THE MARVELLOUS FEAT OF TREE-ILBY SVENGALIVANISED!
"Trilby's tootsies! Trilby's feet!
There's no mistake,
They take the cake,
Do Trilby's model feet!"
Chorus of Popular Nigger Song, adapted.
Mr. Tree Svengalivanting. "You must learn to love me!"
The state of those who have read the novel before seeing the play, is gracious; the state of those who have seen the play without having previously read the novel, is the more gracious. Svengali, the weird unwashed Hebrew, the fantastical, musical magician, so dominates the story, that the author of his being will be remembered as George Jew Maurier. And Svengali the Satanical, marvellously impersonated by Mr. Beerbohm Tree, stands out as the central figure of the strange unconventional drama at the Haymarket. It isn't Trilby, the hypnotised subject, but Svengali, the fearful "object," the dirty demoniac hypnotiser, on whom all eyes are fixed, and in whom the interest is centred. He is Shylock and Fagin, Mephistophelesized; he is as loathsome as Hyde without Jekyl; he is the Spirit of Evil in the story of the Devil's Violin; he is the haunting, cringing fiend in the Shadowless Man; he is, in fact, the very Deuce himself.