the fine passion of its
exponents. Even the dresses had their dramatic value. Their
archaeological accuracy gave us, immediately on the rise of the curtain,
a perfect picture of the time. As the knights and nobles moved across
the stage in the flowing robes of peace and in the burnished steel of
battle, we needed no dreary chorus to tell us in what age or land the
play's action was passing, for the fifteenth century in all the dignity
and grace of its apparel was living actually before us, and the delicate
harmonies of colour struck from the first a dominant note of beauty which
added to the intellectual realism of archaeology the sensuous charm of
art.

As for individual actors, Mr. Mackinnon's Prince Hal was a most gay and
graceful performance, lit here and there with charming touches of
princely dignity and of noble feeling. Mr. Coleridge's Falstaff was full
of delightful humour, though perhaps at times he did not take us
sufficiently into his confidence. An audience looks at a tragedian, but
a comedian looks at his audience. However, he gave much pleasure to
every one, and Mr. Bourchier's Hotspur was really most remarkable. Mr.
Bourchier has a fine stage presence, a beautiful voice, and produces his
effects by a method as dramatically impressive as it is artistically
right. Once or twice he seemed to me to spoil his last line by walking
through it. The part of Harry Percy is one full of climaxes which must
not be let slip. But still there was always a freedom and spirit in his
style which was very pleasing, and his delivery of the colloquial
passages I thought excellent, notably of that in the first act:

What d' ye call the place?
A plague upon't--it is in Gloucestershire;
'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept,
His uncle York;

lines by the way in which Kemble made a great effect. Mr. Bourchier has
the opportunity of a fine career on the English stage, and I hope he will
take advantage of it. Among the minor parts in the play Glendower,
Mortimer and Sir Richard Vernon were capitally acted, Worcester was a
performance of some subtlety, Mrs. Woods was a charming Lady Percy, and
Lady Edward Spencer Churchill, as Mortimer's wife, made us all believe
that we understood Welsh. Her dialogue and her song were most pleasing
bits of artistic realism which fully accounted for the Celtic chair at
Oxford.

But though I have mentioned particular actors, the real value of the
whole represent