In my last letter I mentioned Mr. Henry Hamilton's version of The Three Musketeers which is atill being acted every evening at the Globe Theatre, though unfortunate Jy, it has been shorn of its main interest in.
lat Mr. Lewis Waller no longer plays the part of d'Artagnan, a dle he was reluct tantly compelled to rélinguish when the rival version (by Mr. Sydney Grundy) put in an appearance at Her Majesty's.
As Mrs. Malaprop says caparisons are odorous" but if two, or rather four, London theatres will it ist upon playing virtually the same piece at the same time what is to be done? Briefly Her Majesty's version is no good at all. The scenes (there ure' ten of them) are lovely and the dresses most beautiful, but when that has been said no more remains. In his adaptation of, Dumas' story Mr. Grundy has fallen far behind Mr. Hamilton, and (with the exception of Mrs. Tree, who comes far nearer to my idea of Queen Anne of Austris than did Miss Kate Rorke) I thought all the parts were indifferently filled. As d'Artagnan, Mr. T'ree cannot hope to compete with Mr. Lewis Waller yrhose performance was, almost. perfect As the Duke of Buckingham, Mr. Waller looks well but has almost nothing to do, altogether I suppose he was not on the stage more than ten minutes. Mrs. Brown Potter was not convincing as Milady, nor Mr. McLeay as Richelieu, in 2 fact the whole performance was, to me at lest, a hugo disappointment.
OF The Manaweres of Jane which has replaced The Little Minister at the Haymarket the same, Ifear, must be said. It is bright and amusing, beautifully acted and well staged, and had it been the*maiden work of a young and aspiring playwriter one would have said, it shows promise, try again; but as the work of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, who has already given to the world such plays as The Dancing Girl and The Liars, one cannot judge it from so lenient a standpoint, and the only charitable explanation that I can offer is, Jane's manceuvres must have been a nightmare to their author, during the hottest days of the summer. Messrs. Harrison and Maude wanted the play and it wasn't ready, so Mr. Jones sat down and wrote just the first things that passed through is brain—with no very successful results. Of course, this may he entirely wrong, but it is the sort of idea I got as the play went on. The lion's share of the work falls on Miss Winifred Emery who, as the wayward and headstrong heroine Jane, was quite bewitching. Miss Beatrice Ferrar, too, deserves praise for her clever character sketch of a perfectly awful child, Pamela Beechinor, who delights in listening at doors and retailing all the news she hears. No one else kad anything very striking to do, but like the heroes who in Mr. Gilbert's famous song "*did nothing in particular," they "did it very well."
11th November.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.