The fact is, it was necessary to keep the lover, _Mr. Stanley Trevenen_, away for some time, in order to allow of there being a glimmer of probability in the announcement of his having thrown over the girl to whom he is devotedly attached, and having married somebody else whom he met abroad. "Now," says the dramatist, "what is the shortest possible space of time I can allow for this? Ahem!--say a month." So he gives him a month. "Then," says he, next, "what is the shortest possible time we can allow for an engagement and a marriage? Say six weeks. Good. Six weeks be it. Only, hang it, this muddle has to last for six weeks! Well, it can't be helped. I can't give any more trouble to the bothering plot; and, as after all, there's a capital character for Mr. HARE, and not at all a bad one for Miss RORKE, with a fairish one for FORBES ROBERTSON, why, if Mr. HARE will accept the play, and do it, I should say that, cast and played as it will be, it is pretty sure to be a success." [Illustration: The Happy Pair.] So much for the Author and the Play. As to the Actors, Mr. HARE has had many a better part, and this is but an inferior species of a genus with which the public has long been familiar; but there is no one who can touch him in a part of this description. Admirable! most admirable! _Barbrook_ is in reality a silly elderly scamp, with all the will to be a villain but not endowed with the brains requisite for that line of life. Thus, the Author, unconsciously, has created him. But Mr. HARE invests this feather-headed scoundrel with Iago-ish and Mephistophelian characteristics, that go very near to make the audience believe that, after all, there _is_ something in the part, and also in the plot. But the part is only a snowman, and melts away under the sunlight of criticism. Miss KATE RORKE is charming. It is a monotonous and wearisome part, and the merit of it is her own. Miss NORREYS is very good but the girl is insipid. Miss COMPTON, as the good-hearted, knowing, fast lady, wins us, as she proves herself to be the real _Robin Goodfellow_, the real good fairy of the piece, _Robin Goodfellow_ is a misnomer, unless the aforesaid _Robin_ be dissociated from _Puck_: but it is altogether a bad title as applied to this piece for, as with Mr. CARTON's piece at the St. James's, _Liberty Hall_, it is a title absolutely thrown away. Mr. FORBES ROBERTSON is as good as the part permits, and it is the Author's fault that he is not better. Mr. GILBERT HARE gives a neat bit of character as the Doctor, and Mr. DONALD ROBERTSON may by now have made something of the rather foolish Clergyman (whether Rector, Vicar, or Curate I could not make out), whose stupid laugh began by making a distinct hit, and, on frequent repetition, became a decided bore. It is played in one Scene and three Acts, and no doubt in the course of a fortnight certain repetitious and needless lines will have been excised, and the piece will play