TWO FANTASIES. In a little improvised theatre beneath the Church
of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, two plays by Mr. C. R. Allen had their first performance last week. • These plays are true fantasies : in the remote fantastical world to which they belong a single false step on the part of the writer, a hair- breadth of exaggeration, is fatal. But in Mr. Allen's case a strange twist of imagination, and a subdued sense of poetry in the dialogue, give life to his odd characters. The more im- portant play, The Four Foundlings, is a very considerable achievement. Through some kink in time and space, four characters wander into an inn parlour, a boy, a young sailor, a waggoner, and an old lame man. Gradually they recognize each other—the sailor when he was young wore the same torn doublet as the boy, the waggoner had caught fever at the same foreign port as the sailor, and the old man blames all three for the aches and pains they have brought him, for the characters are all manifestations from different periods in the life of a single person. They then start recriminating each other for misusing the opportunities of life, and for the way they had treated their dead mother. But the boy remembers having run away fro-m his mother only a short time before, and preiently she, too, comes to the inn and finds them. Each of the characters, she shows, is to blame, but also each has done some worthy deed to justify his life. Mr. Allen has treated this idea with unfailing beauty : there is austerity and power in his writing, tempered by a gentle and delicate fancy. It will be a great pity if a larger public does not have an opportunity of seeing The
Previous page
