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spare time to the amusement of their fellow residents. Moreover, as has been said before, the community was small, and the critic had after all to live with his actor-neighbours who would no doubt know about his identity.
Thus, "A Stranger" wrote, about George Colman's Heir at Law (April 21 1851): “Zekiel Homespun was inimitable; we had no idea there was a Gentleman in Shanghae who could take the difficult part so well.) The simplicity, humour and serious earnestness which it displays in some parts were brought out and sustained in a manner that we have scarcely seen equaled, except by some of the leading actors of our Metropolis". And again: “Constant playgoers as from childhood we have been we have rarely, indeed never, ‘assisted' at a more agreeable evening than that of Wednesday the 16th instant [i.e. February 16 1859]. The performances [of J.M. Morton's Whitebait at Greenwich and Thomas Morton's Sink or Swim] passed off with the utmost eclat due to the talent and exertions of the actors". Sometimes the author felt it even necessary to apologize for any criticism he uttered: "We do this, not in the invidious character of critics upon amateur performances or still less as tinctured with the slightest disposition to find fault, but in order that the excellent materials which have been combined in the troupe should be made as much of as possible. Indeed it is the very appreciation of the talents displayed on Thursday [sic; this should be Wednesday January 23 1856– JH] which prompts the expression of these remarks. We are sure that neither the performers nor the audience would thank us for the undiscriminating and therefore worthless praise which usually satirize amateur performances". But even in this case the critic only had made some comments on the costumes that were used in one of the pieces (cf. Calendar, 23.1.1856). Mild remarks were the severest criticism dished out; about one of the actors on June 2 1859, **we may perhaps be permitted to take an exception to his brogue, which, however good as an assumption, scarcely denoted one to the manner born"; and about another on the same evening; "his humour seems better fitted for low than for eccentric comedy".
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Only when it came to the choice of pieces was the paper not always undividedly positive. Writing about John Maddison Morton's Done on Both Sides (February 10 1858) not much enthusiasm was shown: “We have witnessed, we confess, better farces on the same stage and we are inclined to believe that as actors may sometimes not come up to the play, it occasionally happens that plays are not altogether worthy of the