* *

COURT OUT!

[Illustration: One of the Points of the Piece. The Queen of the
Amazons gets the Needle.]

What is an "Original Farcical Romance"? The immediate reply is that
_The Amazons_, by Mr. PINERO, is a specimen of the genus. To see _The
Amazons_ ought to supply the terms of the required definition. I have
seen it, and yet the definition does not satisfy me. "_Original_"!
Well--more or less; but to use old materials in a novel manner is
quite enough for originality. The girl brought up as a boy is not
absolutely new or original, _vide_ _Tom Noddy's Secret_, and multiply
the heroine of that farce by three. The three men hunting after the
three girls and obtaining access to them at school--substituting, in
this case, home for school, and a mother for a school-mistress--is not
absolutely new or original; but, again, what matters this to anyone,
so long as the new shape given to the old material is genuinely
amusing? So "farcical" goes with "original." But now, as to its being
a "Romance?" Would not the term "burlesque" be a better term than
"Farcical Romance?" The characters of the three adventurous lovers
are not less burlesque than were those of the three Knights in ALBERT
SMITH'S romantic Extravaganza, _The Alhambra_, played then by ALFRED
WIGAN, and Mr. and Mrs. KEELEY. So if I may take it that "Farcical
Romance" is only a way out of describing the piece as "burlesque,"
then I know how to class it, and what to expect. Now I must own that
my puzzlement is due to my own fault, for it so chanced that I did not
look at the author's description of his play until after leaving the
theatre. I thought I was seeing something that was intended to be as
broad a farce as _Bebe, alias Betsy_, but I soon found that, whatever
it might be, it wasn't this. It is capitally acted by all, but
especially, on "the Spear Side," by Mr. WEEDON GROSSMITH and F. KERR,
the former as an effeminate Earl, and the latter as a manly Viscount.
But, even from a burlesque point of view, Mr. ELLIOT overdoes the
Frenchman, a part which belongs to a stage-family of Frenchmen, of
which, in former times, ALFRED WIGAN was the best representative; and,
later, Mons. MARIUS, who, as the French sporting nobleman, in _Family
Ties_, in love with an English "Mees," and so proud of his English
slang, was simply the character to the life, without any more
exaggeration than was artistically necessary. On "the Spindle Side,"
Miss LILY HANBURY looks hand