PLAY-TIME.
Since the first night, if hearsay evidence can be accepted, as I didn't see the première, Mr. Sugden must have immensely improved his Touchstone. He plays it now with much dry, quaint humour, and when I saw him in the part last week, every line told with a decidedly discriminating but appreciative audience. His scenes with that capital Audrey, Miss Marion Lea, and with William, were uncommonly good. I confess I was surprised. Mr. Bourchier—but now an amateur, now thus—gives Jaques' immortal speech of "All the world's a stage," in a thoroughly natural and unconventional manner, chiefly remarkable for the absence of every gesture or tone that could make it a mere theatrical recitation by a modern professional reciter at a pic-nic. Mrs. Langtry's Rosalind is charming, her scenes with Orlando being as pretty a piece of acting as any honest playgoer could wish to see. And what a pretty Lamb is she they call Beatrice who plays Phœbe! What a sweet, gentle, restful play it is! How unlike these bustling times! To witness this idyllic romance as it is put on at the St. James's, is as if one had stepped aside out of "the movement," had bid adieu for a while to the madding crowd, and had plunged into the depths of the forest of Arden, to find a tranquil "society of friends," among whom, under the greenwood tree, one can rest and be thankful.
