The revival of Rowley's old comedy of A Woman Never
Text, in the form to which Mr. Manche brought it some seven-and-twenty years ago, has given new attraction to the "off nights" at Saffier's Wells—that is, the nights onwhich Mr. Phelps does not act. The play is neither well constructed, brilliant, nor poetical ; but it can excite the sympathies and laughter of a public which has not learned the art of being blasé ; and the student of old English literature will not have spent an unprofitable evening if he goes to see it as a specimen of the average Elizabethan comedy, evidently intended by its civic foundation to appeal to the feel- ings of the 'prentices. At present, our zeal for the Corporation is not strong enough to further the apotheosis of a modern Lord Mayor; and we may look back with curiosity to the days when Rowley sang the glories of Sir Stephen Foster, and made his improvement of Ludgate Prison the subject of a drama.
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