_Punch_, as I have so often insisted, was a Londoner first and foremost, but he did not exclude the provinces from his survey. The opening of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon in 1879 was a landmark in the history of the legitimate drama, and _Punch_ did not fail to acknowledge the strenuous local labour and large local liberality which had carried to completion a worthy scheme for commemorating the most memorable work ever wrought by mortal brain. It was in the same year, again, that _Punch_ recorded with sympathy and admiration the memorial performances given at Manchester for the benefit of the widow and family of Charles Calvert, the actor-manager "who did more for the elevation and development of the higher drama, historical and imaginative, than any provincial manager on record, and than any metropolitan managers, except Macready, Charles Kean and Phelps." Phelps and Charles Mathews had both died in 1878, and Buckstone in 1879. Mrs. Langtry, who had taken to the stage, is advised to give up acting in 1882. In 1883 Mr. Anstey Guthrie's immortal _Vice Versâ_ was dramatized and produced with Mr. Charles Hawtrey as Mr. Bultitude. The evergreen veterans of to-day were already advancing in fame and popularity. Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson had appeared as Romeo in 1881. In 1884 the late Mr. Wilson Barrett, encouraged by his successes in melodrama, essayed the rôle of Hamlet. _Punch_ maliciously embodies his criticisms in a letter to Irving, then touring in America, but the general tenor of his remarks is decidedly reassuring to Irving. The long run of _Our Boys_ in 1877 was equalled and eclipsed, after an initial failure, by the prodigious popularity of _The Private Secretary_, also in 1884. Lady Bancroft died only the other day; Sir Squire is still hale and hearty. Yet it is thirty-six years ago since they resolved, while still at the zenith of their popularity and in early middle age, to quit the scenes of their many triumphs, and _Punch_, in his notice of their farewell performance, says no more than the strict truth:-- The Bancrofts have done much for the Stage; in fact, the _mise-en-scène_ at the houses where Comedy is played, owes its present completeness entirely to them. They, and Mr. Hare with them, introduced the natural style of acting, thereby supplanting the theatrical tone and gestures of the old school, which Burlesques had done good service in laughing off our Stage for ever. The performance at Cambridge of the _Eumenides_ by "Messrs. Æschylus and Verrall" in the same year is handled in a vein of friendly facetiousness. _Punch_ found Sir Charles Stanford's music rather more than worthy of the occasion, but thinks Æschylus and his very clever collaborator might have shown more common sense and allowance for modern feeling.