DEAR MR. PUNCH,--According to a well-known Critic, writing of a
morning performance of _The Doll's House_ on Tuesday, the 27th ult.,
at Terry's Theatre, "There is no need to discuss IBSEN's piece any
more." I will go a little further, and say, not only should the play
be spared discussion, but also performance. All that could be done for
this miserable drama (if a work utterly devoid of dramatic interest
can be so entitled) was effected some years since, when _Breaking a
Butterfly_, a version with Messrs. HERMAN and JONES as adapters, was
played at the Prince's (now Prince of Wales's) Theatre. I believe some
one or other has said that that version was misleading, because it
modified IBSEN, and did not reveal him in his true colours. This I can
readily believe, as my recollection of _Breaking a Butterfly_ merely
suggests boredom; whereas, when I consider _The Doll's House_ of
Tuesday, I distinctly mingle with boredom a recollection of something
that caused a feeling of absolute loathing. That something, I imagine,
must be the new matter which was absent from the first version, and
crops up in the text of the second, which, according to the Play-bill,
appears "in Vol. I. of the authorised edition of IBSEN's Prose Dramas,
edited by WILLIAM ARCHER, and published by Mr. WALTER SCOTT." By
the way, I must confess that, although the name of the Editor is
not familiar to me as a dramatic author, his superintendence of the
authorised text seems to have been performed sufficiently creditably
to have rendered him as worthy of an honourable prefix as the
publisher. Why omit the "Mr."? Now I come to think of it, there is
an Englishman, not unconnected with dramatic literature, who is known
nowadays as WILLIAM, without the prefix of Mister, but in his own time
he was known as Master WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, and Master he remains.
"But this," as Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING might observe, "is quite another
WILLIAM."