* * * * * ROMEO ROBERTSON AND JULIET PAULA CAMPBELL. _Mrs. J. P. C._ "O ROMEO, ROMEO! wherefore art thou ROMEO?" _Romeo Robertson._ Because I have played it before: but "O JULIET, JULIET! wherefore art thou JULIET?" _Mrs. J. P. C._ Because you cast me for the part, and I wanted to play it. _Shakspeare adapted to the Lyceum._ [Illustration: Master Romeo probably seventeen, and Miss Juliet certainly fourteen years old.] _JULIET_ is, according to her nurse, just fourteen years of age. The story is that of "_Villikins and his Dinah":_-- There was a rich noble in Verona did dwell, He had but one daughter an unkimmun fine young gal, Her name it was _Juliet_, just fourteen years old, With a werry large fortune in siliver and gold. Singing tooral li (_ad. lib._). The southern girl of fourteen equals the northerner of nineteen; and this must ever be the initial difficulty which few experienced actresses, can surmount. _Juliet_ is, in fact, a single girl and a married young woman rolled into one. "Single," "double," and "there's the rub!" Mrs. PAT CAMPBELL'S _Juliet_ takes the poison, but not the cake. Her _Juliet_ has over her the shadow of _Paula Tanqueray_. From the commencement, except in the Balcony scene, she is a _Juliet_ "with a past." The balcony and the moonlight suit this _Juliet_. Good, too, is she when, abjectly miserable, she crumples herself up all in a heap, like the victim in a picture of Japanese torture, so that at any moment, without surprising the spectator, she might turn heels over head and straighten herself out at the feet of the irascible old _Capulet_. Once again let me adapt a verse of the ancient ditty:-- "Oh Papa, oh Papa, I've not made up my mind, And to marry just yet I do _not_ feel inclined." (_Aside._) To _Laurence_ the Friar I'll tell all my grief, And the reverend gent may afford me relief By singing (_as a duett_) tooral li tooral, &c. Judging from the _Tanqueray_ model, Mrs. PAT CAMPBELL _ought_ to have been at her best in the potion scene; but, she wasn't. As for the final stabbing, she might as well have tickled herself with a straw and died o' laughing. [Illustration: Romeo Robertson ready for any undertaking. Vaults opened, &c.] Watching FORBES-ROBERTSON as _Romeo_, I could not help thinking what an excellent _Hamlet_ he would make; perhaps when I see him in that character, I shall remember how good he was as _Romeo_:-- "_Hamlet Romeo amem, rentosus Romeo Hamlet._" But that's another story; so suffice it that temporarily FORBES-ROBERTSON is "Our Only _Romeo_."