Mr. MILNE has an individual manner so distinct that he can well afford to acknowledge his debt to Sir JAMES BARRIE. As in _Mary Rose_, so here (though there are no supernatural forces at work) we have the sharp contrast between commonplace life, as lived by the rest, and the life of Fairyland, as coming within the vision of one only. And we were reminded too of the Midsummer-madness that overtook the company in _Dear Brutus_. I won't say that it wasn't natural enough for _Melisande_, under the fascination of a moonlit Midsummer Eve, to imagine, when she chanced upon a gentleman in fancy dress of the right period, that at last she had realised her dream of a hero of romance; but she was stark Midsummer-mad to suppose, when she met him early next morning with his costume unchanged, that he would keep it on till he came to tea with the family, and then, still wearing it, waft her off to Faerie. But not even BARRIE has ever made a better scene than that which showed us the disillusionment of the visionary when she is confronted with her blue-and-gold hero of romance now transformed into a plain Stock Exchange man, his air of banality enhanced by the last word in golf suitings. The humour of this scene, in which she made conventional conversation without any real effort to conceal her sense of the bathos of the situation, was very perfect. The relatively simple humour of the match-making mother--not so simple, all the same, as its spontaneity made it appear--had the distinction which one expects of Mr. MILNE; but this was far the funniest feature in the play. It would have been an easy matter to make cheap fun, as MARK TWAIN did in _A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur_, out of the popular view of the Age of Romance, but A. A. M. avoided that obvious lure. Indeed, in his natural anxiety not to be taken too seriously in his first attempt to be serious, he rather tended to make light of his own theory of modern romance, laying a little too much stress at the end on the culinary aspect of conjugal felicity. I am not sure that Mr. ARTHUR WONTNER (to whom my best wishes for his new managership) quite realised, in his doublet and long hose, my idea of a figure of mediaeval romance. In fact I am free to confess that I disagreed with _Melisande_ and preferred him in his golf-clothes. But perhaps that was part of the idea, and Mr. MILNE meant me to feel like that. Miss BARBARA HOFFE'S _Melisande_--a difficult part, because she was the only other-worldly person in the play and the only one in desperate earnest--was very cleverly handled. In her most exalted moments of poetic rapture she was never too precious, and when called upon for a touch of corrective humour was quick to respond.