huge excrescences from her present, and by the time that she
had reached the last act, the audience sat dazed at the delicate
beauty of her character. No masculine playwright could have done as
much. Possibly if the purifiers of Lady Jane Shore elected to
dramatize the career of Messalina, they would make of her a
combination of Joan of Arc and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall.

The _Jane Shore_ at the Hudson Theater was married to a brute of a
husband, but she left him simply because she was driven to it, poor
girl! She became the mistress of _Edward IV._, apparently because she
yearned to be a mother to his children. She was always rescuing the
little princes from the _Duke of Gloucester_. She sat beside _Edward
IV._, in the council chamber of Westminster Palace, so that she could
beseech him to pardon delinquents who were brought before him in a
procession of fifteenth century "drunk and disorderly."

There never was a more perfect lady. The playwrights unfortunately
omitted to picture her teaching a Sunday school, and I can only
imagine that they must have forgotten to do so. _Jane Shore's_ love
for _Edward IV._ was depicted in such lily tints that you simply hated
the memory of your history book that said such rude things about her
life after the sovereign's death. The historical "penance" that on the
stage seemed so effective was, as we know, really unavailing. Dramatic
license is a great thing, and it is pardonable when it is used with
discrimination. But made to do duty as a daub, it is unjustifiable.
What is the use of going down into history as one thing, if you are to
be bobbed up on the stage, after the passage of centuries, as another?
To the feminine playwright, the line that separates saints from
sinners is an invisible boundary.

As a play, "The Lady Shore" was mere melodrama, of a somewhat
incoherent nature. Perhaps if the central character had been
imaginary--and it was nearly that--the melodrama would have been all
the better for it. Why not invent a good new character, instead of
revamping a bad old one? Why not exercise the imagination upon some
original creation, instead of straining it around a type that lurks in
the libraries? The authors of "The Lady Shore" might have used their
labors more advantageously. It is always a futile task to rewrite
history. History is cold, and unbudgingly accurate. Why trifle with
it?

Miss Virginia Harned, however, escaped from her play. She is an
emotional actre