86, had had its prototype, so far as the title was concerned, in the
'Woman of the World' of Nelson Lee and Stirling Coyne.

Exceptionally lucky, indeed, is the dramatic writer who can now discover
a wholly new name for his production. A wholly fresh subject is, of
course, even more difficult to achieve. Take what phase of life you
will--make what use of it you please--you cannot secure absolute
novelty. You cannot find a piece of ground which has not been trodden,
however slightly, however differently, by a predecessor. The author of
'The Schoolmistress' introduces his audiences to a very charming lady
pupil-teacher, and to three scarcely less charming lady pupils. But one
thinks at once of the still more delightful bevy of tutors and scholars
presented to us just nineteen years ago, by T. W. Robertson, who,
inspired by a German original, gave us not only Bella and Naomi Tighe,
but a 'rosebud garden of girls,' of which the attraction has by no means
yet departed. Mr. Ruskin has sneered at Bella as 'an amiable governess
who, for the general encouragement of virtue in governesses, is rewarded
by marrying a lord.' But for all that, she is a pleasant figure, and
Naomi is a piquant one, and the English stage has witnessed few more
agreeable scenes than those in which Dr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe's young
ladies take part in the course of 'School.'

As everybody knows, there is an 'angry schoolboy' in 'The Alchemist,'
who is likely to survive not only in literature, but in history, by
reason of the effective use which Sheridan once made of him when
retorting upon Pitt in the House of Commons. Is there not, too, a comedy
of Brome's--'The Antipodes'--in which the fathers go to school instead
of their sons, and are made to ape the habits of the youthful scholar?
Richard Lovelace, we read, wrote a comedy called 'The Scholar,' but it
was never printed, and probably had reference to the adult rather than
the juvenile student. In the early years of last century, 'The
Schoolboy' was the title given to a farce played at Drury Lane, a piece
of which one Johnny was the hero--a Johnny who had the honour of being
impersonated by the great Roscius himself, and by actors, too, of the
calibre of Woodward, Shuter, and J. W. Dodd. Early, again, in the
present century, 'The Scholar' was the name of a play adapted from the
French by Buckstone; but in this case, as, no doubt, there was in
Lovelace's, there is more of the scholastic than of the school.