The drama is deficient in male characters of salient interest. Philip is vague and blank, as he is evidently meant to be, and Cardinal Pole is a portrait of a character constitutionally inapt for breadth of action. The portrait is a skilful one, however, and expresses forcibly the pangs of a sensitive nature entangled in trenchant machinery. There is a fine scene near the close of the drama in which Pole and the Queen--cousins, old friends, and for a moment betrothed (Victor Hugo characteristically assumes Mary to have been her cousin's mistress)--confide to each other their weariness and disappointment. Mary endeavours to console the Cardinal, but he has only grim answers for her: "Our altar is a mound of dead men's clay, Dug from the grave that yawns for us beyond; And there is one Death stands beside the Groom, And there is one Death stands beside the Bride." _Queen Mary_, I believe, is to be put upon the stage next winter in London. I do not pretend to forecast its success in representation; but it is not indiscrete to say that it will suffer from the absence of a man's part capable of being made striking. The very clever Mr. Henry Irving has, we are told, offered his services, presumably to play either Philip or Pole. If he imparts any great relief to either figure, it will be a signal proof of talent. The actress, however, to whom the part of the Queen is allotted will have every reason to be grateful. The character is full of colour and made to utter a number of really dramatic speeches. When Renard assures her that Philip is only waiting for leave of the Parliament to land on English shores she has an admirable outbreak: "God change the pebble which his kingly foot First presses into some more costly stone Than ever blinded eye. I'll have one mark it And bring it me. I'll have it burnished firelike; I'll set it round with gold, with pearl, with diamond. Let the great angel of the Church come with him, Stand on the deck and spread his wings for sail!" Mary is not only vividly conceived from within, but her physiognomy, as seen from without, is indicated with much pictorial force: "Did you mark our Queen? The colour freely played into her face, And the half sight which makes her look so stern Seemed, through that dim, dilated world of hers, To read our faces." In the desolation of her last days, when she bids her attendants go to her sister and "Tell her to come and close my dying eyes And wear my crown and dance upon my grave," Mary, to attest her misery, seats herself on the ground, like Constance in "King John"; and the comment of one of her women hereupon is strikingly picturesque: "Good Lord! how grim and ghastly looks her Grace, With both her knees drawn upward to her chin. There was an old-world tomb beside my father's, And this was opened, and the dead were found Sitting, and in this fashion; she looks a corpse."