THE THEATRE.
THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1
Szn,—May I thank you for opening your jounial to some criticisms on the theatre ? I am sure that many of your readers who are interested in the drama will thank you too. If, as Bacon says, the theatre is capable "of no small influence both of discipline and corruption," then it is important that intelligent criticism should be brought to bear upon the stage. It is true that we have competent dramatic critics on our newspapers, but the conditions under which a newspaper criticism is written diminishes seriously its useful- ness. The reader who glances at his "daily" during breakfast- time wants to know quickly whether a play is a success or a failure; how the audience liked it, and what palpable " hits " were made by the actors. He has neither time nor inclination to read a subtle analysis of the good or bad points in a play, or to learn whether there was consistency in the actor's impersona- tion. Let the audience but laugh and the play be applauded, and in the heat and noise of the moment the critic must be content to record the general impression. But the art of the theatre does not flourish without sound criticism. The actor becomes careless and the dramatist indifferent. Now, however, that the Spectator has consented to pass judgment upon the playhouse, Thalia and Roscius must look to their laurels ! And may I ask why it is that English scholars, who number among their fraternity perhaps the finest Shakespearean critics the world has ever known or is ever likely to know—why it is that they still sit on the Mount of Parnassus proudly aloof, silent, and contemptuously indifferent to the usage that their sublime poet receives at the hands of the actors on this twentieth-century stage of ours? I think that if modest "Will," who never fancied his plays as " works " or "classics," or even as "literature," knew about the doings of these gods, he would laugh at them. Shakespeare cannot thank men of letters for depriving the drama of the right to be judged in its proper place, the theatre.—I am, Sir, &a., Wm. Pon..
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