FICTION AND THE STAGE.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR. "] Sia,—The members of the Toronto Public Library Dramatic Club read " Tarn's" essay on "Fiction and the Stage " (Spectator. April 1st) with great interest, pointed by the fact that we were giving the fourth revival of our oivn collection of " Scenes from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, with a conversation on literary taste from Northanger Abbey." We have not attempted to make a regular play from the book, but have constructed a more or less connedted story, using long conversations as they are written and pillaging freely for material to build up an " Evening at Longbourn " which would i:droduce the Bennet family to the audience. We had to introduce very little outside material. But we were sure that when the girls discussed " that disagreeable Mr. Darcy's " behaviour at the ball that Mrs. Bennet would " desire that none of you girls ever so far forget yourselves as to encourage the odious creature." We knew, too, that when the gentlemen came from their wine, interrupting Kitty and Lydia's practice of their dance steps, Mr. Collins would enter the room telling of a remarkable lecture he had had the honour of delivering, and would wind up the evening by declaiming " Paradise Lost," while the girls and Mrs. Bennet crept off one by one till the solitary candle they left showed tho oblivious and reverend gentleman rolling out Milton's periods over the sleepy head of Mr. Bennet.
We have found that these scenes appeal not only to lovers of the " incomparable Jane," who say we have captured the atmo- sphere of the book (that was what we hoped to do),but audiences to whom we have played in a missionary spirit have come asking for the books. Our chief librarian tells us he has had to put extra copies in any branch libraries where we have played to the readers. Will you or " Tarn " tell us if Mr. Squire's Pride and Prejudice has been publishedt—I am, Sir. &c., Reference Library, Toronto, Canada. MARJORIE JAnVIS. [We are delighted to hear of the success of the incomparable Jane in Toronto. Mr. Squire's dramatic version of Pride and Prejudice has not been published.—En. Spectator.]
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