he accuses her of making _Theseus_ break faith with a number of ladies. Clearly they were a travelling company and would never have confined themselves to the costumes of any particular clime. Anyhow, when at His Majesty's you saw _Oberon_ in sylvan dress moving lightly through a wood that looked like a wood (and so left your mind free to listen to him), you could believe in all the lovely things he had to say; but when you saw Mr. BARKER'S _Oberon_ standing stark, like a painted graven image, with yellow cheeks and red eyebrows, up against a symbolic painted cloth, and telling you that he knows a bank where the wild thyme blows, you know quite well that he knows nothing of the kind; and you don't believe a word of it. But, to leave SHAKSPEARE decently out of the question, I liked the gold dresses of the fairies enormously, so long as _Puck_--a sort of adult Struwel-Puck that got badly on my nerves--was not there, destroying every colour scheme with his shrieking scarlet suit, which went with nothing except a few vermilion eyebrows. I liked too the grace of their simple chain-dances on the green mound (English dances, you will note, and English tunes--not Indian). But in the last scene, where they interlace among the staring columns, their movements lacked space. Indeed that was the trouble all through; that, and the pitiless light that poured point-blank upon the stage from the 12.6 muzzles protruding from the bulwarks of the dress-circle. There was no distance, no suggestion of the spirit-world, no sense of mystery (except in regard to Mr. BARKER'S intentions). The best scene was the haunt of _Titania_, with its background of Liberty curtains very cleverly disposed. As drapery they were excellent, but as symbols of a forest I found them a little arbitrary. I do not mind a forest being indicated, if you are short of foliage, by a couple of trees (in tubs, if you like) or even a single tree; but somehow--and the fault is probably mine--the spectacle of hanging drapery does not immediately suggest to me the idea of birds' nests. I am afraid I should be just as stupid if Mr. BARKER gave me the same convention the other way round, and showed an interior with foliage to indicate window-curtains.