The Adelphi opened with the new burletta of Rip Van
Winkle —founded on the legend so humorously related by WASHINGTO?; IRVING in the Sketch Book ; but the burletta is by no means equal to the story. Rip is cursed with a termagant wife, from whose tender embraces he is spirited away by the ghost of Hendrich Hudson, the Dutch discoverer; and compelled to pilot his spectre. bark during a twenty years' cruise. YATES'S personation of the henpecked husband was very droll ; and his picture of the old man's despair, when, on waking from his supposed sleep, he finds all his former companions dead and the place entirely changed, and his delirium of joy on meeting with his daughter, were exceedingly well acted. 0. SMITH looked very picturesque in his old Dutch costume, as Hendrich Hudson; and the spirit- crew and the spectre-bark, with its apparition and vanishing, were admirably represented,—as such mysterious occurrences always are at this theatre. There was an American election scene intro- duced, in which REEVE and BUCKSTONE figured the rival can- didates; but in spite of their fun and drollery, this part of the piece must be set down as a failure. REEVE'S Cupid following, however, restored the good-humour of the audience; and his bur- lesque of TAGLIONI excited an abundance of laughter; which was kept up afterwards by the Pet of the Petticoats.*
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