The Foundations of a National Drama. By Henry Arthur Jones.
(Chapman and Hall. 7s. 6d. net.)—On his title-page Mr. Henry Arthur Jones quotes Keats's words, "Receive the truth, and let it be your balm" ; and we are at once reminded of the Max caricature of the dramatist which shows him waving a flag with an extremely mild expression on his face and is labelled "England's Scourge." This volume contains a collection of numerous lectures and essays written during the last sixteen years, and they are a proof of their author's very disinterested desire for an improvement in the state of English drama. Whether his method is the best calculated to bring this about seems more doubtful. On almost every page of the book he is to be found lecturing the British public because of its indifference to the "serious drama" and its devotion to "legs and tomfoolery." His pessimism is extreme, and he appears to have but little faith in his favourite remedy of a national state-aided theatre. He is constantly pointing out, and here it is especially difficult to follow him, how much better French plays and acting have been during the last fifteen years than English. It strikes one as possible, at least, that the reason for the public's neglect of good plays is that no good plays are being written. It is rather hard, too, to blame the public for not supporting Shakespearean revivals when one considers what most recent Shakespearean revivals have been like. Is Mr. Henry Arthur Jones right in his theory that if Hamlet were produced for the first time to-day it would be a complete failure ? In any case, the best plan is for
someone to write a play like Hamlet and observe the result. We confess to feeling that there is little chance of improving the public's behaviour by constantly repeating, like Mr. Toobad, "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth!" When a really good English play is written we are content to trust the public to go and see it.
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