EDEPOL!
Sir,—"I'm all the way from Westminster," and the work I have to do is to let you know about the Latin play performed there. Plautus, in truth, is not a wildly exciting writer, and there is in the Trinummus a tameness which, extending, as it does, through five acts, becomes almost oppressive at the end. The young actors looked well and enunciated clearly, and one of them, Mr. J. F. Waters, showed considerable ability as an actor. But we don't go to the College of St. Peter at Westminster merely to see the play. There are other interests. It is pleasant to watch the Old Westminsters rubbing recollections with one another between the acts, and endeavouring gallantly during the performance to keep their rusty Latin abreast of the various situations. Laughter in a Latin play straggles. It is like a dropping fire of musketry. A Westminster master probably leads it off; various intelligent veterans take it up dutifully, and the ladies, bless their unlatinised minds, follow faintly towards the end. If a London manager wants applause in his theatre let him hire a contingent of small Westminster boys. They have attained to absolute perfection in the arts of the claque. At no Paris Theatre is it better done. The epilogue showed a pretty wit and a high degree of skill in the management of hexameter and pentameter. No one could have believed that the Kodak advertisement, "you press the button, we do the rest," would have made so good a Latin line. Much pleased, and so to bed.
Yours,
A Vagrant.
"A mere Question of Time."—Example: "What o'clock is it?"
