own part I must confess to a real enjoyment of amateur acting, if the amateurs have any dramatic talent, and sufficient training to get rid of the worst crudities of inexperience. It has, as compared with the acting of professionals, something of the advantage of a sketch over a finished picture. You do not expect so much, and your imagination can seize on anything good that is suggested: you can, like James Lee's Wife, "Kiss all right where the drawing fails." Dramatic, like other art, tends to stiffen into dull Academic perfection.

The Oxford company was more than respectable. The Orestes of Mr. Macklin in the Cambridge "Eumenides" was indeed, for that quiet power which seems most appropriate in Greek drama, a more impressive performance than that of any of the gentlemen who took part in the "Alcestis"; but with this exception the acting was better than at Cambridge. The chorus of old men, in particular, besides having more room to move in, were better drilled than the chorus of Furies in the "Eumenides." More general grace of movement in both principals and chorus, and still greater beauty of grouping would no doubt have been attained with more rehearsals.

The opening colloquy between Apollo and Death was admirably given by both performers. Mr. Mackinnon himself played Apollo very gracefully, and spoke his Greek in tuneful scholarly fashion; Mr. Bourchier, as Death, appearing as a weird grey phantom of Renaissance type, in a Wagnerian cloud of steam-an ultra modern innovation which doubtless pleased the shade of Euripides. His mediæval grotesqueness of movement was too melodramatic even for Euripides; but he froze the marrow of "The Dailies." The august shade (not Death, but the shade of Euripides) must have smiled over their columns next morning at the Union.

Mr. Grahame, as Admetus, had a long, difficult and ungrateful

part to play; and his make-up was unbecoming, and without that distinction which should mark the royal protagonist. He has a sympathetic voice, spoke well, and acted well and without exaggeration, distinctly improving in his later performances. In the scene with Pheres he showed to special advantage, towering in the calm dignity of his contemptuous egotism above the more demonstrative Pheres, who, in the very bitterness of his well-justified sarcasm, seemed mean beside him. This racy scene went capitally on both sides; Mr. Marriott, as Pheres, proving himself the phrwp Tovnpòs of Mr. Mackinnon's prologue. A little over-doing certain gestures, he yet brought out every point in his part, from his first condolence with Admetus to his angry exit, with remarkable clearness and forceevery spiteful thrust told.

The Heracles of Mr. Mason was a very spirited performance, full of rollicking jollity in the comic scenes; forcible when, dashing down and trampling his garland, he assumed the god, and rushed out to snatch Alcestis from the arms of Death; with some touch of that humorous benevolence which should crown the heroism of the Zeusbegotten son of Alcmena in the restoration scene. His representation of the hero "taking his ease in his inn" between labour and labour, and pleasantly warmed with wine, touched the right key; and his good-humoured laughter as, suddenly unveiling Alcestis, he sprang up on the steps behind the re-united pair, was very genial. There was an unfortunate suggestion of Offenbachian comic opera in his red unkempt hair and beard, so unlike the close-curled athletic hair and beard of the statues of Heracles, and in the whitish drawers which, beneath the cumbrously arranged leopard-skin, somehow gave his legs a feebly acrobatic look; but Mr. Mason's acting carried him through triumphantly.

The Maid-Servant of Mr. Davies was, on the other hand, very well made up, and he delivered his long speech solemnly and sonorously; and the old Man-Servant of Mr. Coningsby Disraeli was a good piece of classical low-comedy, thoroughly humorous without vulgarity—but distinctly suggested the slave of the Latin comic stage, not the more primitive Euripidean character.

To be Alcestis-Death's pythoness, speaking from the tripod of her self-devotion-and not merely a dying woman, would tax the powers of a great actress. Miss Harrison has evidently had but little stage experience, yet there was a fine suggestiveness in her performance, and she once or twice struck a true tragic note. Owing chiefly to defective modulation of her voice, which tended to fall into monotonous falsetto, the mere physical weakness of death was overemphasized; but her action was so good as almost to redeem the deficiencies of her elocution, which though undramatic was elegant and scholarly. Her gestures, when she sank into the marble seat with the children beside her a beautiful group-had a dramatic fitness and a spontaneous grace which left little to be desired. There was a half-savage maternal σropyn in her last embrace of Perimele; and the manner in which she waved back Admetus with the sadly bitter words :

Χρόνος μαλάξει σ' ουδέν εσθ' ὁ καθανών.

and then bent forward, gloomily gazing into the future wherein she would have no part, was really fine. In the last scene her shrouded figure was quite Sibylline, and there was true tragic expression in the gaze, so sad yet blank, which she fixed upon Admetus, when unveiled. The little boy who played Eumelus, Master Whitelaw, spoke his two short speeches with admirable clearness and fluency, and went through his business with charming precision and insouciance.

The dialogues of the chorus, especially that with Heracles, were well given; and the funeral procession, with its funeral march and chant of the chorus, with wailing and tossing of arms, was a fine piece of spectacular pomp, all the evolutions being well executed. The make-up of these old men of Phere was rather commonplace in its wigginess and beardiness, and there was a great monotony in their method of wearing the peplos-the colours, too, might have been better harmonized, for beauty of general effect.

It only remains to speak of Mr. Charles Lloyd's music, which was admirable in itself and went well. By very clever and dainty scoring, his two harps and two flutes, with an alternative clarionet, became, under the composer's bâton, a most efficient and sufficient orchestra. The music was always welcome as a relief to the dialogue, and poetized the situations. Owing perhaps to Admetus's not possessing a singing voice, the Kommos between him and the chorus, which ought to have been very effective, was not set. The best numbers were the second chorus, wva raav, in which the fine baritone of the Coryphæus, Mr. Phillips, told well in a few bars of solo; and the funeral march and chorus. The beautiful ode to the Mansion of Admetus was not quite so satisfactory in the setting of the words. On the whole the Oxford Dramatic Society may be congratulated on a decided success.