"PUSS IN NEW BOOTS."
Five hours is a great space out of a man's life, but that was precisely the time taken by Mr. ARTHUR COLLINS to present his Puss in New Boots, so that I had leisure to study the book of the words, sold shamelessly to the unsuspecting (of whom I was not one), and compare the rough sketches of our three standard authors of the Lane, Messrs. COLLINS, SIMS and DIX with the version, by no manner of means final, of the comedians. A pantomime book is on the whole rather a mournfully unsubtle document. The thing is frankly not meant to be read when the blood is cool. It is the Action, Action and again Action of such hefty knock-abouts as WILL EVANS, ROBERT HALE and STANLEY LUPINO that makes the dry bones live and the old squibs crackle. And it is good fun to watch the audience at their share of authorship, setting the seal of their approval upon the happy wheeze, the well-contrived business, and blue-pencilling with their silence the wash-out or the too obscure allusion.
