It may be said without exaggeration that Shanghai audiences have but rarely the pleasure of witnessing so delightful a performance as that given in the Lyceum Theatre on Saturday night. Dumas' comedy ct fashionable Parisian life in 1750 has very obviously served as a model for many successors in the study of high life, and it does not appear that the moderns have gained much either in art or experience. ihe story concerns the marriage of lo Comte and Comtesse de Candala, the lady's flirtation with a pompous and rather ridiculous little Chevalier and Monsieur lo Comte's courteous interest in another great lady of fashion. The theme is most cleverly developed, with a delightful play of wit and passages of sentiment light as a sunbeam. The setting of the play, too, was admirable, and the minute motif preceding the rise of the curtain at each of the four acts set the tone of the period perfectly. It need only be added at the acting was as good as the play.
"She Stoops to Conquer"
Much as Oscar Asche and Lily Brayton took London by storm some years ago by playing "The Taming of the Shrew' as broad farce, so did the Waring Company on Monday with Goldsmith's immortal comedy. Whether the eighteenth century would have had it so, one may guess. But it was certainly to the taste of the large audience last night and there was nothing 19 complain of in the precision and sureness with which the performance went, though at tremen-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.