belonging to the real Ireland it is the aum of
Mr. Neats to show us. Anything less like the
stage Irinhmen and women to whom we are
used cannot easily be concerved.
In the Hospital is a grimly and fiercely
satirical piece, such as Teutonic breathers of
Scandinavian inspiration love to produce. In
a not particularly well-managed extra ward
of the Vienna General Hospital the life is
quietly sinking out of Karl Rademacher,
whose useless and passably ignommous career
as a critic is thus ending. With some diffi¬
culty he induces the departing physician to
bring to see him a popular and successful
poet, lns former acquamtance. While pre¬
tending to have a secret of the utmost im¬
portance to confide to the anticipated visitor,
his real purpose is to insult him as an im¬
postor, and to tell him, horrible as is the con¬
ception of such a thing, that the wife with
whom he is living has been at one tune his
tormentor’s mistress. Quite in earnest is he
in this savage purpose, and he even, in a
powerful aud repellent scene, rehearses the
coming situation with an actor who is in the
hospital with the acknowledged purpose of
studying character, and the unavowed and
unrecognised purpose of dying. When the
poor, pompous, and successful visitor arrives
the enmity fades from Karl’s heart. How
can he cherish animosity against this poor
invertebrate thing, who, for all bis apperent
sucees, is the victim of domestic wrongs and
social neglect. To the velleity to see an
old scquamtance he attributes having sum¬
moned thie poet from his home, and, after
shaxing hands with him, he turns his face
to the wall and dies. Satanically true are
some of the pictures presented. Whether
the world is the bester for their exhibition is
the question that arises, a question we are
disposed to answer in the negative. Mr. J.
D. Beveridge played with customary breadth
of style as the moribund, his supporters in¬
cluding Mr. George Trollope and Mr. Rudge
Harding.
How He Lied to Her Husband“ is a
characteristic whimsicality of Mr. George
Bernard Shaw, intended to burlesque the
author’s own play of Candida. Humor¬
ous enough in conception and treatment, it is
supremely bitter and cynical in lesson. Not
the least disposed are we to censure Mr.
Shaw for being what he is, or writing what
he can write. The lesson that he now##
preaches s taught virtually three hundred
years ago by the Shakespeare he affects to
despise.
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere
folly.
Henry Apjohn and Aurora Bumpus corre¬
spond pretty closely with Eugene and Can¬
dida in Mr. Shaw’s Candida. He is apoet,
and has dedicated to her many passionate
stanzas with which, though she has not read
them, she is much gratified. Unluckily, she
has allowed an offensive sister-in-law to pur¬
loin them, and they are now presumably in
the hands of ber husband, whose immediate
coming she anticipates. Spurning the advice
of Apjohn that they shall go to Bumpus, avow
their love, quit his house in company, and
leave him to take wihat steps he will, she
insists that he shall lie tbrough thick and
thin, and declare that the poems, which are
addressed to Aurora, have no personal appli¬
cation and are only typical of the dawn.
Bumpus arrives, furnished with the poems,
demands an explanation, and is left by the
cowering lady alone with her lover. In fulfil¬
ment of his promise, Apjohm lies for all he is
worth, but is surprised to find he is on the
wrong tack. Bumpus is mortally offended to
find that his wife is not the object of this
poetical homage, and when, hearng a noise,
Aurora enters the room to allay a deadly
combat, she finds both ien on the floor as
the result of an assault by the husband upon
the man who by neglect has shamefully in¬
sulted his wife. An apology and a retracta¬
tion upon the part of the poet, accompanied
by a consent that the poetical homage shall
be printed with all the glory of Dutch paper,
fine binding, and dekkle edges at the cost of
the husband, brings about a peace-making,
and the title of the forthcoming volume is to
be How He Lied to Her Husband.“ If all
this is madness, and we neither affirm nor
deny that it is such, it is at least vastly enter¬
taining. Our owm feeling was that of the