PARISIAN THEATEICALS.
The Theatre du Vaudeville stands pre6minent in the Parisian record of the past week, A musical comedy in five acts, written by MM. Bayard, de Leuven, and Arthur de Beauplan, and bearing the attractive title of Bocce:cc, ou le Dicameron, was brought out there on Wednesday last. The great founder of Italian prose is even more familiar to the French than to the English, through the medium of Lafontaine's Tales,—one of those few works which extreme indecency does not deprive of classicality. In the comedy, Boccacio is made the hero of a number of his own tales, which are introduced as so many adventures in his life ; and the French triad of dramatists seems to have been at great pains to select the most ticklish stories in the whole Decameron, probably with a view of showing its steermanship. When we say that the tales of the Cooper and of the Pear-tree are among the chosen, some of our readers will understand the force of our remark ;—the rest we do not care to enlighten. The cha- racter of Boccacio is sustained by the admirable Fechter. The Parisians have not yet done with Uncle Tom. M. Arthur de Beau- plan, one of the triad above-named, though he has not, like the dramatists of the Ambigu and the Gaiet6, attempted to grasp the whole big novel, has taken out one episode some two or three chapters long, and con- structed therefrom a two-act piece, entitled Dims, ou un Chapitre de On- ale Tom, which was brought out at the Gymnase on Monday. Mr. Devani, an English contortionist, who last year acquired high re- nown among the distinguished patrons of Cremonie Gardens, and who was afterwards transplanted into one of the Christmas pantomimes, has made his debfit with great success at the Porte St. Martin ; where he has the honour of performing the "firemen of bad dreams," in a divertisse- ment called Smarra.
M. Bayard, whose Fils de Famille is still all the rage at the Gymnase, died on Sunday last, after an illness of two days. He was born at Cha- rolles, in the department of Sa6ne et Loire, in March 1796; and, after abandoning the profession of the law, became one of the most fertile and esteemed writers for the French alp. Among those of his pieces which may be familiar to most of our readers, we may mention Les Gents Jaime Le Pere de la De'butante, Mathias 'Invalide, Les Premieres Armes de .Richelieu, and Le Gamin de Paris. He was buried on Tuesday, at N6tre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle and his obsequies were attended by the principal celebrities of French drama and criticism ; the chief mourner being his son, who we presume, is one of the authors of Boceace.
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