THE WESTMINSTER PLAY.

QUEEN ELIZABETH, perhaps more than any other King or Queen of England, is a monarch associated with the traditions of the English public schools. She " gave two loaves " to a certain mess at a certain table in. Eton College Hall, and two loaves—that is, a double allowance of bread—have duly been placed before that mess ever since. It was she who gave a Winchester scholar the opportunity of making a neat reply in Virgilian Latin, when she asked him if he had been flogged, and he gave her the obvious answer: " Infandum, regina, jubes renovare dolorem,"—a witticism which has been of incalculable use to journalists and public speakers for three hundred years. More important than either of these benefactions, however, she ordained by Royal charter that the scholars of Westminster School should every year perform a Latin play, and it is not to be doubted that had she been present in the dormitory where the "Phormio" was played on Wednesday, her royal ruff would have shaken with Olympian laughter,—that is, if she remembered enough of the Latin which Roger Ascham, " with nips, bobs, and pinches," used to try to get into her head when she was in the schoolroom. Have those English playwrights who do not find it difficult to adapt plays from the French sufficiently studied the Latin of Plautus and Terence P The "Phormio" may have been adapted before now, but an adaptation does not readily occur to the memory. It is certainly an ingenious piece of mechanism, with plenty of movement in it, though possibly the applause which is expected for the triumph of cunning and trickery which is the keynote of the play would not come very readily from an English audience. The hero, Phormio, unless he appeared before a tolerant or a cynical " house," would be hissed. He is a first-rata example of the parasite, and the play shows him throughout making money and curry- ing favour by managing this or that business adroitly, without overdue regard to honesty. He begins by obliging Antipho, an Athenian young man about town, by giving evidence in Court that he, Antipho, is the nearest relation of Phanium, a young girl whom Antipho wants to marry. The Court, therefore, makes an order compelling him to marry her. This is by no means to the liking of Antipho's father, Demipho, who had other projects in mind, meaning his son to marry the daughter of his brother Chremes. He, Chremes, not being a stickler for matrimonial propriety, has two wives, one at Athens and one at Lemnos, and it is the daughter of the latter whom Demipho wants his son to marry. There is the first complication. The second is that Chremes discovers to his horror that his Lemnian wife has left Lemnos, and is in Athens with her daughter looking for him. Both Antipho and Chremes are now in great perplexity ; enter to them Phormio, who offers to take over Antipho's newly married wife, Phanium, if he is given sufficient dowry with her. The two old gentlemen agree, and hand over the cash, whereupon it is discovered that Phanium is none other than Chremes's daughter by his Lemnian wife, who has died of poverty in Athens. This discovery leads to the discovery by Chremes's Athenian wife of the double life he has been leading, and gives an opportunity for one of the most amusing scenes in the play. Phormio throughout manages to ingratiate himself with the people whose power is worth seeking, and the scene ends, as Phormio hopes many more scenes will end, with an invitation to a capital dinner.

It is all as fresh and bright as *hen it was first played before a Roman audience. But more even perhaps than the play, the epilogue is " the thing." It is, indeed, no inconsider- able feat to maintain year after year, ae the authors of the Westminster epilogue contrive to do, so high a level of wit and epigram and ingenious punning. The epilogue is, of course, an appanage to the play on pantomimic lines, and the authors have contrived to introduce into it allusions to almost every conceivable public personality or topic of the day. The curtain rises on a scene in a Westminster street, with "Sophrona, a nurse, scrubbing a. howling boy. Enter to them

Chremes, who is now described as a "truster in soap." " What," be asks, "are you using Pears ? "

" Piris Tune fares ? tu nostra negas commercia ? quare ? "

" Yon put foreign substances into your soap," Sophrona replies, and the quarrel goes on until Nausistrata, "a supporter of Women's Suffrage," comes in, and suggests that they should refer the matter to her. They are disputing over "the right of washing," Chremes explains, which gives Nausistrata an opportunity of addressing a parodied couplet to " You dirty boy ":— " 0 caenose puer, nimium ne crede colori Saponis, caenum nam fugat ipse borax."

Soap shall not be protected, she declares, but women shall. Men have had their own way long enough ; now it is the women's turn :- "Sed nosmet protegere aequomst : Regnavere diu satque superque viii : Armis poscamus suffragia : ad arma, Sorores ! Et pugnae primae scena Senatus erit."

She goes off to the House of Commons, and in comes Phormio, "an unstable politician," followed by Davus, a Chinese coolie, who is vulgarly greeted by the "dirty boy" :— "Puza. (pointing to Davus) Cin-cin- Son:mows. (reprovingly) Nate! CHREMES. (aside) Ego cincinnatum haud cernere possum : Hub ornat potius cauda suilla caput."

For pure ingenuity, the piecing together of those two lines, bringing together the Latin word for "curly-headed," the vulgar street-cry, and the cauda suilla, the pig-tail, could hardly be surpassed. Admirable, too, is the fitting remark made by the Chinaman, "Me not want to go home," "Me non velle redire domum "; and the retort explaining that there is no question of lies involved, merely of " terminological in- exactitudes." "Mental estis," Davus protests, "Non ego servus eram.

Pao. Mentiti ? immo parum exacta fortasse locuti. Expatriatus eras; impatriandus eris."

The Chinese question yields place to the Book Club war and more clever punning. Dorio, a publisher, comes in, remarking vaguely that he does not quite know where he is, and bands a candle to the boy with the appropriate observation " Tolle." "Doesn't your ` Bondman' cost half-a-crown " Phormio asks him, which elicits a panegyric of two popular authors "Quod mare non Aulum novit, quae terra Canentem Quaeve tuas laudes, quodve, Corelli, mare ?"

"Will you join the publishers in the fight ?" he asks Phormio. "Pugnabis mobile bellum," is the immediate reply.

Other current topics which provide material for ingenious jesting are the Poplar Guardians case, and, of course, the Chicago meat scandals. " Quis custodes custodiet ipsos " is perhaps a little hackneyed, but nothing could be better than the dialogue which follows the arrival on the scene of an 'aeronaut, Antipho, who is offered liquid and solid refreshment. The conjugation of potare, to drink, and beari, to be happy, surely never looked queerer than in the two following perfectly correct Latin lines :— "DAVIIS. Oh! vis tu panem carnemque, viator ?

Dein potato.

ANTIPHO. Tao, Besse, liquore beer."

"Have a drink ? " and "I should like a glass of Bass " could hardly be more amusingly translated. Antipho is then offered some essence of beef,—" an ox in a teacup ":— " CHRENES. Accipe compressi robur, amice, bovis. Awnrao. Non tales memini ease cibos, dum paler ab Oxo Ad Tamesin ; mihi vim boa ita reddit."

He will not have and•, and is offered instead a tin of Chicago beef, which he profoundly mistrusts, and of which one of the

players describes the composition with gruesome fervour. The possibilities of the opening words of the Aeneid were not realised until this week :- " Nam tot aunt carnes quot aunt animalia : taurus, Porcus, ovis, catulus, simia, fells, equus : Est sua claque taro: aunt et sine nomine carnes: Omnia mists hie aunt: arma virumque cane."

"Armour, virumque, can—Oh !" groan the other players, and "How truly," one of them remarks, "sings the poet that Where ignorance is bliss'— ' Quern stultum sapere eat, quando ignorare beatumst.' " Nett comes an amusing reference to Mr. Roosevelt, " Raz- feline," as he is spelt,—an orthographic achievement of which his approval-has not yet been announced. "I don't like the words he proposes," says Geta,— " Time° Theodorum et verbs. forentem."

He rejects the President's spelling, and shortly afterwards is confronted with a messenger bringing a mutilated Bill from " another place," which is handed to Phaedria, an educationist, who does not recognise it, and has no use for it:—

"Hem! non agnosco veteris vestigia formae : Non mihi opus tali lege nee usus erit."

What shall be done with the House of Lords ? is the next question. "Dominos dedominare decet," observes the un- stable Phormio, explaining that his remark is an obiter dictum. The difficulty is solved by sending for Nausi- strata, who is to frighten the Lords instead of the Commons. She, however, contrives to get carried off by a policeman, and is carried off screaming the query " Dejectaene sumus " to which the women suffragists supply emphatic negatives. So the epilogue ends,—a quaint and charming survival of a classic age, leaving an audience who have not quite forgotten all the conjugations with the memory of an evening of Latin and laughter, carrying them back into the days when elegiacs were still, to some, worth making as good as they could be made, and when it was an ambition to add yet another name to the many names carved and painted on the long and lofty dormitory wall.