AT THE THEATRE!
The Lyceum again. The Haymarket once more.
"Great Scott!" we exclaim,—not Critical CLEMENT of that ilk, but Sir WALTER,—on again seeing Ravenswood. Since then an alteration in the modus shootendi has been made, and Edgar no longer takes a pot-shot at the bull from the window, but, ascertaining from Sir William Ashton Bishop that Ellen Lucy Terry is being Terryfied by an Irish bull which has got mixed up with the Scotch "herd without," Henry Edgar Irving rushes off, gun in hand; then the report of the gun is, like the Scotch oxen, also "heard without," and Henry reappears on the scene, having saved Ellen Lucy Ashton by reducing the fierce bull to potted beef.
"What shall he have who kills the bull?" "The Dear! the Dear!" meaning, of course, Ellen Lucy Ashton aforesaid. After this all goes well. Acting excellent all round—or nearly all round, the one exception being, however, the very much "all-round" representative of Lady Ashton, whose misfortune it is to have been selected for this particular part. Scenery lovely, and again and again must HAWES MCCHAVEN be congratulated on the beautiful scene of The Mermaiden's Well (never better, in fact), Act III. The love-making bit in this Act is charming, and the classic Sibyl, Ailsie, superb. Nothing in stage effect within our memory has equalled the pathos of the final tableau. It is most touching through its extreme simplicity.
The Haymarket has re-opened with the odd mixture of the excellent French Abbé Constantin and the weak, muddle-headed, Tree-and-Grundy-ised "village Priest," known as the Abbé Dubois, or "Abbé Do Bore," as 'ARRY might call him. Changes are in contemplation, and may have been already announced. Whatever they may be, it is some consolation to learn that this Tree-and-Grundy-ised French Abbé is not likely to be a "perpetual Curate."