[In the following review, Spiers remarks favorably on the production of Becque's The Merry-Go-Round at the Theatre du Vieux Colombier.]

The second bill of the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier is a delight—a delight for the eyes as well as for the mind. I shall speak later of Copeau's stage-setting and costumes; our immediate attention is required by a question raised in the review of the preceding bill: can this company present with equal soundness and skill plays of very different types?

So far as can be judged from this second programme, the answer is an incontestable affirmative. Becque's La Navette, first given at the Gymnase in 1878, is a one-act play in which figure the five A's—Antonia, the woman; her three admirers, Alfred, Arthur, and Armand, and the maid Adèle. Like a shuttle (whence the name), Antonia weaves in and out among the men, giving up the first for the second, then listening to the advances of the third, only to return once more to the first. Nevertheless the play is neither hilarious nor sentimental. Clever it certainly is, and moderately amusing; but its essential quality is not to be found in these external things. Within this framework one discerns a purpose, an ideal; for Henry Becque is one of those dramatists who have given a new direction to the development of the French drama. Four years after La Navette, he put on the stage Les Corbeaux, and three years later still, La Parisienne. In the first, the partner and the creditors of a dead man prey, without the slightest compunction, upon the wife and daughters he left behind; in the second, the characters of a ménage à trois are so moved by considerations of orderliness, of reciprocal obligations, and of what I might almost call family unity, that they reveal no sense of the immorality of their situation. Through these plays, Becque became the master whom succeeding dramatists have honored as the first to depict in their true sombreness situations and modes of life on which former writers had thrown a false glamour. And the little one-acter La Navette holds promise of these two more serious works.

Antonia is not witty, vivacious, nor alluring. Her admirers, though different from each other, are, with one possible exception, equally commonplace. Weak of purpose, incapable of disinterestedness even in their love, they consider only their petty rights, their purses, and their personal satisfaction. Of romance, they have not a trace. The excellence of the play lies in its sobriety and in the artistic treatment that makes us willing to consider the drabness of the situation. Boredom and the commonplace presented in such a way as to compel our attention, such is the definition of this little work; and as such the actors play it. They who have put so much dash into the “Fourberies de Scapin” are even bold enough to drag their acting here. It takes courage such as few possess today to interpret a play with such sincerity; but this courage is a proof of the highest appreciation of the actor's duty.

Flippant, rich in color, transporting us into an exotic atmosphere where only the commonplace is untrue and only the frivolous counts, the next play on the programme is very different from La Navette. This is Mérimée's Le Carrosse du Saint Sacrement. Don Andrès is Viceroy of Lima. Gouty, luxurious, quick-tempered, this bon vivant casts off his responsibilities with the nonchalance befitting the typical grandee of old, decadent Spain. He cares only for an actress, Périchole. He chortles over her pranks and he delights in her unconventionality, growing angry only when he suspects that he is not alone to possess her favors. How this arch beauty Périchole, appearing in all the loveliness of sumptuous apparel, weans him from his suspicion and obtains, besides, his gilded coach with which to outshine the contemptuous high-born ladies of the town, this is the story that Mérimée puts before us—this, and the fact that her beauty is not without its effect, either, upon the stately and gracious bishop to whose church she finally gives the coach.

Included in the second edition (1830) of the “Théâtre de Clara Gazul,” this playlet seems a little gem of romantic levity. But much of our pleasure is undoubtedly due to Gournac's capital rendering of Don Andrès, to Mme. Bogaert's Périchole, and to the very beautiful setting and costumes.

For the third play of the evening, Copeau returns to Molière. The Fourberies of the last bill, especially the rôle of Scapin, was played in the manner of the most highly developed acting of the old farceurs. La Jalousie du Barbouillé, however, takes us back to a more rudimentary stage of their art. Based on an old tale, already used by Boccaccio, this farce is the first extant work of the French master. It is plebeian and coarse, with much of the boisterous fun of the mediæval populace. The characters are generalizations of the most elementary sort; and it is fitting, as well as historically correct, that they should be painted and dressed rather as puppets than as individuals. Le Barbouillé himself, as the name requires, is so coated with paint that his face is covered as with a mask. Noise, horse-play, and “go” are part and parcel of the play; and the actors give us all that. But they bring out, also, the broad lines of its caricature, the directness of its dialogue, and the remarkable speed and sureness with which Molière, even at this early date, develops an amusing situation. We laugh heartily and are not ashamed of our laughter; for the performance gives us an exhilarating sensation of health, energy, and animal spirits.