The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1883-01-13

second acr, he ~justiies his sudden fancy for
her by her resemblance to his old love Eva.
and in one of those perilous soliloquies with
which the piece is stuffed, advances to the
tootlights and remarks =" Surely 1 must
have loved Eva more than | knew-poor
dead Eva. drowned through me-. But to
make amends, IlciU ued Hiss Dora If
possible"
The house saluted this solemn declar-
alton with shrieks of laughter. New and
original beyond dispute is the notion that a
lover that ruins one sister in the first act is
to make amends by marrying the other in
the second. Down to this point the pit,
though uproarious enough, had put some
kind of curb on its license, out of just re
spect. let US hope, to the great name and
great age of MIR. Tennyson. But from this
moment the scene became an orgie. OF all
means of damnlng a play, none is so fatal
and so pitiIess as that which is known as
"guying it. And they guyed Mr.. Tenny-
sons piece through the last two acts with
merciless merriment which was distressing
SAONSA ~ hbS ACi0 ohd ~ WIN
knew that two of his sons were in the
house.
The blacker Edgar's" villainy grew, the
more hilarious became the pit. The more
obvious the appeal to the moral or patriotic
sentiment, the more direct and deadly were
the volleys of mocking cheers or the more
marked the still more murderous silence.
Some of the most dangerous lines ever put
into an actors mouth fell to Mr.. VEINS LOT
as " Edger,'' and were delivered with un-
finching distinctness. In twenty minutes
more she might have been mine provoked
a ribald yell. One of the peasant girls says
her lover has listed as a sodger, to which
" Dora answers, "Ah, there are no
soldiers like the English soldiers "a bit
of cIaptrap which the house received with
dead silence. So they they did the remark
of " Dora =" to "Dobson:' You are IN
English farmer and not a foreign assassin"
When the blind father, sternly turning
from his daughter, demands piteously
to be led away, the house applauded and
replied: " Don't bring him back again"
When Dora repeats her good night to her
sister, it is echoed unanimously from the
'front.' Good night" and then "Good
night" with remarks not necessary to re-
produce. To these ebullitions not merely
the sentiment but the dictum lent itself
Mr.. Tennyson is beyond dispute a great
master of English, but it has pleased him to
strew this piece with sentences so weak in
structure and phrase that it is a compliment
to speak of them as pueriIe. So much in
nocence of the language Of everyday life
has seldom before been seen outside the
nursery.
The soft.hearted. who would explain away
this disaster, say the house VS. in a hostile
temper; its patience exhausted by long wait.
ing before the curtain went up and SO on
| think not. 1t was not too angry to bestow
a dozen round of cheers on Mr.. Gladstone,
who entered n moment before the play began,
Throughout the evening, 1t s emed to me
there was a complete absence of anything
like animosity or personal dislike. There
was, on the contrary, enough good will to
Mr.. Tennyson to prevent the demonstration
from becoming savage; as an English
audience is quite capable of becoming. on
occasion A sense of humor prev.iled all
through. When Mr.. Kelly came before the
curtain in response to %ironical calls, the pit,
in allusion to the atheistic homilies of the
first act, mingled cries for the author with
cries for Bradlaugh. And Mr.. Kelly's an
nouncement that Mr.. Tennyson was not IN
the house, was met with louds shouts OF
:. Bravo! Bravo % which were s%atirical
enough, no doubt, but not ferocious. | sat
near enough to a Noisy quarter of the pit to
hear some of the talk tn t went on. 1t was,
if anything, rather regretful in tone.-LOn-
don Cor. " y. Tribune.
C~~,o, C+o.Fo, Ion;ac 4haf Ia hnC auar