The respectable theatres in Madrid shut their doors on the Fridays in Lent, and respectable theatre-goers remain at home. It is not the correct thing to be seen pleasure-hunting on a day of mortification and white meats. But actors must live, as well as in London. Those who are connected with high-priced houses and are decently paid can afford to lose one night in the week. But there are poorer followers of the Thespian art who are in very bad case indeed, owing to this tribute to religious scruple. If we are to be virtuous, well and good: but let us be virtuous in earnest. We have bull-fights on the Sundays in Lent. Why may we not enjoy the singing of Marie Sass in _Norma_ on a Lenten Friday? This thin distinction between what is right and what is not--so thin that men of the cold north cannot make it out--comes under the category of those indigenous peculiarities which surpass all understanding. Anyhow, it presses rather heavily on the humble votaries of the sock and buskin who are attached to the middle-class houses, and who are docked of one night's salary in every week of the seven in the penitential season, in order that the proprieties of a public which is not particular to a shade as to how it observes the Sabbath may be respected. The low theatres--the Romea, where the Republic is glorified; the Alhambra, where heels are kicked up and lewd songs are rolled forth; the Capellanes, where monks and nuns are caricatured, have reason on their side, at all events. They dare to be logical in their contempt for the Church, and keep open all the year round, on Friday as on Sunday, in the time of fasting as of feasting. The Teatro Martin is not a low theatre nor yet is it a high-priced one. The actors there are not rich, but the audience has some pretensions to delicacy of taste. What is the lessee of the Martin to do during the Lent? To rob his treasury of one night's receipts and cheat his patrons of one night's enjoyment? That would be the last crime any spirited and enterprising lessee would dream of committing--if he could avoid it. From this dilemma the gentleman of the Teatro Martin has discovered an escape. He opens his house on Fridays, but he converts it into a temple; he reconciles amusement with religion; he produces a Passion Play! I went to see it for the special reason that it was my privilege once to describe the Passion Play in the Bavarian Highlands, and I was anxious to compare one representation with the other, and, if possible, to renew my emotions of the past.