17 MARCH 1849, Page 11

The elements of Separate Maintenance, the new Haymarket farce, may

be found distributed among several other pieces. The bickerings of the husband and wife, who are the hero and heroine of the work, remind one of . Three Weeks After Marriage; the partition of their common sitting- room, by adopting the seam of the carpet as a line of demarcation, is like the situation of A Lad,y and Gentleman in Peculiar Difficulties; while the notion of making each suppose the other not only dead but risen again in a spectral form, will be found in several farces and melodramas. How- ever, the elements are very efficiently worked together by Mr. Stirling Coyne; and his dialogue abounds in comic force. Mr. and Mrs. Keeley as the wedded pair, and Mrs. Humby as one of those pointed soubrettes which she has made quite her own, are of course inimitable.