At this season in former times, when boys were foolishly allowed to leave school for the holidays, the theatres (as some of us are old enough to remember) were much frequented, and were principally used for a silly kind of entertainment called Pantomimes. Of the three theatres in London which still continue to be devoted to some sort of dramatic performance, and have not been transferred into Lecture Halls, one only (the _Gaiety_) seems successful this winter. Crowds attend every night to witness “School,” a piece in which there is no folly of love-making, but the anxieties of a Competitive Examination for Honours in Science are finely realised. A tragic interest is imparted to the plot by making the hero become insane just as he has achieved the object of his ambition. At the _Haymarket_ there has been a failure which we fear will result in the ruin of the lessee. This enterprising gentleman imagined it might be possible to revive in these days an interest in some of the old plays once popular in this country, and after (it appears) long consultation and deliberation, determined to bring the _Merchant of Venice_ upon the boards. It was hoped that the proposal of one of the characters of the piece, named Shylock, to cut a pound of flesh from another, and the discussion whether this could be done without the effusion of blood, would excite the interest of the spectators. Unfortunately, as the author of the drama (Shakespeare, we are informed) stops short at the very crisis of the physiological experiment, and allows the intended subject to escape, the audience not unnaturally have exhibited disappointment, and the piece has been pronounced a failure. At the St. James’s Theatre the manager has likewise made a mistake in reviving Moliere’s _Malade Imaginaire_. We see no humour in this, so-called, comedy. Where is the point, for example, of the supposed jest of making the young medical student, _Thomas Diafoirus_, present his lady-love with a ticket of admission to a dissection? The act was a natural and delicate attention. The next department of the _Age of Science_ is very short as usual. _COURT._ Her Most Gracious Majesty, accompanied by the Princess Urania, and attended by Dr. Brown and Dr. Robinson, Lords Physicians in Waiting, honoured Dr. Scalpel’s studio by a visit, during which Dr. Scalpel exhibited to the youthful Princess several beautiful preparations of various cutaneous diseases, and of the morbid anatomy of Lupus and Elephantiasis.