in ENERY HAUTHOR JONES is not so much his work
but his pluck,--for has he not, in the first place, overcome the
prudery of the Lord Chamberlain's Licensing Department, and, in the
second place, has he not introduced on the boards of the Haymarket a
good old-fashioned Melodrama, brought "up to date," and disguised in
a Comedy wrapper? Walk in, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see _The Dancing
Girl_, a Comedy-Drama shall we call it, or, generically, a Play?
wherein the prominent figures are a wicked Duke,--_vice_ the "wicked
Baronet," now shelved, as nothing under the ducal rank will suit us
nowadays, bless you!--a Provincial Puritan family, an honest bumpkin
lover, a devil of a dancing woman who lives a double-shuffling sort of
life, an angel of a lame girl,--who, of course, can't cut capers but
goes in for coronets,--a sly, unprincipled, and calculating kind
of angel she is too, but an audience that loves Melodrama is above
indulging in uncharitable analysis of motive,--a town swell in the
country, a more or less unscrupulous land-agent, and a genuine,
honest "heavy father," of the ancient type, with a good old-fashioned
melodramatic father's curse ready at the right moment, the last relic
of a bygone period of the transpontine Melodrama, which will bring
tears to the eyes of many an elderly playgoer on hearing the old
familiar formula, in the old familiar situation, reproduced on
the stage of the modern Haymarket as if through the medium of a
phonophone.

[Illustration: FINAL TABLEAU, ACT I.

"O does not a Meeting (House) like this make amends?"

_Ham Christison_ (_Clown_). "Ullo! Oh my! I'm a looking at yer!"]

At all events, _Drusilla Ives, alias_ "the Dancing Girl "--though as
to where she dances, how she dances, and when she dances, we are left
pretty well in the dark, as she only gives so slight a taste of her
quality that it seemed like a very amateurish imitation of Miss KATE
VAUGHAN in her best day,--_Drusilla Ives_ is the mistress, neither
pure nor simple, of the _Duke of Guisebury_,--a title which is
evidently artfully intended by the, at present, "Only JONES" to be a
compound of the French "Guise" and the English "Bury,"--who from his
way of going on and playing old gooseberry with his property, might
have been thus styled with advantage: and so henceforth let us think
and speak of him as His Grace or His Disgrace the Duke of Gooseberry.

This Duke of Gooseberry visits, "quite unbeknown,"--being, for this
occ