The very fi tering reception accorded to Madame Sarah Bernhardt in. Paris for her impersonation of the hero of Shakespeare's greatest, or at least most acted, play put English' people on the gui vive, and not fora long time has advance booking been heavy as for Hamlet done in French at the Adelphi. And the result? Personally I must own to disappointment. Tt was difficult to picture our favourite passages trans-ated into a foreign tongue; but it was far harder to sit still for four-and-a-half weary hours and listen to it all; and, though hardly dare to say so, I thought the divine Sarah had almost less conception of the part than any member of the com-pavy. She was generally oppressively tragic, but occasionally the performance bordered on burlesque; the play scene, however, was very good. 'There appear to have been some twenty female aspirants to this important role at' different periods of the present century; Bernhardt is the first of them Ihave seen, and I can only say I much prefer Mr. Forbes Robertson's reading of the character.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.