DRAMATIC AND MUSICAL.

Modjeska returns to America in September.

Topsy Venn is with Rice's Surprise Party again.

Frank Mayo will star next season in Shakespearian drama.

The latest sensation created by Bernhardt abroad is that she has contrived her marriage so that its validity may well be questioned, and so that no formal decree of divorce will ever be needed to legally separate herself from the Greek.

Young Salvini, not Fred. Paulding, has been engaged to play the heroes to Miss Margaret Mather's heroines, under Manager Hill.

Salvini, the Italian tragedian, returns next season under the management of John Stetson, of Boston, supported by an English company.

Mary Anderson and Lotta are worth anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000, and they are spoken of as lovely girls. They have charming figures.

Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, was once an actor, and a good one. He was married to an actress named Dyke, whose sister, Mrs. Duff, formerly played in Providence.

The Savoy Theatre, in London, is said to have the prettiest drop-curtain of any theatre in the world. It is of white satin, elaborately quilted by hand, and cost $5,000.

A group of more or less distinguished authors are endeavoring to organize a conference of novelists and theatrical managers at London, with a view to compose the little difficulty that has arisen out of the dramatization of "Moths."

Marie Prescott will not star next season. Many other actors have taken the same resolve, and mainly from the fact that the public have shown that they will not tolerate that mediocre actors should be foisted upon them as stars.

Mr. Hill will try Ben Maginley in his new play in Brooklyn for one week. It has been christened "A Squar' Man." It has the Western strength of Bret Harte, the poetry of Joaquin Miller, and a flavor of originality all its own.

Captain Shaw, of the London Fire Brigade, has made his report, after a survey of some eight of the London theatres, and so strong is the condemnation, and so vast the alterations proposed, that the Board of Works decline to deal with the matter, and have referred it to the Home Secretary.

A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette, apparently by way of apologizing for Irving's maturity of aspect in the character, sets forth the fact that "Romeo's age is nowhere exactly defined. He is called 'young Romeo,' and no more." But surely that would be enough, even if there were no other indications in the text of Romeo's youthfulness, and there are several. The whole tragedy, indeed, may be described, and even explained, as a story of youthful passion. The same critic objects that the balcony is always so high. Usually, however, the balcony is so low that any lover endowed with tolerable agility could vault to the side of his mistress with the greatest of ease. The window could clearly be high enough to warrant Romeo's employment of "cords made like a tackled stair" - that is to say, a rope ladder - to reach it. There is truth, however, in the statement that Irving's several attempts to reach Miss Terry's hand, "which is just out of reach, and his desperate clutches and frantic gestures, approach within a dangerous distance of the ridiculous."