In Residence

AU THEATRE DU GRAND GUIGNOL 93 Horror holds one from the outset: but when from words we go to deeds, the formulation of the Logos in the plastic, alas! the element of music-hall supervenes— O Catulle Mendés! didst thou say, forced like Galileo to thy knees by an iniquitous tribunal; Personne ne croit aces cadavres!”? Yet wedoso. The director's murder is done magnificently; better than Macbeth, better than the Cenci ; better than the Mother’s Tragedy. No! this praise is too fulsome, too indiscriminate; but any way, better than the other two. He groans like laurelled Martial in Burns’s poem ; yet his assassin does not tickle the ears of the groundlings with a coarse “ Crévé, nom de D !” but in supreme self-mastery, the iron con- trol of a lunatic whose sanity is at stake, enters stern and silent, his eyes glittering with fiendish joy — Baviére, thy poster is superb!—and develops with calm and scientific precision his system to the raving crowd of madmen and madwomen. Peer Gynt! ay! but Peer Gynt with a tang! Peer Gynt vital, real, terrible. What is the system? That is fine; but remember, my friends, that our own system comes first! Charity begins at home and ends in the workhouse: so the new method must absorb our space—ay! and infinite space!—to the exclusion of our unworthy imitators, Doctor Goudron and Professor Plume. To Montmartre then, reader! to the Grand Guignol! To the Madhouse, 1 We have discovered too late that this is a despicable effort of our cor- respondent’s jejune graphomania. Had we suspected that he was a poetaster as well as a degenerate and imbecile, we should not have printed this rubbish.—ED.