Nights at the Play. By Hatton Cook. 2 vols. (Chatto
and Winclus.)—Mr. Dutton Cook has collected in these volumes some hundred and fifty theatrical criticisms, contributed daring the years 1867-1881 to the Pall Mall Gazette and the World. No man has a higher reputation as a dramatic critic; he is above the suspicion of partiality, a failing which is probably at least as common among the critics of the drama as among the critics of literature, and he has unrivalled qualifications in his knowledge of the past of the English Stage and his familiarity with the present. The two volumes contain a record of the best things that have been seen in the London theatres during, we may say with fair approach to accuracy, the last fifteen years. The present generation will find in them not only a vivid and agreeable refreshment of their own recollections, but a store of sensible criticism ; to generations to come they will be an invaluable store-house of information. Nor is it impossible that the theatrical history which he relates will seem to those generations to contain events not less important than those which Haditt commemorated, "the advent of Edmund Kean and the triumphs of Miss O'Neill." It is interesting to note that, in the performances criticised by Mr. Cook, we find sixteen of Shakespeare's plays, half of them being tragedies and half comedies. Othaffo and Hamlet occur three times in the table of contents, Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice and Richard III. twice.
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