AT THE PLAY.

"THE PACIFISTS."

As a reasonable jusquaboutist I have some misgivings about Mr. HENRY ARTHUR JONES'S farce—parable, The Pacifists. Assume Market Pewbury's afflictions to have been as stated: an intolerable stalwart cad of a butcher fencing-in the best part of the common, assaulting people's grandmothers, shutting them up in coal-cellars and eating their crumpets, kissing their wives in the market square and proposing to abduct them to seaside resorts, and none so bold to do him violence and make him stop it; the police being ill or absent, the Mayor and his friend, chief victim of the butcher's aggression, unwilling on account of principles to do anything but talk and get up leagues to deal with the trouble in general, and in a final ecstasy of disapproval to write a strong letter; only uncle Belcher, a truculent old sea-dog with a natural lust for whisky and blood, organising an opposition, valiantly hiring a notable pugilist to deal with the butcher, and becoming desperately anxious lest the matter should be peaceably settled because the basher, having been engaged, must find something to bash or there will be trouble. Well, if we must have forged for us the sword of a three-Act parable, we should like it with one edge, not two.

Mr. JONES was evidently bursting with the desire to give some irritating people a very hard knock—witness the barbed dedication with which the normally peaceful theatre-announcement columns have bristled some little time past; and I think I dare say that we were interested in his first Act. He did really work out his analogies with some skill. But we soon came to feel that he was essentially doing something between flogging a dead horse, so far as we were concerned, and shooting a sitting rabbit. I suspect too that we realised the issues were too tragic for this kind of buffoonery. The tribute of our applause was a tribute of loyalty to one who has often deserved well of the republic, and partly the desire to show that our hearts were in the right place. I don't see The Pacifists as a pamphlet making many converts. As a kick on the shins it has points.

I confess the thing that pleased me most was a gay little piece of burlesque by Mr. ARTHUR CHESNEY as the red-haired shop assistant who was not a pacifist. Mr. CHARLES GLENNEY so thoroughly enjoyed the robustious sea-captain that we had to enjoy it too—a sound notion of entertainment, that. Mr. SEBASTIAN SMITH played chief rabbit with considerable skill and point; Mr. LENNOX PAWLE amused with his plump dundrearyed mayor; Mr. SAM LIVESEY'S offensive was, I am sure, as Hunnish as its author could possibly have desired. Miss ELLIS JEFFREYS appeared in the first Act as a very plausible imitation of a prominent tradesman's wife in an eighth-rate provincial town, with some quite excellent moments. But she was evidently labouring under severe strain, and I amused myself by speculating how long she would keep out of a really well-cut skirt and a sophisticated air of Mayfair. Just an Act. And surely she is mistaken in thinking that an effect of extreme agitation is best conveyed, by very rapid quasi-cinematographic progression up and down the stage? But I saw no reason to complain of the bold bad butcher's taste in the matter of a subject for abduction.

Sergeant (to Private Simpkins arriving two days late). WELL, SIMPKINS, SO YOU'VE TURNED UP, HAVE YOU?"

Simpkins. "YES, SERGEANT. BUT YOU ARE LUCKY TO GET ME. WHAT WITH DOMESTIC TROUBLE AND ALL THAT DELUGE OF RAIN I NEARLY MADE A SEPARATE PEACE."