From the days of our youth we have always had a kindness for Drury Lane Theatre, and, above all, for Drury Lane pantomime. The theatre has an individual atmosphere, the pantomime is not like the pantomime one sees anywhere else. In order to appreciate the size of the place it is necessary to put on a very small pair of knickerbockers and gaze upwards from the stalls between the chocolates and the ices. It is like looking into the deeps of heaven, though here the gods suck oranges and make cat-calls—those fascinating sounds that our youthful lips would never achieve. Drury Lane is the only theatre that preserves the old glamour. We never enter its doors without thinking of Charles Lamb, and it would hardly astonish us if Mistress Nell Gwynn came to greet us with her basket of China oranges, wearing that famous pair of thick worsted stockings that the little link-boy gave her to save her pretty feet from the chilblains. Outside, the image of Shakespeare leans on its pedestal, sadly contemplative of the grey roofs of Covent Garden. The porters who carry about bunches of bananas unconsciously reproduce the pictures of Mr. Frank Brangwyn. If Shakespeare ever slips down from his perch to watch a scene or two of the pantomime from the shadows of the auditorium, he must wonder a little at our twentieth-century masques. Like the children, he would probably appreciate the splendid colour and brightness of the spectacle, and, having been an actor himself, he would perhaps pardon the actors’ cheerful neglect of the rights of the dramatist. For modern pantomime is a business of strongly contrasted individualities rather than the product of blended and related effort. This is especially true of Drury Lane, whose stage at this season of the year is always crowded with vaudeville Napoleons and musical-comedy Cleopatras. In detail the pantomime is excellent; as an artistic entity it does not exist. At first sight this seems rather a pity. Given a wonderfully appointed stage, gorgeous mounting, a fine orchestra, and a number of gifted performers, it is natural to expect that the result should be more than the mere sum of these units. But, as a matter of fact, pantomime is essentially formless. Those critics who clamour for straightforward versions of the old nursery stories would be vastly disappointed if they got what they wanted. The old stories are well enough when told by firelight in the nursery after tea of a winter’s evening. But they lack humour, and are not, as a rule, dramatic. (“Bluebeard,” of course, is a striking exception.) When a story lasting twenty minutes must be expanded to last four hours the story is bound to suffer. When, in addition, all the characters are played by performers whose strength lies in their individuality, it will be surprising if any part of the illusion created by the original fable survives at all. CHILDREN’S DRAMA