The trouble with most lyrics is that they are written by song-writers who have had no education. Mr. MacKaye's college training shows itself in every line of the opera. There is a subtlety of rhyme-scheme, a delicacy of meter, and, above all, an originality of thought and expression which promises much for the school of university-bred lyricists. Here, for instance, is a lyric which Joe McCarthy could never have written: _Up spoke Nancy, spanking Nancy, Says, "My feet are far too dancy, Dancy O! So foot-on-the-grass, Foot-on-the-grass, Foot-on-the-grass is my fancy, O!_" Of course this is a folk-opera. And you can get away with a great deal of that "dancy-o" stuff when you call it a folk-opera. You can throw it all back on the old folk at home and they can't say a word. But even the local wits of Rip Van Winkle's time would have repudiated the comedy lines which Mr. MacKaye gives Rip to say in which "Katy-did" and "Katy-didn't" figure prominently as the nub, followed, before you have time to stop laughing, by one about "whip poor Will" (whippoorwill--get it?). If "Rip Van Winkle" is ever produced again, Ed Wynn should be cast as Rip. He would eat that line alive. * * * * * Ed Wynn, by the way, might do wonders by the opera if he could get the rights to produce it in his own way. Let Mr. MacKaye's name stay on the programme, but give Ed Wynn the white card to do as he might see fit with the book. For instance, one of Mr. MacKaye's characters is named "Dirck Spuytenduyvil." Let him stand as he is, but give him two cousins, "Mynheer Yonkers" and "Jan One Hundred and Eighty-third Street." The three of them could do a comedy tumbling act. There is practically no end to the features that could be introduced to tone the thing up. The basic idea of "Rip Van Winkle" would lend itself admirably to Broadway treatment, for Mr. MacKaye has taken liberties, with the legend and introduced the topical idea of a Magic Flask, containing home-made hootch. Hendrick Hudson, the Captain of the Catskill Bowling Team, is the lucky possessor of the doctor's prescription and formula, and it is in order to take a trial spin with the brew that Rip first goes up to the mountain. Here are Hendrick's very words of invitation: _You'll be right welcome. I will let you taste A wonder drink we brew aboard the Half Moon. Whoever drinks the Magic Flask thereof Forgets all lapse of time And wanders ever in the fairy season Of youth and spring. Come join me in the mountains At mid of night And there I promise you the Magic Flask_. And so at mid of night Rip fell for the promise of wandering "in the fairy season," as so many have done at the invitation of a man who has "made a little something at home which you couldn't tell from the real stuff." Rip got out of it easily. He simply went to sleep for twenty years. You ought to see a man I know.