Mr. Bfiln came to Shanghai with the reputation of being a Shakespearian actor, and though he did not say in so many word: that he was going to present Shakespeare's Richard IIT on Ssturday night, that was certainly the belief of most of those who formed his audience on that occasion. It was therefore most disappointing to them to be. asked. to sit through an execrable performance: of Colley Cibber's hash of Shakespeare's play, a bash cow; about one-third of the: original play anangled out of all ion, one-third of Colley Cibber in which that writer descends into depths of bathos that made the three hours one long grief to the judicious, and one-third of extracts from other plays of Shakespeare stuck about here and there as jed good to Cibber's vulgar taste. Mr.
in. presenting Richard, added all Irving's worst mannerisms to the ranting methods of G. V. Brooke and actors of the ood ald transpontine school, tearing the lines to tatters and ranting as they did at the Vie. before it became a 'Temperance Music Hall; and he finished up by fighting with Richmond with cutlisses strictly on 3 of the celebrated combat between' th junior Vincent Crummileses, so graphic j cally described in chapter XXIt- of Nicholas Nickleby. To criticise auch formance in detail is impossible, and as the sume actors kept turning up again in different characters with different names, it was almost too bewildering. It is a great pity that so much good material as Mr, Mun has with him, and so much talent as Mr. Mun has displayed in previous representations, were not put to better use..We must say good word for Mr. Montgomery's mond, who is unfortunately only sven in the Inst act, while Mr, Nunn was good as Henry VI and tolerably restrained as Ca-toshy, and Mr. Atholwood was a vigorous Bockingham. 'The three Queens' were quite lachrymose enough, while Miss Hea-Ly's Prince Edward was very goods except that she was alittle too tall for the part. The scenery was fair and the dresses excellent, In the intervals between the acts musie-hallsougs in which the gallery joined with their feet, were played on piano, and anything less appropriate could hardly have been selected, To morrow night Mr. Milu is to appear in Richelieu, a piece much better within his resources than Kichurd ILL.
In Bulwer Lytton's play Richelieu, performed by Mr. Mun and his company at the Lyceum Theatre on Wednesday night, we have a specimen of a close of dramatic composition which has fallen out of favour to a large extent in the presetit generation—ronmnticdrama. Tt would be interest to trace the steps by, which this change in the popular taste has been gradually effected; but whatever the process may have been, the fact remains that for one peeformange ofthe plays of Bulwer Lytton, Kemble, Sheridan Knowles, and others' of the same school, there are twenty of the modern drama as made familiar to us. at the Adelphi and other theatres. Action has taken the place of rhetoric. "In these hurrying scurrying days the public is not as tolerant as it used to be of a lover who indulges in flowery remarks about the state of his heart when he ought to be doing something more practical. Under these circumstances Richeliew can hardly be called 8 popular play; but, containing as it does so much of Lytton's "fine writing" be regarded as a classic. One line at least, "The pen is mightier than the sword," la universally known. In this play the author has presented the unique personality of the great Cardinal Richelieu in many lights—as a tender guardian, as a crafty politician, 8 poetaster, as an ecclesiastic, but above all as a patriot. A character so complex can only be adequately portrayed by an.ctor of considerable powers. That Mr. Milu filled the part admirably there can be no doubt; and bearing in mind the general excellence of his rendering one can forgive in great measure the occasional extravaganees of manner into which he falls, Hewas Ppetbaps more natural in the lighter scenes, it whenever force and intensity were needed there was no deficiency. It is much to be regretted, however, that Mr. Mun should have adopted the undignified course of coming before the curtain at the close of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.