Cirrus@Austlit

A letter praising the production of the play 'The Australian Bunyips', which was then being staged at Our Lyceum theatre, Sydney. The letter includes some valuable background on the play itself.

The author's remarks on Australian theatre are particularly notable: 'I look forward to the day when gold from the native mint shall entirely supersede the blue-fire melo-dramas that develop no principles or character, possess no incidents save those common to them as a class, and confer no benefit moral, social, or political. The Australian stage will then fulfil its mission, and do what it, what every stage should do in the words of our great poet, - "hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure" .' [The quotation here is from Shakespeare's Hamlet]