR. HUBERT DRUCE has begun a season at the Royalty which I hope will be successful. With a small theatre like this he needs, of course, only a small company. But here of all places the better the players the better the chance, and although the names in the Dean Street programme are in this sense on the whole ...

... . MR. J. M. BARBIE'S comedy, Little Mary, has passed its one hundredth and fiftieth representation, but there is little if any falling off from its popularity. Miss Nina Boucicault nightly adds to the number of her admirers as the exponent; of the principal part, and Mr. John Hare, who has been temporarily absent through indisposition, has now returned to resume his position in the cast of the ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE ELECTRIC MAN. AT THE NEW ROYALTY THEATRE. ONE is glad to see Mr. Harry Nicholls at the theatre again, though to see him at the Royalty is perhaps to see him from too near. His style, so largely formed in big houses, is somewhat too broad and too emphatic for the bijou auditorium in Dean-street. However, ho is very clever and genial, and quaint always, and no doubt ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE ALHAMBRA. THE drama, at present gives us few now things which stay long enough with us to be worth noting before they go. The mischief comes, I fear, largely from the actor-manager system. Too many theatres nowadays get into the hands of gentlemen and ladies who consider that the public thinks as highly of them as they, on their side, do of their very mediocre selves. ...

... . A. B. C. of Housekeeping. By Mrs. J. N. Bell. (Henry J. Drane, l8-) A. B. C. of Cookery for Invalids. By Mrs. John Kiddle. (Henry J. Drane, Is.) Forty Fancies and Seven Songs. By Amelia M. Barker. (Henry J. Drane, Is.) The White Prince of the Stolen Roses. By Kate Stanway. (Henry J. Drane, 3s. Gd.) In the Great White Land. By Gordon Stables, R.N. (Blaokie and Son, Ltd., 3s. 6d.) The ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. MAGDA, AT THE ROYALTY THEATRE. MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL is an actress-manager, and Magda is a play which a lady free to choose her own part can scarcely be blamed for selecting. All the glory goes to the heroine, and it is rather easily won glory, coming as it does chiefly from declamation, in which most women who are women can without great effort hold their own. I do not ...

... . lHE Hippolytus of Euripides, even as done into English by Mr. Gilbert Murray, is hardly a promising production for a summer day, hut it was carried through with re markable success on the 26th ult. by the New Century I heatre Society. A good many of the patrons were uneasy in their seats during the long and gloomy opening with the moanings of Phaedra, guilty of an unholy passion for her ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. SAID Johnson, apropos of She Stoops to Conquer, I know of no comedy for many years which has so much exhilarated an audience, that has answered so well the great end of comedy, making an audience merry. How did they then act the only one of Goldsmith's three plays which had a great deal of success with its contemporary public? That we shall never ...