Mr. Buckstone, of the Haymarket, has been doing rather a
foolish thing, The Woman in Mauve, a new play at his theatre, intended to ridicule sensation drama, has on the whole proved a failure. On the first night some of the audience hissed, and:as a London audience has unfortunately lost the habit of hissing, Mr. Buckstone suspected a plot, and, for some reason unknown, that Mr. Boucicault was the author of it. He did not name that gentle- man, but Mr. Botteicault wrote to ask why he made the charge. Mr. Buckstone 'replied that he had proofs, but when further pressed was obliged to acknowledge that his proof amounted mainly to gossip. We have no doubt he was quite honest in his faith. In fact matters in London have now reached that pass that a manager cannot imagine why people should hiss unless they are paid as the claque are to applaud, and actors feel as ruffled by criticism as if they were reading sermons. It is time that some audience should assert its old right, and when a bad piece is pro- duced damn it there and then unmistakeably. If bad acting were treated in the same way, we should have better characters and abler representations of them.
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