Box and Cox, a new farce produced at the Lyceum,
is one of those absur- dities which are amusing because they are evidently meant to be absurd, and because a droll defiance of common sense is maintained throughout. Every playgoer knows the idiosyneraties of those two oddities Buckstone and Harley; and can fancy that if the comical pair have a piece to them- selves, in which, as the Yankees say, they can "poke their fun" at eaeh other without restraint, the result must be laughable indeed. The dis- honest artifice of a landlady who lets one room twice over—that is to say, to a hatter who is out all day, and a printer who is out all night—pro- duces the desirable meeting of the two comic spirits; and the squabbles, hatred, rivalry, and ultimate friendship of Messrs. Box and Cox—whose dialogue, moreover, is smart and appropriate—keep the audience in a roar.
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