f time I can allow for this? Ahem!--say a
month." So he gives him a month. "Then," says he, next, "what is the
shortest possible time we can allow for an engagement and a marriage?
Say six weeks. Good. Six weeks be it. Only, hang it, this muddle has
to last for six weeks! Well, it can't be helped. I can't give any more
trouble to the bothering plot; and, as after all, there's a capital
character for Mr. HARE, and not at all a bad one for Miss RORKE, with
a fairish one for FORBES ROBERTSON, why, if Mr. HARE will accept the
play, and do it, I should say that, cast and played as it will be, it
is pretty sure to be a success."

[Illustration: The Happy Pair.]

So much for the Author and the Play. As to the Actors, Mr. HARE has
had many a better part, and this is but an inferior species of a genus
with which the public has long been familiar; but there is no one who
can touch him in a part of this description. Admirable! most
admirable! _Barbrook_ is in reality a silly elderly scamp, with all
the will to be a villain but not endowed with the brains requisite for
that line of life. Thus, the Author, unconsciously, has created him.
But Mr. HARE invests this feather-headed scoundrel with Iago-ish and
Mephistophelian characteristics, that go very near to make the
audience believe that, after all, there _is_ something in the part,
and also in the plot. But the part is only a snowman, and melts away
under the sunlight of criticism. Miss KATE RORKE is charming. It is a
monotonous and wearisome part, and the merit of it is her own. Miss
NORREYS is very good but the girl is insipid. Miss COMPTON, as the
good-hearted, knowing, fast lady, wins us, as she proves herself to be
the real _Robin Goodfellow_, the real good fairy of the piece, _Robin
Goodfellow_ is a misnomer, unless the aforesaid _Robin_ be dissociated
from _Puck_: but it is altogether a bad title as applied to this piece
for, as with Mr. CARTON's piece at the St. James's, _Liberty Hall_, it
is a title absolutely thrown away. Mr. FORBES ROBERTSON is as good as
the part permits, and it is the Author's fault that he is not better.
Mr. GILBERT HARE gives a neat bit of character as the Doctor, and Mr.
DONALD ROBERTSON may by now have made something of the rather foolish
Clergyman (whether Rector, Vicar, or Curate I could not make out),
whose stupid laugh began by making a distinct hit, and, on frequent
repetition, became a decided bore. It is played in one Scene and three