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The Tip for the Alexandr(i)a Park Meeting. "Heraclian must win." Notice the Rara Nativa Oysteriana Shrub in the background.

THE HAYMARKET HYPATIA.

That I never could struggle through Charles Kingsley's novel Hypatia, is, as far as I am personally concerned, very much in favour of my pronouncing an unbiassed opinion on the "new classical play" ("Historical," if you like, but not "classical," and there is not the slightest chance of its becoming a "classic") written by G. Stuart Ogilvie, entitled Hypatia, and "founded on Kingsley's celebrated Novel," which "celebrated Novel" is, for me at least, not only "celebrated," but "remarkable," as being one of the very few works of fiction (excepting always the majority of Kingsley's works) completely baffling my powers of endurance.

Cyrillus Fernandez Gladstonius Episcopus.

Mr. Stuart Ogilvie's Drama may be a clever adaptation of a story difficult to adapt; but that his play is powerfully dramatic, even when it arrives at what, as I conceive, was intended to be its strongest dramatic situation in the Second Scene of the Third Act, no one but an Umbra (to be "classical"), a sycophant, a "creature," or a contentious noodle, could possibly assert. Yet, as a series of tableaux vivants, illustrating scenes in the public and private life of Issachar the Jew,—and that Jew Mr. Beerbohm Tree, so artistically made up as to be absolutely unrecognisable by those who know him best,—the action is decidedly interesting up to the end of the Third Act. After that, all is tumult. The gay and seductive Orestes, Prefect of Alexandria (carefully played by Mr. Lewis Waller) is slain, anyhow, all higgledy-piggledy, by the Jew, Issachar, whose seductive daughter Ruth (sweetly and gently represented by Miss Olga Brandon) this gay Lothario of a Prefect has contrived, not, apparently, with any great difficulty, to lead astray, or, to put it "classically," to seduce from the narrow path of such virtue as is common alike to Pagan, Jew, and Christian. As for handsome Hypatia herself, magnificent though Miss Julia Neilson be as a classic model for a painter, she is nowhere, dramatically, in the piece, when contrasted with the unhappy Jewish Family of two. It is the story of Issachar, his daughter and Orestes, that absorbs the interest; and, as to what becomes of Cyril and his Merry Monks, of Philammon (which, when pronounced, sounds like a modern Cockney-rendering of Philip Hammond, with the aspirate omitted and the final "d" dropped), of old Theon (who never appears but he is immediately sent away again, and therefore might be termed "The-on-and-off-'un"), and, finally, of even that charming specimen of a Girton Girl-Lecturer on Philosophy Hypatia herself, well—to adopt Hood's couplet about the Poor in London,—

From an Ancient Vase found in the Haymarket.]

"Where they goes, or how they fares, Nobody knows and nobody cares."

The entire interest is centred in Issachar, and had the author devised some strong dramatic climax (such as occurs in that play of Sardou's where Sarah B. stabs Paul Berton) with which to finish the piece, when the Prefect should have been killed either by Issachar or by Miriam (Sardou would have made Issachar's daughter the heroine—the Sara Bernhardt of the piece) then, in the penultimate Act, anything tragic, or otherwise, might picturesquely and appropriately have happened to the classic Girton girl, Hypatia, and Master Phil 'Ammon, the good young Monk so inclined to go wrong, to the great contentment of the audience.

Mr. Tree makes a thoroughly oriental type of Issachar, and it is within an ace of being a grand impersonation. What that ace exactly is, it is somewhat difficult to say, but what is wanting is wanting in his great scene with his daughter. If the dramatist had given him such another final chance as I have already suggested, the character might have been dramatically perfected in Mr. Tree's hands. As it is, both by author and actor it is left "to be finished in our next."

Mr. Terry is good as the amatory Monk, and Miss Julia Neilson is statuesquely graceful as Hypatia. If I say "she is making strides in her profession," I must be taken to allude not to her vast improvement histrionically, but to the long steps which she takes across the stage.

The costumes are admirable, especially that of Issachar, on whose attire the Messrs. Nathan as Israel-lights-and-leaders must be considered high authorities.

Mr. Alma Tadema, R.A., is responsible for the designs of the scenery by Messrs. Johnstone, Hann, Hall, and Harker. [Great chance for 'Arry 'ere! "Scenery by 'Ann—a lady artist of course—then 'All and then 'Arker, from designs by Halma Tadema." "I s'pose Halma's a artistic shemale," 'Arry would say: "cos I know as there's another Halma on the stage, leastways on the Music 'All stage, and she's Halma Stanley."] Whatever the designing Alma may have done, I cannot say much for the reproduction of his favourite game of marbles. The "marble halls" lack polish; but the Market Place, The Court of Hypatia's House, Issachar's snuggery, and a Street in Alexandria, are highly effective pictures. But I should like to know if in Mr. Alma Tadema's design for the Monk's dress, Mr. Fred Terry found a small black and silver crucifix of very modern workmanship suspended from the girdle, as this religious emblem did not come into use until a much later date. By the way, ecclesiastical ornaments must have been cheap in those days to warrant Bishop Cyril (strongly rendered by Mr. Fernandez) flaunting about the streets of Alexandria in such rainbow robes as, in a later age, would have led people to imagine that he had just broken out of the stained glass window of a Gothic Cathedral. Two thousand years hence the New Zealand dramatist may represent the Archbishop of Canterbury as walking about London in his lawn sleeves with coronation cope and mitre, or Cardinal Herbert Vaughan as wearing his scarlet hat and robes, and