3-070-634 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Domestic Theatricals - 1. The Dressing-Room; 2. The Stage; 3. The Last Act, 1881. '...the preparation and performance of a very delightful private entertainment, by a large party of young people, with the approval and assistance of their kindly elders...The little girls attiring themselves in the dressing-room, or hastening to take from the servant-maid a quantity of articles of dress..., seem to be engaged in a manner always sure to be agreeable to lively spirits of their sex. The second of these views, which ought rather to be entitled "From the Stage," shows us the assembled audience, young and old, in front of the stage, from the aged grandmother down to the smallest baby; while to the right hand, behind the screen, all the dramatis personae stand in waiting for their signal to appear...A four-year old girl, led forward by her elder sister, is about to speak the prologue. In the dénouement of "the Last Act,"...we can easily recognise the seasonable apparition of some jolly old personage - he may be Father Christmas...or Old Father Time...who makes everybody happy with his liberal gifts of sweetmeats and toys. We have a shrewd suspicion that it is only Papa in disguise; but please don't tell'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.