Mrs. Kendal, one of the few cultivated English actresses, on
Tuesday read a paper on the Stage before the Social Science Association. It is, on the whole, decidedly unfavourable to the present condition of the drama. The comfort of playgoers has been amazingly increased, and the scenery has been elaborately improved,—a change of which Mrs. Kendal strongly approves, —but criticism is at a low ebb, much exaggerated, very careless, and not always honest ; and actors are madly intent on adver- tising themselves, while the pieces played are in general inferior. Audiences are delighted with what are in reality long farces, the central idea of which is that an innocent wife is hoodwinked and cheated by a profligate husband. "The more outrageous the conduct of the husband, and the greater the innocence of the wife, the louder are the shrieks of laughter." The ancient coarseness has disappeared, but it has been re- placed by pieces full of suggestiveness, sometimes, says Mrs. Kendal, clever, but more frequently vulgar and clumsy imita- tions. " Spice " at once attracts the public, and the other day going with her husband to the theatre at Glasgow, she, "though not too straitlaced, left the building at the end of the second act." That is strong testimony from one who is certainly not shocked through inexperience of the stage, and goes far to justify the immovable dislike with which some religious bodies regard the theatre. The direct mischief done is probably not quite FO great as appears, for there is something, though not much, in Charles Lamb's argument that there is a conventional immorality as well as a conventional morality; but the evil tends to intensify itself, and to drive the sound drama off -the stage.
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