I am inclined to guess that if the author of ‘As You Like It’ had accepted an invitation from the Professional Woman’s League, he would have sat out the performance at Palmer’s Theater, gazing at it with tolerant eye and courteously complimenting the Lady President or the Lady Vice-President who had been deputed to escort him to his box. But I make no doubt that his glance would have been less favorable had he been a spectator of a performance of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ given in May, 1877, at Booth’s Theater for the benefit of George Rignold, who appeared as Romeo supported by seven different Juliets, the part changing impersonators with every reappearance of the character. Grace d’Urfy danced in the masquerade, Adelaide Neilson leaned down from the balcony, Ada Dyas was married in the cell of Friar Lawrence, Maude Granger shrank from bloodshed, Marie Wainwright parted from Romeo, Fanny Davenport drank the potion, and Minnie Cummings awakened in the tomb. It cannot be denied that Romeo was the greatest lover in all literature; but he was not a Don Juan deserting one mistress after another, and still less was he a Bluebeard married to half-a-dozen wives. The diversity of actresses, one replacing another as the sad tale rolled forward to its foredoomed end, may have served to attract a larger audience than Rignold could allure by his unaided ability; but it was destructive of the integrity of the tragedy. The unavoidable result of this freakish experiment was to take the mind of the audience off from the play itself and to focus it on a succession of histrionic stunts,—the single scenes in which the Juliets, one after another, exhibited themselves in rivalry with one another. The continuity of the tragedy of young love in the springtime of life was basely broken, its poetry was sadly defiled, and its dignity was indisputably desecrated. The actresses who lent themselves to this catchpenny show were ill-advised; they were false to their art; and they took no profit from their sacrifice of their standing in the profession. While the performance was discreditable to all who were concerned in it, the major part of the disgrace must be assumed by the actor who lowered himself to make money by it. The obvious objections which must be urged against the splitting up of a single part among half-a-dozen performers do not lie against the appearance of a single actor in two or more characters. In fact, the doubling of parts, as it is called, is one of the oldest of theatrical expedients; and it was the custom in the ceremonial performances of the Greek drama at Athens, when there were only three actors, who might have to impersonate in turn seven or eight characters. It sprang up again in Tudor times, when a strolling company like that to which Hamlet addressed his advice numbered only a scant half-dozen members, and in which there might be only one boy to bear the burden of two or three or even four female characters.