A poet in the _Forum_ asks the question, "Is Verse in Danger?" 'Tis a wild suggestion! Is Verse in Danger? Nay, _that_'s not the curse; Danger (of utter boredom) is in Verse!
"ODD MAN OUT."--On Saturday last, the last among the theatrical advertisements in the _Daily Telegraph_ was the mysterious one, "MR. CHARLES SUGDEN AT LIBERTY," and then followed his address. "At Liberty!" What does it mean? Has he been--it is a little difficult to choose the right word, but let us say immured--has he been immured in some cell?--for it does sound like a "sell" of another sort--and has he at last effected a sensational escape? No doubt CHARLES, our friend, will be able to offer the public a satisfactory explanation when he re-appears on the Stage which suffers from his absence.
_OR, THE DOOK, THE DANCING GIRL, AND THE LITTLE LAME DUCK._
What is to be admired in ENERY HAUTHOR JONES is not so much his work but his pluck,--for has he not, in the first place, overcome the prudery of the Lord Chamberlain's Licensing Department, and, in the second place, has he not introduced on the boards of the Haymarket a good old-fashioned Melodrama, brought "up to date," and disguised in a Comedy wrapper? Walk in, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see _The Dancing Girl_, a Comedy-Drama shall we call it, or, generically, a Play? wherein the prominent figures are a wicked Duke,--_vice_ the "wicked Baronet," now shelved, as nothing under the ducal rank will suit us nowadays, bless you!--a Provincial Puritan family, an honest bumpkin lover, a devil of a dancing woman who lives a double-shuffling sort of life, an angel of a lame girl,--who, of course, can't cut capers but goes in for coronets,--a sly, unprincipled, and calculating kind of angel she is too, but an audience that loves Melodrama is above indulging in uncharitable analysis of motive,--a town swell in the country, a more or less unscrupulous land-agent, and a genuine, honest "heavy father," of the ancient type, with a good old-fashioned melodramatic father's curse ready at the right moment, the last relic of a bygone period of the transpontine Melodrama, which will bring tears to the eyes of many an elderly playgoer on hearing the old familiar formula, in the old familiar situation, reproduced on the stage of the modern Haymarket as if through the medium of a phonophone.