Another and a very amusing farce, from the prolific pen
of the pun- ning dramatist A'BECKET, has.been added to the various entertainments- of the New Strand Theatre, which have this week commenced with the Indian War-Dance and Rifle Shooting, and terminated with the bur- lesque of Man-Fred. The pathetic ballad of " Unfortunate Mho Bailey" forms the subject and title of the piece; the scenes of which take place in a ladies' boarding-school-we beg pardon, seminary-kept by a namesake of the heroine. At this school" the unfortunate Miss Bailey" teaches music under another name; and here she meets again with her false love, Captain Smith, "the bold dragoon of Halifax;" who not having the fear of her ghost before his eyes, comes to make love to Miss Jenkins, a parlour boarder, in the character of an elont- tion-master. But Miss Bailey, the unfortunate, assumes the apparition of her own ghost, and, with her red garters round her neck, terrillts
Captain Smith into a promise of marriage ; while the plump and sen- timental parlour-boarder is left to her books and bread and butter.
The scenes in the boarding-school, are capitally acted. Mrs. GAR- RICK wakes a most exemplary schoolmistress; cud her young ladies are as romping, hoydenish, pert, and mischievous, as any set of school- girls within twenty miles of town. The procession of the school, headed by the tiny folk, and gradually increasing in altitude till the aw- ful form of the governess towers in the rear—the "school in an uproar," stilled into a bum of seeming industry by the entrance of the governess—the dancing lesson with OXBERRY—as the dancing-master- the throng of night-capped heads at the window in the last scene, and the announcement of the piece by an infantine pupil in her night-dress —are all in good keeping, and true to the life. The dialogue is too full of puns, but the majority are laughable. Miss P. IloeToN gives two admirable imitations of Mrs. WAYLETT'S style of ballad-singing : we could scarcely discern the difference with our eyes shut. MercnEsi.'s parody of DENYIL in Maufred is a perfect example of the grave burlesque. It is alone worth seeing. A burlesque by the author of the Revolt of the Workhouse, is announced ; in which a stud of asses are to appear—if we rightly interpret the jocosely mysterious paragraph in the bills.
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