as oratorios. In either case, whenever this has been done, however,
it has been the habit of critics to make merry at the expense of my
Lord Chamberlain and the puritanicalness of the popular spirit of
which he is supposed to be the official embodiment, and to
discourse lugubriously and mayhap profoundly on the perversion of
composers' purposes and the loss of things essential to the lyric
drama.

It may be heretical to say so, but is it not possible that Lord
Chamberlain and Critic have both taken too serious a view of the
matter? There is a vast amount of admirable material in the Bible
(historical, legendary or mythical, as one happens to regard it),
which would not necessarily be degraded by dramatic treatment, and
which might be made entertaining as well as edifying, as it has
been made in the past, by stage representation. Reverence for this
material is neither inculcated nor preserved by shifting the scene
and throwing a veil over names too transparent to effect a
disguise. Moreover, when this is done, there is always danger that
the process may involve a sacrifice of the respect to which a work
of art is entitled on its merits as such. Gounod, in collaboration
with Barbier and Carre, wrote an opera entitled "La Reine de Saba."
The plot had nothing to do with the Bible beyond the name of
Sheba's Queen and King Solomon. Mr. Farnie, who used to make comic
operetta books in London, adapted the French libretto for
performance in English and called the opera "Irene." What a title
for a grand opera! Why not "Blanche" or "Arabella"? No doubt such a
thought flitted through many a careless mind unconscious that an
Irene was a Byzantine Empress of the eighth century, who, by her
devotion to its tenets, won beatification after death from the
Greek Church. The opera failed on the Continent as well as in