her going to sleep when her father is prosing. The conspirators, and the remorseful king, are minor characters, calling for no particular remark, except as padding to sustain a weakish plot. Now what do I do? Burlesque it? Not in the sense in which I understand burlesque, as, for instance, I burlesqued _Fédora_, _Diplomacy_, Ouida’s _Strathmore_, &c., &c. No; but I take the story and give it a turn similar (though not the same) to what Thackeray gave to _Ivanhoe_ in _Rebecca and Rowena_. He took up the tale where Scott left off, but he reproduced the scenes and characters under changed conditions. I take the story with its leading characters; I omit the tempest entirely (only a sea-fog, when Prospero had forecasted a “disturbance”), and Ariel, capable of assuming all sorts of shapes and forms, does so and wrecks the ship. The arrangement of scenes doesn’t follow the play. Of course Trinculo and Stephano are not in it, for no one making a new comic story could take them or Caliban as far as he is associated with them and make them more funny, whether in dialogue or in business (I know it all, having studied it) than they are in the piece. No one _could_ take the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ and produce a modern extravaganza, though they might (as Planché did) use the fairies out of it, who are immortal. No one deprecates a vulgar, coarse piece of buffoonery by way of burlesque more than I do. I have undertaken this very work as an advance on _Blue Beard_, as _Blue Beard_ was (though you would not recognise it) a distinct advance on what had preceded it. It forms one of the “burlesque drama” series――a generic title to which I have objections, but by which Mr. John Hollingshead sets store――and as it is a matter of indifference to the public whether what is really an extravaganza comes under the above heading, I havn’t any more to say, but the sum is that I am distinctly not burlesquing Shakespeare’s _Tempest_, as by burlesquing I understand my mode of treatment of Sardou’s _Fédora_, _Diplomacy_, Ouida’s _Strathmore_, &c., &c.” In September 1883, Mr. Hollingshead also wrote to the _Daily News_ as follows:――