print of a fat man, on a colored lithograph of "Falstaff Beer": those graphic atrocities give a fair idea of the physical investiture of Wise's Falstaff. That actor possesses some ability and he has had the advantage of much training: he was born in 1862 and he has been on the stage, chiefly in America, since 1888. He shows slight sense of the value of words,-certainly as they are used by Shakespeare,-and less of the value of time or "pace." His Falstaff made much pother, but it amounted to little. No background of experience was suggested; not even a remote suggestion was given that the man depicted had degraded himself from anything higher to a greedy, self-indulgent sensualist, and despite his knowledge and better judgment sunk into abject humiliation: there was no touch of wily sapience anywhere, no hint of self-scorn after his discomfiture. When Sir John enters, with his "belly full of ford," he is in a state of mind and body as painful, short of tragic desperation, as a sensible man could well experience: yet he is irresistibly comic. There is a world of humorous self-contempt in his speech, "Well, if ever I be served such another trick, I'll have my brains ta'en out and buttered and give them to a dog for a New Year's gift!" (Is there, anywhere, any man but Falstaff who could possibly have expressed himself in those words!) He calls for sack, and with it he seeks to dilute the Thames water he has swallowed. The action of this player, at that point, is typical of all that he did, and likewise of the distinction which exists between the methods of the superior histrionic beings of this halycon time and those of the much disparaged "Old School." Instead of the "quart" of sack, for which Falstaff calls, and for the consumption of which he, or any other man, would require more than a moment, a huge pitcher-like vessel, that would have contained about two gallons of fluid, was brought to him. This he seized, applied to his lips, tilted up and, affecting to gulp down the whole contents, beginning as though the vessel were brimful and continuing till the bottom of the pot was turned toward the ceiling,-wiggled his body as if to signify both suction and enjoyment, while the orchestra made "comic descriptive" music, mimicking the sound of guttural gurgles and gulps! That is "modern comedy" of a kind frequently seen. Anybody who supposes that such actors as James H. Hackett, "Ben" De Bar, and Charles Fisher-representative types of the "Old School"-would have stooped to such expedients of common clowning, or could have been induced to do so, in acting Falstaff or any other well drawn, authentic character, has much to learn about the history of acting and actors. Wise came nearest to resembling Falstaff in his interview with Mistress Quickly, when she first comes to him, from Mistress Ford. Among the minor performances in this revival those of Mistress Quickly by Miss Annie Hughes and Master Page by Fuller Mellish were notably good; the rest were entirely bad. Dr. Caius, played by Robert Payton Gibbs, having received from Mistress Quickly the "green box" for which he had sent her, hurled it away, over the bridge side, so that it struck the back drop, and then he rushed from the stage without even a glance after his property. Evans was colorless and insignificant: Parson Hugh is not a coward: of very truth "the parson is no jester"; he is a pleasant-natured, sturdy, eccentric Welshman; he "keeps his day," and, unhindered, he and Master Doctor Caius would do more than "hack our English." Mellish, as Page, was easy, natural, agreeable.—a finished actor, intelligently and properly attending to his business, in a slight part, and seeming rather puzzled by the association in which he found himself. Miss Hughes presented a buxom, thriving, rather handsome Mistress Quickly, glib in speech, avaricious, foolish yet shrewd, delivering the language with exceptional and delightful perception of the meaning and value of every word, and so presenting a clear, consistent, tenable ideal; fluent and precise in execution, discreet, various, and genuinely comic in effect. VII. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. "See, how the lovers sit in state together, Secure from human chance, long ages out, No lovers lived so great or died so well." -DRYDEN. HISTORICAL COMMENT. "ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA," which contains 3,964 lines, is the longest of Shakespeare's dramas and, poetically and in a literary sense, one of the best of his works, while considered as a play it is defective because of excess of material and diffuseness of treatment. It is based on the story of the life of Marcus Antonius (83?-30 B. C.), as told by Plutarch, and as known to the dramatist from his reading of North's translation (from the French of Amyot) of Plutarch's "Lives." It was first published in the Folio of 1623. Authoritative Shakespeare scholars, Dyce, HalliwellPhillipps, Fleay, White, Hudson, and Rolfe among others, believe it to have been written in 1607 or early in 1608, and first produced in the latter year, but no evidence has been adduced that conclusively shows either when it was written or when it was first acted. An entry in the Stationers' Register, May 20, 1608, of "a book called Antony and Cleopatra" is believed by Dyce and some other authoritative Shakespeare editors to refer to Shakespeare's play, and from that record the inference is drawn that the play was written shortly before that date. As to the order in which the Roman plays of Shakespeare were composed, most of the editors agree that "Julius Cæsar" was written in 1607, "Antony and Cleopatra" in 1608, and "Coriolanus" in 1610. The complete maturity which characterizes those plays and the vigor and splendor of their style indicate that Shakespeare wrote them when his powers were fully developed and at their height. "Antony and Cleopatra" was first published in the Folio of 1623. "The text is, upon the whole, remarkably accurate," says Knight. Only two earlier plays on the subject are known to exist, namely, the "Cleopatra" of Samuel Daniel, published in 1594, and the "Antonie" of Mary Herbert, |