Rural Person announces as a startling discovery—"That's Miss AGNES ETHEL who's a-playin' FROW-FROW. Well, now, she ain't nothin' to LYDDY THOMPSON."
Jocular Man says to his Travelled Friend—"The idea of Miss ETHEL trying to act like a French-woman! Did you hear how she pronounced Monsieur?"
Travelled Man smiles weakly, conscious of the imperfections of his own pronunciation. To his dismay, the Sympathetic Young Lady asks—"What does that horrid man mean? How do you pronounce the word he talks about?"
Travelled Man, with desperation—"It ought to be pronounced m—m—m—" (ending in an inaudible murmur.)
"What? I didn't quite hear."
The Travelled Man will catch at a straw. He does so, and says—"Excuse me, but the curtain is rising."
FROU-FROU, in a dying state and a black dress, with her back-hair neatly arranged, is brought into her husband's house to die. He kneels at her feet. "You must not die. I am alone at fault. Forgive me sweet angel, and live." With the only gleam of good sense which she has yet shown, FROU-FROU refuses to live, and dropping her head heavily on the arm of the sofa, with a blind confidence that the thickness of her chignon will save her from a fractured skull, she peremptorily dies.
Subdued sobs from the audience, with the single exception of the Jocular Man, who says—"Well, if that's moral, I don't know what's immoral; and I did think I had lived long enough in Paris to know that."
With which opinion we heartily coincide, adding also the seriously critical remark that though Messrs. DAVIDGE and LEWIS play their comic parts with honest excellence, and though Mr. CLARKE is really a good actor in spite of his popularity with the ladies of the audience, Miss ETHEL, upon whom the whole play depends, is so obviously incompetent to personate a brilliant and spirituelle Parisienne that one wonders at the popularity of FROU-FROU. The majority of the audience are ladies. Can it be that they like the play because it teaches that the sins of a pretty woman should be condoned by her husband, provided she looks well with her back-hair down?
MATADOR.