In one respect, at all events, these play-dramas of children should meet with the approval of modern dramatic critics. No one can accuse them of losing sight of the motive of their drama in elaboration of scenery or stage effects. A chair will serve for a beleaguered castle, a pirate ship, or Cinderella’s coach in turn, and the costumes imitate this Elizabethan simplicity. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that their stage is entirely free from the tyranny of those pernicious conventions that place obstacles in the way of art. The law of primogeniture, always rigidly enforced in nurseries, as Mr. Kenneth Grahame has observed, makes the eldest brother as much of a nuisance as the actor-manager. According to his nature, and the character of the play, he always insists on being either hero or villain, and in the absence of limelight contrives to give himself an exaggerated share both of the action and of the dialogue. Sisters are placid creatures and do not very much mind whether they have anything to do or not as long as they can all be princesses; but it is hard on a younger brother to be compelled to walk the plank, although he has the heart of a pirate chief. And the fact that whatever part he may play the eldest brother must triumph at the end of the last act tends to stereotype the lines along which the drama develops. As for the plays themselves, it must be owned that they cover an extraordinary extent of ground, and display a variety that no other repertory theatre can hope to equal. The present writer has seen five children in one afternoon give spirited performances of Aladdin, David and Goliath, an unnamed drama of pirates, and the famous comedy of teacher and naughty pupils. This last is the standard performance of Elementary School girls all over London, and to the discerning critic displays just those faults of sophistication and over-elaboration to which long runs at our theatres have made us accustomed. The teacher is always too monotonously ill-tempered, the pupils are ill-behaved beyond all discretion; Ibsen, one feels, would have expressed this eternal warfare between youth and authority in subtler terms. Sometimes, however, London children achieve a really startling realism in their games; and the looker-on may derive a considerable knowledge of the mothers from watching the children perform in some such drama of life as the ever-popular “Shopping on Saturday Night.” It may be noted here that children’s rhapsodies over dolls and kittens, or, indeed, over anything, are always clever pieces of character-acting. Naturally, children do not rhapsodise, but they soon learn the secret of the art from observation of their elders.