The Play.

Expectation ran high when the curtain rose on the first scene of W. S. Gilbert's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern," in which the great master of comic opera parodies "Hamlet, as he is acted." As G. Toogood, in the robes of King Claudius, confessed the sin of his youth—his five-act tragedy—a perceptible shudder passed through the audience. Miss Nell Batham, as Queen of Denmark, received the awful news with a grace and dignity which befitted her exalted rank. It was not, however, till Claudius crossed the stage in the bitterness of his humiliation that the audience seemed to see the concentrated essence of Irving, Bentley, and Wilson Barrett. But if Claudius was tragic, who can describe the grace and elegance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—A. S. Henderson and R. M. Watson. Who could wonder that the fair Ophelia, robed in dainty white and so charmingly portrayed by Miss F. G. Roberts, should forsake at once the antic Hamlet and admire the perfect mould of Rosencrantz. And Hamlet himself, so full of dark forbodings, so fall of long soliloquy, so lank and lean, with what grim earnest did he suffer "his lucid intervals of lunacy." F. A. de la Mare was most natural in the rôle, and he embraced Ophelia and the Queen at the last farewell, if not with practised skill, yet with manifest enthusiasm Miss E. Page, as the "Player Queen," was seen all too little, and G. V. Bogle sustained the part of "Player King" with all the fondness and delicacy the part demanded. A. G. Quartley was abundantly sepulchral as Polonius, while T. Seddon, R. Mitchell, and O. Stout were appropriately dignified and knightly as "Lords in Waiting."