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Richelieu. Walter Hampden is now to be observed in this ancient, reverberating play by the late great victim of romantic elephantiasis, Sir Edward (The Last Days of Pompeii) Bulwer-Lytton. It must be a magnificent experience for Mr. Hampden. For every maneuver of eyebrow, every musical tremor of voice, every curdling glance which he can devise, the late Bulwer-Lytton provides an accompaniment bombastically in keeping. Some of his phrases are still tenaciously clinging to the English tongue 91 years after their invention. You will remember the almost continually misquoted, "In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves for a bright manhood, there is no such word as 'fail.' " And at another point the wily Cardinal makes a remark which, paradoxically, seems almost unbearably bromidic: "The pen is mightier than the sword." Mr. Hampden is surrounded by a competent group of swashbucklers, courtiers, gamesters, conspirators and Ladies of the Court.
Babes in Toyland. The thrilling call of massed trumpets which begins the march from this opera by the late great Victor Herbert suggests much more significant affairs than the parade of toy soldiers which follows it. Perhaps it was because he knew the serious splendors of the childish imagination that Composer Herbert wrote some of his most glamorous music to accompany the deeds of such characters as Bo-Peep, Jill, Curly Locks, Tommy Tucker and Simple Simon. Milton Aborn's revivalists (TIME, Oct. 7 et seq.), treat this tonal poetry creditably.