A Scene on its Metal.
Leaving the scenery to come to the acting, I may say that the play is generally well cast. Mr. Maclean and Mr. Charles Collette are both very amusing, the first as Camillo, and the last as Autolycus, and Mr. George Warde is quietly humorous with the baby. When I say quietly humorous, I do not mean that he trenches in the least on the ground occupied by either the Clown of Pantomime or the Clown of Shakspeare. He does not sit upon the infant, or throw it about—no, nor even sing to it a little comic song. He gets all his effects by merely carrying it quietly about, and showing it, with an assumption of gravity that is killing, to Mr. Forbes-Robertson. To turn to the less important characters of the play, Mr. Davies as a gaoler suggests that in "those days" prison officials were sometimes whatever happened to be the equivalent of the period to the modern "masher." Miss Zeffie Tilbury, Miss Helena Dacre, and Miss Desmond ("1st Lady with a song" and gigantic lyre) are all equally good, and even the subordinate female parts have efficient representatives.
Returning to the gentlemen (a difficult task when it entails leaving such pleasant company) Mr. F. H. Macklin as Polixenes is sufficiently robust in his manly bearing to suggest the necessary contrast with Leontes, and Mr. Fuller Mellish is picturesque, painstaking and conscientious as Florizel.
