[Loud applause, which was instantly suppressed.

Mr. Pheasant (sternly).> This Court is not a Prize-Ring.

* * * * *

“A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE” AT THE AVENUE.

[Illustration:  Alexander the Less and the preux Chevalier.]

First of all, the title of the piece is against it. The Struggle for Life suggests to the general British Public, unacquainted with the name of DAUDET, a melodrama of the type of Drink, in which a variety of characters should be engaged in the great struggle for existence.  It is suggestive of strikes, the great struggle between Labour and Capital, between class and class, between principal and interest, between those with moral principles and those without them.  It is suggestive of the very climax of melodramatic sensation, and, being suggestive of all this to the majority, the majority will be disappointed when it doesn’t get all that this very responsible title has led them to expect.  Those who know the French novel will be dissatisfied with the English adaptation of it, filtered, as it has been, through a French dramatic version of the story.  So much for the title.  For the play itself, as given by Messrs. BUCHANAN and HORNER,—­the latter of whom, true to ancestral tradition, will have his finger in the pie,—­it is but an ordinary drama, strongly reminding a public which knows its DICKENS of the story of Little Em’ly, with Vaillant for Old Peggotty, Lydie for Little Em’ly, Antonin Caussade for Ham, and Paul Astier for Steerforth.  Perhaps it would be carrying the resemblance too far to see in Rosa Dartle, with her scorn For “that sort of creature,” the germ of Esther de Seleny.  Mix this with a situation from Le Monde ou l’on s’ennuie, spoilt in the mixing, and there’s the drama.

[Illustration:  The Avenger.]

For the acting—­it is admirable.  Miss GENEVIEVE WARD is superb as Madame Paul Astier, and it is not her fault, but the misfortune of the part, that the wife of Paul is a woman old enough to be his mother, with whose sufferings—­with her eyes wide open, having married a man of whose worthlessness she was aware,—­it is impossible to feel very much sympathy.  She is old enough to have known better.  Mr. GEORGE ALEXANDER’S performance of the scoundrel Paul leaves little to be desired, but he must struggle for dear life against his—­of course, unconscious—­imitation of HENRY IRVING.  Shut your eyes to the facts, occasionally, especially in the death-scene, and it is the voice of IRVING; open them, and it is ALEXANDER agonising.  No one can care for the fine lady, statuesquely impersonated by Miss ALMA STANLEY, who yields as easily to Paul’s seductive wooing as does Lady Anne to Richard the Third.  After Miss WARD and Mr. ALEXANDER, the best performance is that of Miss GRAVES as Little Em’ly Lydie,