(60 tbratrro.
The Christmas theatrical week, commencing this year on Friday, is so completely different from the ordinary working week, which honestly starts on Monday and terminates on Saturday, that the hebdomadal chronicler of dramatic events has some difficulty in taking his point of view ; and his positirn may be likened to that of the connoisseur, who, anxious to study the manipulation of a picture, stands so very close to it that he cannot tell whether it is a portrait or a landscape. Still more aptly may our glance be likened to the view which the traveller on the railroad takes of the express-train moving in the opposite direction. Surely the early framers of almanacks could never have foreseen the mis- chief of making " Boxing-day" fall on a Friday. Then, Friday is such a proverbially unlucky day ! 'Under the circumstances, we confine ourselves to a very comprehensive record, in which everything like detail is studiously avoided. Our rail- way traveller neither sees the passengers nor the quality of the carriages in the passing express, but one thing he does see, and that is the direc- tion. It is to the direction taken by the theatrical entertainments this Christmas that we for the present limit our record ; and this direction nearly corresponds with that taken a twelvemonth ago. Certain houses are cievoted to pantomime. Drury Lane opens with its Harlequin Ho- garth ; the Princess's puts forth Harlequin Billy Taylor; and Sadler's Wells, turning to the Countess D'Anois, elicits from her Harlequin and the Yellow Dwarf. The Transpontine establishments are, of course, faith- ful to the motley wear. Aatley's claps Harlequin's jacket on Mr. Briggs, the celebrated sportsman of Punch; and the Surrey talks of a mysterious Personage named Harlequin Blue-Cap. On the other hand, certain the- atres are as rigidly devoted to burlesque. The Lyceum, with its Pianchfi and its Beverley, brings out The Prince of Happy land, founded on the French story _La Riche aux Bois; the brothers Brough, through the me- dium of the Haymarket, tell the tale of Prince Radiant; and Mr. Tom Taylor shows the fate of _Little Red Riding Hood at the Adelphi. A re- ference to any file of newspapers will show that those theatres, classed according to the categories of pantomime and burlesque, have the same division for 1851 as for 1850. The only -variation is in the case of the Olympic, which this year gives a harlequinade, founded on the story of William Rufus.
The renovation of Drury Lane, by Mr. Bunn, Who has thoroughly beautified the previously dirty sane, is especially worth recording. The house seems now to have a chance of becoming something more than a ghastly monument of times g6ne by.
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