Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 108, January 26, 1895

It was a pleasant sight, on the première of King Arthur , to see Mr. Comyns Carr, poet, littérateur , art-critic, theatrical manager, orator, journalist, dramatist, and not a few other things beside, gravely bowing his acknowledgments as the Arthur of the piece at the Lyceum. Beshrew me, and by my halidome, he hath done his work with so deft and cunning a hand as to puzzle not a little those who have their Goethe, their Tennyson, and some of the most favourite plays of William Shakspeare at their fingers' ends, and who are also more or less acquainted with Wagnerian trilogies.
We all know Kettle began it. Well, Wagner begins this, in the Prologue, with spirits and water, i.e. , mere spirits getting along swimmingly in a kind of Niebelungen lake-and-cavern scene. Not until the curtain rose was any sort of attention paid to the music, which might have therefore been the composition of Noakes or Stokes, instead of having been exquisitely written by King Arthur Sullivan.
Enter King Arthur Irving and Merlin ( Charles his friend ), suggestive of Macbeth and Banquo , to see Wagnerian water-witches in The Colleen Bawn's cave. Wagnerian water-witches, disturbed by the approach of gentlemen, swim away to regain, presumably, their bathing-machines. Then Charles-his-friend Merlin undertakes the part of a kind of half-converted Mephistopheles , and shows the Faust-King-Arthur a living picture of Guinevere as Marguerite in a vision. After this up comes a hand out of the water, bearing a magnificently jewelled scabbard, in which, of course, is that blade of the very first water, Excalibur .
Arthur accepts the sword with thanks, observing that if necessary he will use it to make any cuts the piece may require. More chorus of water-sprites, and end of prologue. Merlin , or a spirit, ought to have sung Voici le sabre . This chance was lost.
The next scene is at Camelot, when in come a lot of knights in armour, and the story begins in real earnest. Here is Ellen Terry, sweet and majestic as the Burne-Jonesian Queen Guinevere , and here, too, is Forbes-Robertson as Lancelot , a part which he plays and looks to perfection. The order has been given All wigs abandon ye who enter here, that is as far as the male principals are concerned; so they all keep their hair on, and thus Henry Irving in armour looks more like the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, or a moustachioless Don Quixote , than the glorious Chairman of the Goodly Round Table Company.