Too Realistic.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 6, 6 February 1902, Page 19

Too Realistic.

Douglaß Jerrold knew a thing or two in his time. And has he not told us the ugliest trades have their ' momenta of pleasure ' ' Even the grave-digger and the hangman are popularly supposed to smile like cherubs at play whenever they happen to dispose of their tailors or the rate-collector. Mr. Wilson Barrett's trade is a bit funereal at times ; but one of the ' moments of pleasure ' that light it up must have come to him and his company a few evenings ago in Christohurch. The play The Silver King had reached one of its most ' intense ' situations. The apple in my throat grew as large as a full-grown purple-top Swede, and in the midst of an emotional and expectant silence the villain of the piece (' the Spider '—a real top-notoher, by the way, at everything ' ornery ') sneaked out by a door just as the hero (Mr. Wilson Barrett) stalked in majestically by one of the wings. We have all heard of ' the many-headed monster of the pit ' that ' still remains to mortify a wit.' But in the present instance an excited pittite, carried away by the realism of the situation and bubbling over with zeal to aid the hero in vindicating truth and vanquishing villainy, pointed excitedly to the spot where ' the Spider ' had vanished and yelled to Mr. Wilson Barrett: 'The ruffian's just gone out that door!' A chivalrous farmer from somewhere near ' the pleasant waters of the River Lee ' gave the stall villaio. a somewhat livelier time in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, some thirty years ago. He waded through the 'cello and two kettle drums— breaking them (so the report said) into a million - smithereens,— jumped on the stage, craoked the skull ot Danny Mann, and prematurely rescued from his murderous grasp the Colleen Bawn, the sweet ' Lily of Killarney.'