DRAMATIC FAMILY LIKENESS.
For the plot of The Passport, recently produced with a fair amount of success at Terry's Theatre, the authors admit their indebtedness to Colonel Savage's novel, My Official Wife. Oddly enough, this plot bears a considerable resemblance to that of The Orient Express, a piece "made in Germany," of which the English adaptation was produced here, at Daly's, during his season. In this piece, i.e., The Orient Express, a gentleman has tourist tickets for himself and wife; but his wife, after disposing of her ticket to a professional cicérone, returns to England alone, while her husband, travelling on business, continues his journey. The cicérone has sold the ticket cheap to a lady, who is therefore compelled to travel under the name inscribed on the ticket, and finds herself in the same carriage with the gentleman who has the corresponding ticket, and the ticket-collector, seeing the same names, hands back both tickets to the gentleman, and tries to keep the carriage strictly reserved for them all the way, in which attempt he fails, and hence arise, on their return to England, complications analogous to those of The Passport. Was the novel of My Official Wife written before the German farcical play, or is it only a family likeness?
"Il ira loin."—Dr. Farrar, now Chaplain to the Speaker, has been made Dean of Canterbury. From the Deanery to a Bishopric is but a step. He has gone Far, will go Farrar and fare better ... and then ... Farrar-well to all his greatness!