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DEFINITION OF “CHAFF.”—­The husk of Wit.

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[Illustration:  “THERE’S THE RUB!”

BILL-POSTER (uneasily).  “IF THAT PIG DON’T MEAN DEVILTRY, I’M A ——­
SEPARATIST!”]

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PLAYING OLD HARRY AT THE LYCEUM.

[Illustration:  The Magnetic Lady.]

“I once did manage to make a cast correctly,” writes ANDREW LANG, in his charming book anent the sport and pastime of fishing, and if ever HENRY IRVING made a cast to catch the public, it is now, when he uses as his bait SHAKSPEARE’s Henry the Eighth, got up in a style which emphatically “beats the record,” so utterly “regardless of expense” is it, with well-tried, responsible actors, in what may be called minor parts, though the majority of the dramatis personae are on a fair dramatic equality, and with Our ELLEN TERRY, as Queen Katharine, and himself as the great Lord Cardinal.

[Illustration:  “Go to,” Norfolk and Suffolk!]

The first difficulty that HENRY IRVING had to face—­literally to face—­was that by no sort of art could he make up his features to be an exact portrait of CARDINAL WOLSEY.  Personally, I prefer Mr. IRVING’s picture of WOLSEY to the extant portraits, which concur in representing him as a heavy, jowly-faced man, who might be taken as a model for one of GUSTAVE DORE’S eccentric-looking ecclesiastics in the Contes Drolatiques, rather than as the living presentment of the great Chancellor, Statesman, and Churchman who ruled a cruel, crafty, sensual tyrant, and successfully guided the policy of England at home and abroad.  HENRY IRVING’s Cardinal is a grand figure, courtly, though somewhat too cringing withal, evidently despising the various means he uses to further the end he has in view, and looking upon the Lords, Courtiers and all around him as merely puppets, whose strings he holds to work them as he will.

[Illustration:  The Cardinal’s Train de Luxe.]

Then, after seeing him as Sole Adviser of the Crown, after seeing him as Highest Judge in the Ecclesiastical Divorce Court in such splendid state as our Judge JEUNE may eye with envy, after seeing him in his own Palace, most courteous as Grand Master and liberal Provider of Right Royal Revels, he is exhibited to us in the deserted Hall, a spectacle for gods and men (that is, shown to the Gallery and the rest of the audience), the single figure of the Great Cardinal, fallen from his high estate; and to him, in place of all his princely retinue, comes his one faithful servant, CROMWELL, supporting his dying master, for dying he is, as he staggers feebly from the Palace at Bridewell.  It is difficult to call to mind any situation in any play more genuinely affecting in its simplicity than this.  The audience is held spell-bound,—­yet, for my part, I should have welcomed a greater variety in tone and action.