While at the Lyceum we find in full action the
tendency to turn a book of the day into a play, we perceive at the Haymarket a retrogression to a state of the drama that existed at the old Lyceum some twenty years ago. There, in a new piece, bearing the promising moral title of The Round of Wrong, we have a sentimental Yorkshireman, with his variations of joy and sorrow, and a " funny " man, having about as much to do with the plot as with the forthcoming Christmas pantomime, cracking his jokes for the laudable pur- pose of keeping his audience from growing too dull. The Yorkshireman has fallen in love with the disowned daughter of a "great man "; and is just on the point of making her his wife, when the wicked "great man" finds it convenient to own her, and takes her away. The Yorkshireman afterwards has it in his power to ruin the oppressor by committing a little forgery; when the amiable girl, by dissuading him from his purpose, saves her lover from crime and her father from destruction. There are two or three effective scenes in this piece; and it gains additional interest by the skill with which Webster represents the various emotions of the Yorkshire- man, and the simple amiable style in which Ms Fortescue plays the young lady. But altogether it is too long, too loosely constructed, and is certainly not adapted for the present day.
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