THE THEATRE.
"THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS" AND THE FAITHFUL PHOENIX.
MY wheel has come full circle. I am going to see The Faithful Shepherdess on the stage—I who, as a boy, devoured the play as though it were an apricot flanked with clotted cream, I who kept myself awake at night to read of Corin, Amoret, Amaryllis, and the Sullen Shepherd, I who longed so passion- ately to know what the Satyr's lyrics and the Water God's invitation to the stream and the Moon's caresses on " the head of old Latmos " would sound like on the stage, I who
felt in my very bones that Plays were meant to be seen and heard in noble company, and not brooded over by musty scholars in a squalid solitude. I who was, and knew I was, a Peri at the gates of Paradise, am going next Monday to step over the divine threshold and give my heart its rights. I shall wander unrestrained in the Eden of Fletcher's hand. It sounds much too good to be true.
And I am going to see the masterpiece of pastoral literature, not played in a Vicarage Home Field or a College Garden by lanky boys or lumpy girls with long noses and beefy arms and chitons cut from art bedspreads. No I am going to see The Faithful Shepherdess interpreted by the most accomplished ladies and gentlemen of the English Stage, and produced with the care, the culture, and the exact artistry which the immortal Phoenix bestows upon its votaries and members.
What a Phoenix and what Turtles ! I have heard nothing whatever as to the way in which the play is to be given. How should I ? Such whispers of delight do not penetrate to where the galley-slave of publicity and politics sits sad and patient at his seven days' oar. But I am not anxious or worried. I am as sure as I am that the sun will rise to-morrow that not a point will be missed. The Satyr will not murder his veto- syllabics or mumble his couplets. The rhymed lyrics will not be given like blank verse, nor the blank verse like prose.
Again, there will be no fatuous attempts at realism such as Fletcher dreaded for his play when he spoke with so fascinating a contempt in his Epistle Dedicatory. He writes of the people who expected his work to be " a play of country-hired shep- herds in grey cloaks, with cur-tailed dogs in strings, sometimes laughing together, and sometimes killing one another, and, missing Whitsun Ales, Cream Wastle and Morris Dances, began to be angry."
There will, I know, be no such rustic ineptitude shown by the Phoenix, but only a worthy setting, exquisite in form and colour, for good acting and faultless verse. It will be a magic journey into Arcady, not a char-&-banc tour into Somerset or Dorset !
But I shall spoil my own and other people's pleasure if I say more. I am not even going to re-read the play. I am too much of an epicure for such a bgtise. I don't handle wall- fruit for a week before I eat it. So here's luck to the players of the Phoenix, and to their audience !
What a tragedy it would be for me if I were killed by a taxi on my way to the play I I shall be very careful at the crossings
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