[Winks at Lord TRIMI GLOVESON, who winks back.
Mr. Pheasant. Really? That is very interesting, very interesting indeed! I think perhaps the best plan will be for the two principals to accompany me into my private room, to give a practical exemplification of the manner in which such a contest is generally conducted. (At this point the learned Magistrate retired from the Bench, and was followed into his private room by LOO BOBBETT. BEN MOUSETRAP, and their Seconds. After an hour's interval, Mr. PHEASANT returned to the Bench alone.) I will give my decision at once. The prize must be handed over to Mr. MOUSETRAP. That last cross-counter of his fairly settled Mr. BOBBETT. I held the watch myself, and I know that he lay on the ground stunned for a full minute. (To the Usher.) Send the Divisional Surgeon into my room at once, and fetch an ambulance. The Court will now adjourn.
[Loud applause, which was instantly suppressed.
Mr. Pheasant (sternly). This Court is not a Prize-Ring.
"A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE" AT THE AVENUE.
First of all, the title of the piece is against it. The Struggle for Life suggests to the general British Public, unacquainted with the name of DAUDET, a melodrama of the type of Drink, in which a variety of characters should be engaged in the great struggle for existence. It is suggestive of strikes, the great struggle between Labour and Capital, between class and class, between principal and interest, between those with moral principles and those without them. It is suggestive of the very climax of melodramatic sensation, and, being suggestive of all this to the majority, the majority will be disappointed when it doesn't get all that this very responsible title has led them to expect. Those who know the French novel will be dissatisfied with the English adaptation of it, filtered, as it has been, through a French dramatic version of the story. So much for the title. For the play itself, as given by Messrs. BUCHANAN and HORNER,—the latter of whom, true to ancestral tradition, will have his finger in the pie,—it is but an ordinary drama, strongly reminding a public which knows its DICKENS of the story of Little Em'ly, with Vaillant for Old Peggotty, Lydie for Little Em'ly, Antonin Caussade for Ham, and Paul Astier for Steerforth. Perhaps it would be carrying the resemblance too far to see in Rosa Dartle, with her scorn For "that sort of creature," the germ of Esther de Sélény. Mix this with a situation from Le Monde où l'on s'ennuie, spoilt in the mixing, and there's the drama.
