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THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.

[Illustration:  ‘S’]

Solemn and severe German tragedy reigns in the Fourteenth Street theatre.  Once it was called the French theatre, and was devoted to the witty comedies of SCRIBE, and the luxurious legs of OFFENBACH.  But a woe has been denounced against the SCRIBES and OFFENBACHS—­(there is considerable difference between the latter and the Pharisees)—­of that once gay theatre.  Like many other French frivolities, it has lately yielded to Teutonic tragedy.  The cold and calculating German “MEPHISTOPHELES” treads the stage where once tripped the light feet of Parisian beauty.  The burlesque Germans of the Grand Duchy of Gerolstein have vanished before the grim and earnest countrymen of grand and simple old King WILLIAM.  It will be long before the French players find heart to burlesque anew the German soldiery.  It will be some time, let us hope, before the German players at the Fourteenth Street theatre give way to the shameless antics of French Opera-Bouffe buffoons.

PUNCHINELLO gives a glad farewell—­with no thought of saying au revoir—­to the French follies that have given the French theatre so unenviable a reputation; and he waves his pointed hat in joyful welcome to SEEBACH and her German friends who have made the Fourteenth Street theatre a temple of the classic drama.  Like other places which can properly be called dramatic temples, the theatre now partakes of the solemnity of a religious temple.  One goes to see SEEBACH, not to laugh, but to test one’s ability to suppress the desire to weep over the woes of MARGARET, and to mourn with MARY STUART.  Fortify yourself, O reader, with a substantial dinner and much previous sleep, and come with me for a night of German tragedy.  Come to the Fourteenth Street theatre, not to look back regretfully at departed opera-bouffe, but to SEEBACH.  It is with such reckless puns as the foregoing, that I endeavor to brace your spirits for the exhausting struggle with six hours of tragedy played in the most tragic and awful of modern languages.  You are to hear Faust in German.  No man who has accomplished this feat can wonder at the stolid bravery of the German infantry.  It is said that the new recruit is forced to hear Faust once a week during his first year of service.  This terrible discipline has the natural effect of giving him that steadiness under fire, at which the world marvels.  He will stand with his regiment for hours under the merciless fire of the mitrailleuse with no thought of flight.  What terrors can shot or shell have for him who has been taught to listen unmoved to the dialogue of “FAUST” and “MEPHISTOPHELES” in the first thirty-two acts of Faust?

We find the theatre full of Germans, wearing that grave and earnest expression of countenance wherewith the German takes his legitimate tragedy.  Sprinkled among the Germans are several Americans, more grave and more in earnest than even their Teutonic neighbors, for they are straining their attention to detect a familiar German word—­such as “Mein Herr,” or “Ach.”  When once they have heard the expected syllables, they smile a placid smile of contentment, and remark, one to another, “I can understand pretty nearly everything that is said,—­with the exception, of course, of an occasional word.”