ART, LITERARY AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1939, 12 May 1880, Page 2

ART, LITERARY AND DRAMATIC GOSSIP.

[From English Files.] A new play, from the pen of Florence Marryat, aud founded on one of the clever lady’s novels, is nearly completed, and will probably be heard in public in the course of the summer. Mr Sotheru will play this year in London. Not at the Haymarket as had been at one time intended, but at the Gaiety, where in the autumn he will appear in Mr W. S. Gilbert’s new eccentric piece, “ Shogner’s Fairy.” Mr John McCullough gives as entertaining account of his first leanings toward the drama. It was in a Philadelphia shop, as related in the “ Kewa” of that city, that the boy John began his working life as apprentice in chairmaking. In the same shop was an intelligent old mechanic named Burke, whose busy Ufa had been brightened by much hard reading, and who was continually reciting Shakespeare, greatly to the boy’s delight. Burke’s favourite amusement, when slightly enlivened by the wine cup, was to murder young McCullough with a paint brush, and then recite with exceeding great effect over him Mark Antony’s speech over the dead Casar. “ I became ■ erfectly enraptured with the man,” says the actor, “ and made such a patient, occommodatieg corpse for him, that he finally made me a present of a copy of Shakespeare. From that day the doom of the chair-making business, so far as I was concerned, was sealed for over.”

Sir J. Gilbert has in hand a large composition, probably the largest he has yet contemplated, representing the “Battle of the Standard.” The design comprises, it is said, about five hundred figures, and the picture is now far advanced.

Miss Braddon, in the preface to her new novel, the “ Athenssum says, explains very clearly and temperately the reasons which led to the change in its title. While “ Splendid Misery” was appearing in the “ World,” the name was claimed by the publishers of a periodical in which a tale so entitled had, it seems, been printed. The critic of the “ Spirit of the Times,” a writer who has had extensive experience of things theatrical on both sides of the Atlantic, says :—“ ‘ The Pirates of Penzance’ is one of the greatest, most legitimate, and best-deserved successes ever produced in New York. The Fifth Avenue is overcrowded at every performance, and nobody is satisfied with a single visit. Our presentiments of its success have been more than realised, and and Messrs Sullivan and Gilbert will learn the difference between New York and London profits. Properly handled, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ will make both of them millionaires, and D’Oyly Carte rich enough to buy a specie! milk-white steamer to carry them back to old England. Of course the first question asked about the piece is whether it is like ‘ Pinafore.’ It is very different, and verymuch better, stronger, and cleverer. London will go wild over many of the points which only cause hearty laughter here : for Messrs Sullivan and Gilbert have not been tempted into any local allusions, and have kept ‘ The Pirates’ thoroughly English, from lie first word to the last.”