“Yorick’s Love.”

Mr. Howells’s new tragedy, translated and
adapted from the Spanish, was played last
night in the opera house by Lawrence Bar-
rett and a strong supporting company. The
house was fair in size and enthusiastic in its
recognition of the great power of the play.
It followed the moving course of the inevita-
ble tragedy with absorbed interest, and testi-
fied its approval by calling for the leading ac-
tors again and again. Mr. Barrett, may be
satisfied with the honors he won in it, and his
associates be contented to share the applause
on their excellent acting.

“Yorick’s Love” is one of the most power-
ful of modern plays. In point of force,
purity, intensity of passion and artistic com-
position it is almost an anachronism in these [days.]
It takes us back to the times of Shakespeare in
more senses than one. In depth of passion and
beauty of diction it is a notable play for any time.
The plot is unique, but it seems to be almost of the
devising of the great dramatist himself, at least it
is such a one as [he would delighted] to have embel-
lished with his genius. We have already given it in
full and need not here repeat it. It is a play within
a play, in which the actors enact on the stage a
tragedy which is perfectly real to the actors. Yor-
ick is the comedian of the Globe theater. His
young wife, whom he passionately loves, is in love
with Master Edmund, the adopted son of Yorick,
and the two young lovers, who are guilty only of a
hopeless passion, are conscience stricken and in
despair. Yorick has no suspicion of his trusted
protege or of his wife Alice. But these actors are
to take part in a new play in which the injured hus-
band, the faithless wife and the lover are the leading
characters. Before the play comes on Yorick has his
jealousy excited, but his suspicions do not extend
to Edmund until in the crisis of the play an inter-
cepted letter is placed in his hands (instead of the
stage letter) and the death of his rival and his own
suicide follow.

The passion of jealousy in an unsuspicious nature
has never in any modern play been more powerful-
ly portrayed, and Mr. Barrett’s rendition of it de-
serves the highest praise. He is playing all the
time in double part, that of the actor and the man
in the play, and his skill in this difficult feat is of
the highest. His stage manner (which we have
thought sometimes too pronounced) is even a strong
and natural point in this situation.
The play is full of beauty. In the height of sen-
timent it is never sentimental, in the stress of pas-
sion it is never forced. We suppose that Mr. How-
ells is to be credited with the exquisite language of
the play, and perhaps with some of the allusions
which so happily keep the play in the Shakespeare
region. There is no affectation of ancient style, but
the whole diction is in beautiful keeping with the
time of the characters. We are certain that it will
bear reading for its exquisite style and the noble
beauty of its sentiment, and that it will be hardly
less moving off the stage than on.

Want of space compels us to be brief, and we
will only say in all heartiness that author and trag-
edian have produced and represented a really great
tragedy.