"to write SHAKSPEARE for a company of Marionnettes." Encouraged by
his extraordinary success, he has soared higher yet, and adapted
our greatest national drama for the purposes of the (Independent)
itinerant Stage. We are enabled by the courtesy of his publishers to
give a few specimen scenes from this _magnum opus_, which, as will
be seen, requires somewhat more elaborate mounting and mechanical
effects than are at present afforded by the ordinary Punch
Show. In M. MAETERLINCK's version, Ponsch becomes the Prince of
Half-seas-over-Holland; he is the victim of hereditary homicidal
mania, complicated by neurotic hysteria. Inflamed by the insinuations
of Mynheer Olenikke--a kind of Dutch Mephistopheles and Iago
combined--he is secretly jealous of his consort the Princess Jödi's
preference for the society of Djoë, the Court Jester and Society
Clown. Here is our first sample:--

_A Chamber in the Castle. Princess JÖDI discovered at a
window with DJOË._

_Jödi_. Lo! lo! a shower of stars is falling upon the fowl-house!

_Djoë_. Oh! oh! a shower of stars upon the fowl-house? (_A water pipe
in the back-garden bursts suddenly and splashes them._) Ah! ah! I am
wet all over! Have you a pocket handkerchief?

_Jödi_. Oh, look! a comet--an enormous one--has descended into the
water-butt! The sky is blood-red, and the moon has turned the colour
of green cheese. This bodes some disaster!

_Djoë_. It is unsettled--rainy--unpleasant weather. Can you lend me an
umbrella?