HALLIWELL-PHILLIPS is dead! We yesterday sent to press the last pages of this issue, adding at the last moment the brief item below, as to a new addition to his great collection at Hollinbury Copse. Twenty-four hours later the telegram reaches us.

To speak of the close of such a life, requires more than the impulse of a moment. To speak fittingly of it, who will dare? Later we shall try to dwell on his noble manliness, his inexhaustible patience, his magnificent hospitality, his large, unfailing friendliness-which, even more than his achievements in the great field of history he had made his own, and to which he gave life, time, fortune, and strength-crowd upon us. Just now we can only bend to the blow.

He dies in harness. In a letter to The New York Shakespeare Society, which honored itself by electing him its first honorary member, he spoke of the weight of advancing years and the constant interruption it brought to his studies. But never a word of relinquishing them; and readers of SHAKESPEARIANA will remember the simple modesty with which, in our issue of October last, he alluded to his immense labors, covering almost half a century, as a simple matter of tendency and of taste! and as still in progress.

If his friends should be asked to say what was Mr. HalliwellPhillips' most prevailing characteristic, we think they would say it was the courtly and tender and charming words with which he would welcome a newcomer into the great preserves where he himself has so long and fondly labored. He was as far above, was as incapable of, resenting the arrival of a new investigator as an intruder and an enemy, as he was of defending himself when attacked by those very newcomers-to whom he alone had given a place to stand and work to do!

Learned, brave, genial, modest, patient; his countrymen and lovers on two sides of the ocean will do him princely honor.

But the highest encomium they will ever pronounce upon him will be that, in the midst of that small bickering, jealousy, criticism, counter-criticism, criticastering, and ungentleness, which unhappily have been too prominent among the disciples of the gentle Shakespeare, he has never cherished an unkind thought or said an unkind or an ungentle word! A. M.

J. B. LIPPINCOTT PUBLISHING Co. announces for about January 15, the first number of Poet Lore, "a monthly magazine whose office and aim shall be the comparative study, interpretation, and praise of the choice and master-spirits' of English poetry, and the popular spread of the kindly influences of genius." We further draw from the prospectus before us that the magazine will be solely devoted to illustration of English anthology. Our new contemporary seems to be in no danger from inattention to first principles. It announces as among questions to be treated in its opening number: "Questions introductory to a study of Shakespeare's place in English literature." Even if "Shakespeare's place in English literature" had not been settled by a consensus of civilization for the past century or so (as some of us had supposed), a question as to it to-day is, at least, not premature. But to begin the preliminary study of questions introductory to that question in January, 1889, evinces a most commendable determination to hasten slowly and do nothing with rash precipitation; which must surely lead in the end to substantial and permanent success for our esteemed contemporary. SHAKESPEARIANA can promise its readers nothing quite as basic as this.

SHAKESPEARE is not popular in Roumania. Of a production of Lear at the National Theatre in Bucharest the leading newspaper says: "The play is antiquated. The subject dates. from before the flood. Instead of being interested in the insanity of the howling king, the public went sweetly to sleep, and will not be likely to come back again."

THE allotment of The Bankside Shakespeare, including the three volumes now deliverable, is as follows, as far as has been arranged:

I. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Appleton Morgan, A.M., Esq.
II. The Taming of the (A) Shrew, Albert R. Frey, Esq.
III. The Merchant of Venice, William Reynolds, A.M., Esq.
IV. Troilus and Cressida, Appleton Morgan, A.M., Esq.

V. Romeo and Juliet, B. Rush Field, M.D.

VI. Othello, Thomas R. Price, LL.D.

VII. Much Ado About Nothing, Wm. H. Fleming, Esq.
VIII. Love's Labor's Lost, Thos. R. Price, LL.D.

IX. Richard III., James E. Reynolds, Esq.

X. Midsummer Night's Dream, William Reynolds, A.M.
XI. Titus Adronicus, Appleton Morgan, A.M., Esq.
XII. First Henry IV., William H. Fleming, Esq.
XIII. Second Henry IV., William H. Fleming, Esq.
XIV. Lear, Hon. Alvey A. Adee.

A volume of the sonnets (texts of 1609 and 1640) is arranged to appear uniform with the above, with introduction by Dr. W. J. Rolfe, and it is not unlikely, if the edition be received with favor, that the Doubtful Plays may be added to the series. As the New York Shakespeare Society considers The Bankside Shakespeare a work as monumental as it is unique, it proposes in the concluding volume of the series, to print the names and addresses of its subscribers opposite the number of the set for which their subscription was received.

MR. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPS announces that he has added to his collection of Shakespeare Rarities at Hollinbury Copse, a copy of the printed original music to "Farewell, Dear Heart, since I must needs begone," quoted by the Clown in Twelfth Night, and a мs. book of travels of the last century containing the earliest known account of the interior of the room understood to have been that in which Shakespeare was born, in the Henley Street cottage.

THE Shakespeare Society of New York receives a proof of the late Mr. Halliwell-Phillip's regard in the shape of electroplates, electros of wood-blocks, and wood blocks. All these of which he died possessed he leaves to his American disciples. He bequeathes 300 bound volumes of autograph letters to the University of Edinburgh. His unrivalled collection of Shakespearian rarities goes to the Corporation of Birmingham, if they like to pay $35,000 for them. His library is left to his nephew.

GENTLEMEN who write books about Shakespeare and who consequently are anxious to get the reviewers' right, will be interested in the following item from Belford's Magazine for Septem➡ ber, 1888: "Young gentlemen connected with the press and employed to write of fires, prize fights, executions of criminals, cases of crim. con., and other stirring events, are instructed to put in their home time criticising new books." Is it possible that this is how it is all done? Perhaps this is what Mr. Brander Matthews (who has written novels, poems, essays, editions of the old dramatists, plays, short stories, and everything else, and always been nicely handled and so ought to know how he does it) means when he says that the only way to get good notices from "the Press" is to give yourself a good notice in your preface! Our own idea is that the way to do it is to "stand-in" with your bookbinder. For very many book reviewers actually open the books they review. And if the binder has fixed it so that your book opens readily at the proper place-why, there you are!

The Stage.

(NEW YORK CITY.).

MRS. JAMES BROWN POTTER and her admirable company have announced as in preparation and underlined for production at Palmer's Theatre, for an early date, the Antony and Cleopatra. The announcement is one that almost justifies the running of special trains. To see this magnificent play, so practically neglected for more than a century, mounted (as it will be mounted by this company and at this historic theatre) in the splendor of modern stage equipment, will be a rare and memorable privilege. We trust that Mr. Palmer will present his audiences, on the bills of the play, with a stage history of this magnificent drama from the earliest dates, which would make an

instructive and valuable souvenir. Kaffka's opera, Antoine et Cleopatre, was produced at Berlin in 1780, and an opera in six acts founded on the play, Kleopatra, by Wilhelm Fredenberg, was presented at Magdeburg in 1882, and Antonius und Kleopatra, a grand opera by Fürsten von Wittganstein, at Gratz in 1883. But we have no record of the play itself for many years, except that April 2, 1877, Mrs. Agnes Booth and Joseph Wheelock essayed the play at the Broadway (now Daly's) theatre, with indifferent success. Mr. Hamilton Bell, who got up the dresses for Mr. Daly's Taming of the Shrew, designed the costumes for the present play at Palmer's.

AT the Star Theatre, on January 9, Mr. James and Miss Wainwright will open in As You Like It, in which Miss Wainwright will make her New York début as Rosalind. Mr. James will be seen, for the first time here, as Orlando. Manager Mortimer has engaged Professor J. M. Laflin for the part of Charles the Wrestler. A feature will be made of the costumes, which have been prepared expressly for this production. During their engagement Mr. James and Miss Wainwright will also be seen in Much Ado About Nothing.

(LONDON.)

The general verdict on Mr. Irving and Miss Terry's Macbeth (produced at the Lyceum on New Year's Eve) is that it is not Shakespeare's play of that name, either in arrangement or in spirit. Mr. Irving has rearranged the scenes into a libretto of his own. Of his conception of the character of Macbeth himself, we shall doubtless have much to say later. It is a complex part. Macbeth was "too full of the milk of human kindness" to deserve to be represented as a thunderous savage. Doubtless he was weak and sinuous. But Mr. Irving has thoroughly soured the milk of human kindness, and makes him an Iago, artful, crafty, and yet without the "fine Italian hand " of Iago himself. The Lady Macbeth of Miss Terry is equally metamorphosed. There is none of the stately queen of Siddons or Cushman. She is magnificent, but, like the entire production, savors something more of melodrama than of tragedy.