that may be said in its favour, we give the preference to another play, Nabin Tapaswini. If it has greater faults than the other, they are redeemed by greater merits. The idea of the play is taken from Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, and the plot is that of a well-known Hindu nursery tale, embellished with the love adventures of a sort of Indian Falstaff. The Falstaff of the story is Jaladhur, a prime minister, whose weight and circumference have marked an embarrassing figure, though he still retains the amorous propensities of youth. The object of his affections is Málati, the young and beautiful wife of a merchant named Kalikanta. Malati has a cousin, Mallika, the purest of women at heart, though endowed with a sharp tongue, the rough edge of which she is not chary of using. Having learnt of Jaladhur’s passion for Malati and the solicitations which he addressed to her, she put her cousin up to giving him a series of practical lessons, which form the matter of the play. First of all, Jaladhur is induced to meet his own wife under the idea that she is Malati, and his protestations of love mixed with abuse of his wife are cut short and himself put to flight by the entrance in the scene of Kalikanta, to whose wrath the spurious Mallika would have fallen a victim, if she had not saved herself by telling out to him who she was. This, however, did not occur till Jaladhur had felt the weight of his jealous wife’s broom.
The next scene is in the merchant’s house, where he has been led to expect that his wishes will at length be gratified. Before venturing on this Jaladhur has induced his royal master, whose health was failing, to send Kalikanta to Arabia in search of that sovereign remedy—the flesh of the Hondol kutkutia, a fabulous animal which had no existence out of the minister’s brain. By Mallika’s advice, the trader, instead of starting for Arabia, conceals himself near home, and returns by agreement to the house where Jaladhur is in company with the two ladies. The gay Lothario, thus surprised, hides himself, first, for want of better shelter, with a grotesque mask to hide his head, in a cask of tar, and afterwards in a heap of cottonwool, with results which may be imagined. At last he is advised to fly, and Mallika lets him out of a back door, immediately in front of which is a great iron cage prepared for the Arabian beast. He runs into this cage in the dark, and Mallika shuts the door. In the morning he is carried off to Court, and the people on the way crowd round the strange beast, pelt him with brick-bats and poke him with sticks, while he is so much afraid of being recognized that he squeaks and capers about, as the wild beast for which he is taken might be supposed to do. At last they meet the king, and after a time Kalikanta turns up, and the facts are in due course disclosed.
This is the comic vein of the piece, but there is also a serious
