refuses to dance, and Jarno the gipsy chief threatens her with
his whip. Wilhelm Meister, who happens to be passing, saves her from a
beating, and, pitying the half-starved child, buys her from the gipsies.
Among the spectators of this scene are Laertes, the manager of a troupe
of strolling players, and Philine, his leading lady. Philine is an
accomplished coquette, and determines to subjugate Wilhelm. In this she
easily succeeds, and he joins the company as poet, proceeding with them
to the Castle of Rosenberg, where a grand performance of 'A Midsummer
Night's Dream' is to be given. Mignon, at her earnest request,
accompanies him, disguised as a page. While at the castle Mignon is
distracted by Wilhelm's infatuation for Philine, and when Wilhelm,
prompted by Philine, tries to dismiss her, she puts on her old gipsy
clothes and rushes away. Outside the walls of the castle she meets with
an old half-witted harper, Lothario, who soothes the passion of her
grief. In a moment of jealous fury at the thought of Philine she utters
a wish that the castle were in flames. Lothario hears her words and
proves his devotion by setting fire to the theatre while the performance
is in progress. Mignon had been sent by Philine to fetch her bouquet
from the green-room. The fire breaks out while the unfortunate girl is
in the building, and she is given up for lost, but is saved by Wilhelm.
The last act takes place in Italy. Mignon's devotion has won Willielm's
heart, and the opera ends by the discovery that she is the long-lost
daughter of Lothario, who is actually the Count of Cipriani, but after
the disappearance of his daughter had lost his reason, and wandered
forth in the guise of a harper to search for her. The score of 'Mignon'
reveals the hand of a sensitive and refined artist upon every page. It
has no claims to greatness, and few to real originality, but it is full
of graceful melody, and is put together with a complete knowledge of
stage effect.

Thomas's 'Hamlet' (1868) is accepted as a masterpiece in Paris, where
the absurdities of the libretto are either ignored or condoned. In
England Shakespeare's tragedy is fortunately so familiar that such a
ridiculous parody of it as MM. Barbier and Carre's libretto has not been
found endurable. Much of Thomas's music is grandiose rather than grand,
but in the less exacting scenes there is not a little of the plaintive
charm of 'Mignon,' Ophelia's mad scene, which occupies most of the las