Taques.. D. Munday. Frederick. Morrison. Amiens wy A. French.
Jaques: 3) H. Dacheroom. Oliver. " George.
Adam 'ALR, Evanson. Touchstone Vestibule.
Lo Beau 14, B, Hamilton, Charles G. L. U, Potts,
Corin. yy AL Molecule. Silvius W. J. Andrews, William H. Youngfellow. Orlando Norval MeGregor. Celia Miss Virginia Cranna, Phebe " Ada Dow.
Audrey Mrs. A. D. Currier. Rosalind Liss Janet Waldorf.
Shakespeare's beautiful pastoral, s You Like It, than which none of his comedies is more dear to lovers of poetry, or has enriched English literature with more, happier, and more widely known quotations, passed through some pitiable vicissitudes after the Stage was crushed by the Puritans. Popular as it must have been in the times of Elizabeth and the first Taines, it lay unnoticed after the reopening of the theatres at the Restoration until 1723, when a Mr. Charles Johnson, " theatrical pastrycook who kept a tavern in Bow Street and passed for a dramatic author on the strength of his fabrication of pi moutées from materials stolen indiscrimi ately from the Elizabethan dramatists, produced a caricature of ds You Like 1t which he called Love in a Forest, and which was acted at Drury Lane, Booth, Wilks, and Theophilus Cibber being in the cast, Touchstone, Audrey, William, Corin, Phebe, and Sylvius were suppressed. The wrestling match was turned into a tilt between two knights. Orlando was accused by Charles of being a traitor, and the speeches between Norfolk and Bolingbroke from King Richard IT were given to them, and in the Inst act the extravaganza of Pyranus and Thishe was interpolated from A Midsummer Night's Dream. That eminent actors should have taken part in such a thing, and that it should have held the stage for some nights, shows how low the taste of the public and its dramatic favourites had fallen at the beginning of last century. The present acting edition, the text of which is Shakespeare's with certain omissions and. transpositions, such as the attribution to Jaques of the First Lord's description of Jaques himself and his moralizing upon the wounded stag, was first produced. in 1740, and it has ever since, as Mr. Dutton Cook tells us, held a firm position in the list of acting plays, partly on account of its well-deserved popularity, and partly because, as we have said before, no actress feels that she has attained distinction until she has played Rosalind, The part has been assumed both by comedians and tragedians, and the former have naturally been the more successful in it; for most comedians of talent can compass the tragedy in Rosalind, while it is given to few tragedians to display the sportiveness, wit, and archness that make Rosalind one of the best loved of Shakespeare's heroines. The great Mrs. Siddons was complete failure in it.
Considering the drawbacks to the performance on Tuesday evening, it was an undoubted success; even if the acting had been generally bad, the clear delivery of Shakespeare's lines in such beautiful surroundings was well worth going to hear.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.