magic, as why should there be, than about the English novelist, the English painter, the English architect, or the English chemist. It is too silly to be told that there are no English dramatists. We haven't got a Shakespeare, of course, any more than an Isaiah, or a Dickens either, or a Turner. And who but the Elizabethans ever had a Shakespeare? The miracle of the man was so complete, all the more for the obscurity surrounding his life, that he has been explained away in all sorts of ways. He has been Bacon, Raleigh, and many things. I have myself never been able to get rid of the feeling that Shakespeare, like the Scriptures, may have been a collection of writings by many hands, gathered together by a common inspiration. Be that as we like to dream, however, Shakespeare has in one sense been a great trial to the dramatists of England. So hopeless is his superiority to all comers, that no other dramatist in this country, in common talk, takes rank as a poet at all. If the average Frenchman is asked to name his greatest poets, Corneille, Racine and Molière will rise to his lips at once The German will tell you of Goethe and of Schiller; but the average Englishman, after beginning with Shakespeare, will talk of Milton, of Byron, of Shelley, or of Wordsworth, according to taste. But he will forget, or he will know nothing of, the grace and charm of Fletcher, the humours of Ben Jonson, the grim power of Webster or the lofty pathos of Ford.

As for the dii minores of later days, how many Englishmen are aware of the fact that, after Shakespeare, the poet who wrote the greatest number of successful stage-plays was one Sheridan Knowles? For the actors also, Shakespeare is, as a rule, it always seems to me, too high. It is a curious fact that the memory of nearly all our leading tragedians, except those of the very greatest and most indisputable genius, is more closely connected with other characters than his. Macready's name suggests Richelieu, Charles Kean recalls Louis XI., Phelps, Sir Pertinax Macsycophant. In my own personal experience, the pieces of acting which have electrified me have never been Shakespearian. In the round of scholarly and poetical studies from Shakespeare which was given us by the American tragedian Edwin Booth, there was none that I saw, interesting as they were, which approached in power and stage effect his acting of Tom Taylor's "Fool's Revenge." Shakespeare is too complete. He leaves nothing to fill out, nothing to add, in his great leading characters. The language of lesser men leaves scope to the tragedian to bring out in his own way the eternal human passions with which all good plays alike must deal. But it never was in mortal-except, I suppose in Edmund Kean, or Mrs. Siddonsto add anything to the ineffable music of Othello's cry, to the awful

intensity of the curse of Lear, to the infinite motherhood of Constance's despair. The speakers of such lines as those, through no fault of their own, are crushed like Tarpeia under the ornaments of gold.

If these remarks seem out of place, I must plead in the first place an irresistible tendency to wandering in discourse, into the various fields of Gossip or of Criticism; in the second, that, whatever else happens, we may safely venture to predict that Shakespeare in England will always be the Drama of the Day. To judge from the wonderful performance of "Muck-a-bet," which it was my fortune to behold not long ago at the Porte St. Martin, with the three witchesLord, such witches-dancing round and round the mulberry tree about the figure of the hapless Thane, he will never succeed in taking root in France. But with us, every rising generation will demand at all events its own Shakespearian manager, and the man will be forthcoming for the purpose. I am not blind to the attractions of the form which the Shakespearian drama now takes in London, though it is not much consonant to my individual taste. It appeals too much to the eye, too little to the ear; but for effects of stage-management, and harmonious grouping of the characters, it has perhaps not been surpassed. No doubt that in that respect stage art has advanced wonderfully. There is all the difference in the world between the Field of Waterloo, as I beheld it at Astley's, and one of the battlefields of modern Drury Lane. And the pleasure of the eye is a great pleasure, after a hard day's work; a great recreation and a great repose. To be despised or under-rated in no way.

But we want better plays; and we want English ones. There are signs, I think, that those detestable parodies of the French are nearly played out, with their one eternal weary, unsavoury string— their tiresome variations of the Conjugal Discord. That lively description of marriage may or may not be the proper thing in France; but thank God I have not found it the besetting characteristic of an English home. These wives always running away from their husbands for no conceivable reason, and these husbands making hay of their domestic hearths out of a general desire to be uncomfortable about nothing, make up surely the dullest and foolishest picture of life, apart from its other qualities, which mortal hand can waste its time on drawing. It certainly does not educate: it certainly does not amuse. It is a sin, to my mind, against Art, and against Human Nature. It passes the time, that is all; and it does so by pandering to a temptation which, like other temptations which exist in a certain class of mind, the mind should set itself manfully to stamp out, as it should all such weeds. That is what we are here for, in fact; and our various thorns in the flesh are not intended to be nursed, but to be got rid of. I am not protesting against all

adaptation; a good play should be for all languages, not for one, and none of the strong motives of passion and of life should be excluded from the author's province, if he deal with them humanly and to a good end. But if he has any mission at all, it is to remember that his end be good. This school of drama, whether in its original dress or in the too frequent English copies which have appeared of late years, does more harm to that healthiness and simplicity of mind. which is true manliness and true womanliness, than all the muchabused shows of pretty faces and figures in pretty dresses, to a setting of bright music and harmonious colour, which it is so much the fashion to turn up the whites of the British eye at from the stalls; and through a good pair of glasses. I can preach no homily on that text; for for the life of me I could never see any harm in the thing. Those fairy shows are very pretty and restful, and if the dressing is sometimes in danger of being carried-I was going to say too far, but I suppose it should be not far enough-then the show becomes ugly, and punishes itself. But plays of the kind are but a small corner of the theatric globe, and with all respect I will leave it to a certain reverend and distinguished Bishop, when asked his views of the Drama, to imagine at once that he was being consulted about the Ballet. I turn to the great need of the moment: English literary drama. I say again, and I maintain, that in order to get at that, the author and his best friend, the public, only want to get at each other. For between us and them-I am becoming quite personal, it would seem, but I want to make of this something in the nature of a personal appeal-there is a great gulf fixed; and the name of that gulf is this. It is the people who know all about it. Let me explain at once that I am not going to run amok at the critics. I never could quite understand the Holy War which has seemed to last as long as the world between authors and critics, who ought to be allies if any men ought. But certainly, in connection with the stage at all events, they are as a rule, I think, a little too inclined as it were to take the part of the actor as against the hapless outlaw who is called an author. When admonished that I have written a part quite unworthy of Miss Jones's genius, though she struggled her best under the depressing load, I reflect with sorrow that no doubt it is so; and that Miss Jones's genius (though I had not heard of it before) is established by the fact that throughout the play she preferred her own language to mine. I daresay she was quite right: but genius should bear its own responsibilities. We do suffer, sometimes. We are always being "made" by somebody's genius; but then there is always somebody else's to unmake us again.

I remember on the first night of a play of mine, when the atmosphere was electric, and actors and audience rather unusually

excited, my hero had to leave the stage with this sentence-in answer to an appeal to him to be firm in an approaching interview with the evil genius of the play-" Don't be afraid," he should say, "to do her justice; she asks as little quarter as she gives." In his nervousness, the actor forgot the words-hesitated-stammered-pulled himself together, and with a majesty of gait and utterance quite in keeping with the occasion, he left the stage with this memorable sentiment in his mouth: "No matter! to-do her justice-sheshe-gives as little trouble as she takes." Ever since, in my bad dreams, I have been beset with speculations as to what that phrase might be brought to mean. In this case it was a mere question of nervousness; for never in any piece of mine did I meet with any man who worked harder or played better; and in the excitement of the moment the remark passed without notice. But it was certainly severe upon an author who, of course, as we all do, prides himself upon the balance of his antithesis, to be credited in spite of himself with that astounding epigram. Perhaps, however, I did not suffer so much as the playwright, who not having had the opportunity of personal supervision over a country actor in a small part, whose educational standard was not of quite the highest, suddenly heard his Regent Orleans, or some other "incorrigible roué," denounced as an incoriggable roo.

But to return to the critics for a moment. I have no complaint against them, for they have been very courteous to me, with the usual bilious exception of one or two among them whose notion of criticism is rudeness. These do really no harm except to themselves, and exercise my philosophic mind as to where they expect to go to. I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, than live by giving painto those you live by, moreover. In that, as in other things, good nature is more akin to duty and usefulness than some folk wot of. And in some cases, certainly, a higher standard of knowledge should be required. I was much amused once by a letter from one of our northern capitals, from a young man, a stranger, who wrote to me in a very nice spirit about some work of mine, and asked me to give him some advice as to a sound critical training. I could only suggest that the two great essentials were, study and kindliness. In writing again, he told me in the frankest way that he thought things were rather wrong in that way; for that on his paper, a leading provincial journal, when the editor, who had a taste in that direction, did not write the theatrical reviews himself, he left it to the police reporters! Well, if we were the mere conveyancers that Ouida says we dramatists all are-and as a matter of fact far too many are-we could certainly not be treated with scanter ceremony than that. We have capital critics amongst us; but a sterner and more conscientious exercise of

editorial discretion in the selection of their men in this direction, as well as in others, would be of great value to the art of the stage, sometimes even on some of the most prominent of the newspapers of the day.

But to return to my obstacle-the people who know all about it. They are an odd, strange, irresponsible, practically nameless body, for it would be impossible to say exactly who they are. They do not know. They are actors, they are friends of actors, they are men who write plays themselves, they are managers and actingmanagers, they are mere hangers-on, they are people in Society, they are people out of it. And unfortunately the critics-certainly through no fault of their own, for the influences all round them must be very hard indeed to shake off-are too much apt, instead of guiding taste themselves, or of honestly reflecting the opinion of the general public (that is my readers, or anybody), either course practical and fair, to let themselves become the mouthpiece of this irresponsible and floating tribunal, which is not the public, but a self-appointed committee of opinion, who have made for themselves certain laws, as far as they attain to that, which they insist upon applying to the plays before them. It doesn't matter a penny to them whether the true public like a play or not, but whether the public ought to like it, according to them. Over and over again have I been astonished by seeing some piece practically recorded as a failure, which the outsiders -in other words, everybody-have welcomed with delight; another as a success to be, though that same larger tribunal has unequivocally rejected it. For they will have their shibboleths. A play must have action," they say. Of course it must; but by action they mean what used to be called "business," a mere kind of pantomime bustle. The true action of all art is passion; the whirlwind of human nature, the action and reaction of the laws of flesh and blood. I have seen 'Othello' played through by a manager who knows his business as it was once understood, without an extra or a super" in the cast, in a room no bigger than a lecture-room. I do not believe in a dramatist who can never write without pomp and crowds. Shibboleth the second; situation. Fudge. A fine story makes its own situations out of that same action and reaction, and the truest "situations" in the world are probably those which come out of two souls face to face together, not the technical conjuring-tricks which bring half the dramatis persona of a play in at the nick of time from o. P. or from P. S., to witness some carefully-prepared complication which, in the friction of life and of human nature, could never have really come about at all. Shibboleth the third, Motive. The "motive" is not strong enough, they say. The motive of a play should be told in a line; and any motive which sets human nature to work is good enough for anybody. A man is told by his father's ghost that his uncle and stepfather was

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