“ODD MAN OUT.”—­On Saturday last, the last among the theatrical advertisements in the Daily Telegraph was the mysterious one, “MR. CHARLES SUGDEN AT LIBERTY,” and then followed his address.  “At Liberty!” What does it mean?  Has he been—­it is a little difficult to choose the right word, but let us say immured—­has he been immured in some cell?—­for it does sound like a “sell” of another sort—­and has he at last effected a sensational escape?  No doubt CHARLES, our friend, will be able to offer the public a satisfactory explanation when he re-appears on the Stage which suffers from his absence.

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PLAYING OLD GOOSEBERRY AT THE HAYMARKET;

OR, THE DOOK, THE DANCING GIRL, AND THE LITTLE LAME DUCK.

What is to be admired in ENERY HAUTHOR JONES is not so much his work but his pluck,—­for has he not, in the first place, overcome the prudery of the Lord Chamberlain’s Licensing Department, and, in the second place, has he not introduced on the boards of the Haymarket a good old-fashioned Melodrama, brought “up to date,” and disguised in a Comedy wrapper?  Walk in, Ladies and Gentlemen, and see The Dancing Girl, a Comedy-Drama shall we call it, or, generically, a Play? wherein the prominent figures are a wicked Duke,—­vice the “wicked Baronet,” now shelved, as nothing under the ducal rank will suit us nowadays, bless you!—­a Provincial Puritan family, an honest bumpkin lover, a devil of a dancing woman who lives a double-shuffling sort of life, an angel of a lame girl,—­who, of course, can’t cut capers but goes in for coronets,—­a sly, unprincipled, and calculating kind of angel she is too, but an audience that loves Melodrama is above indulging in uncharitable analysis of motive,—­a town swell in the country, a more or less unscrupulous land-agent, and a genuine, honest “heavy father,” of the ancient type, with a good old-fashioned melodramatic father’s curse ready at the right moment, the last relic of a bygone period of the transpontine Melodrama, which will bring tears to the eyes of many an elderly playgoer on hearing the old familiar formula, in the old familiar situation, reproduced on the stage of the modern Haymarket as if through the medium of a phonophone.

[Illustration:  FINAL TABLEAU, ACT I.

“O does not a Meeting (House) like this make amends?”

Ham Christison (Clown).  “Ullo!  Oh my!  I’m a looking at yer!”]

At all events, Drusilla Ives, alias “the Dancing Girl “—­though as to where she dances, how she dances, and when she dances, we are left pretty well in the dark, as she only gives so slight a taste of her quality that it seemed like a very amateurish imitation of Miss KATE VAUGHAN in her best day,—­Drusilla Ives is the mistress, neither pure nor simple, of the Duke of Guisebury,—­a title which is evidently artfully intended by the, at present, “Only JONES” to be a compound of the French “Guise” and the English “Bury,”—­who from his way of going on and playing old gooseberry with his property, might have been thus styled with advantage:  and so henceforth let us think and speak of him as His Grace or His Disgrace the Duke of Gooseberry.