rom little _Peaseblossom_ and his young friends to hoary
antiques with moustaches like ram's horns and beards trickling down to
their knees. And as many as like it, and are not afraid of being
poisoned, may have gilt faces that make them look like Hindoo idols with
the miraculous gift of perspiration. But he should please remember that
the play is not his own. It is, in point of fact, SHAKSPEARE'S, and I am
certain he was not properly consulted about the Orientalisation of the
fairies out of his Warwickshire woodlands. You will be told that he
_has_ been properly consulted; that he himself makes _Titania_ say that
_Oberon_ has "come from the furthest steppe of India," and that she too
had breathed "the spiced Indian air." But on the same authority Mr.
BARKER might just as well have fixed on Asia Minor or Greece as their
provenance. She charges _Oberon_ with knowing _Hippolyta_ too well, and
he accuses her of making _Theseus_ break faith with a number of ladies.
Clearly they were a travelling company and would never have confined
themselves to the costumes of any particular clime.

Anyhow, when at His Majesty's you saw _Oberon_ in sylvan dress moving
lightly through a wood that looked like a wood (and so left your mind
free to listen to him), you could believe in all the lovely things he
had to say; but when you saw Mr. BARKER'S _Oberon_ standing stark, like
a painted graven image, with yellow cheeks and red eyebrows, up against
a symbolic painted cloth, and telling you that he knows a bank where the
wild thyme blows, you know quite well that he knows nothing of the kind;
and you don't believe a word of it.

But, to leave SHAKSPEARE decently out of the question, I liked the gold
dresses of the fairies enormously, so long as _Puck_--a sort of adult
Struwel-Puck that got badly on my nerves--was not there, destroying
every colour scheme with his shrieking scarlet suit, which went with
nothing except a few vermilion eyebrows. I liked too the grace of their
simple chain-dances on the green mound (English dances, you will note,
and English tunes--not Indian). But in the last scene, where they
interlace among the staring columns, their movements lacked space.
Indeed that was the trouble all through; that, and the pitiless light
that poured point-blank upon the stage from the 12.6 muzzles protruding
from the bulwarks of the dress-circle. There was no distance, no
suggestion of the spirit-world, no sense of mystery (except in reg