Ellen Terry, for that individuality which raises certain artistes out of the crowd. In the drama I cannot see the successors to Pinero, to H. A. Jones, and to three or four others I might name, whose productiveness must wane in time. Yes, there is Barrie, who has great possibilities, and Stephen Phillips; but then Phillips is a poet, consequently his productions are restricted, and would be acceptable only at three or four theatres at the most.

I know that of these remarks it will be said that writers upon the stage have in all generations, as every famous actor was nearing the end of his or her career, been given to shaking their heads and croaking, "The art of acting will die with them." Yet the man has come when the hour has struck, and the stage has gone on much as before. And so I suppose it will be again, at least let us hope so.

It is disquieting, however, to every lover of the drama that each year more and more theatres are given up to variety shows and to mere buffoonery. Even Wyndham's recently went went over to farce, and the Criterion is everything by turns and nothing long. The Garrick under its present manager, and the Duke of York's during several seasons have adhered to goodclass work, but a change of managers may at any time send these houses over to the majority, so that the St. James's, His Majesty's, and the Haymarket, which, however, has pandered too much to Mrs. Grundy and mawkish sentimentalism of late, are the only firmly established legitimate theatres in the metropolis.

The opening of a number of handsome suburban theatres, that in decorations, stage appointments, and everything appertaining to stage art can hold their own against most of the houses of Central London, and seat

the public at less than half their prices, is a startling new departure in things theatrical. It was feared at first that they would have a very damaging effect upon the finances of the West End theatres. I think it was Sir Henry Irving who expressed himself quite cheerfully upon this point by his belief that they would create new audiences, out of people whom the higher tariff and the fatigue and expense of the journey from the suburbs had hitherto kept out of the theatres, that they would prove a sort of school for the theatrical education of the suburbans, which would ultimately lead them to the fountain-head of the art. And I think this view is

proving to be a correct one.

As long as the theatre is simply a business speculation, so long must it be conducted upon purely business lines, and its customers must be provided with what they want, and not with what they ought to have. What then about a subsidised theatre? If a theatre be supported by a public grant, that grant must come out of the public purse, and every taxpayer would think that he had a right to have his say about the conduct of the establishment. Now, as we should have all the Puritan element of the country dead against the subsidy, imagine the fate of the subsidised theatre. It would be the deadliest of failures; instead of raising dramatic art it would lower it to the depths of inanity, as it would fall under the dictation of Philistinism. Shakespeare would have to be emasculated even more than he is now; every play produced would have to be written for "the young person," as she is supposed to be, and if there were any derelictions from the seventh commandment, pater familias would storm the newspapers with protests against the public money being used to promote immorality. We have only to remember the storm that

was raised by certain plays of Pinero's and Jones's to realise what the attitude of a large section of Britishers would be; possibly it would rouse another passive resistance movement, the Nonconformist conscience is so very sensitive to money. Well, the manager, as a public servant, would have to succumb, and the National Theatre would be converted into an institution for the dramatisation of the works of the Religious Tract Society. No, no national theatre is possible in this country until it is purged of Puritanism, and that desideratum is not likely to be realised until the Greek Kalends.

THE NEW GAIETY was opened on October 26th, 1903, with The Orchid, a piece of the usual Gaiety pattern. It is a handsome house, constructed up to the latest improvements, with a stage eighty feet wide and forty feet deep. When on Lyceum first nights people began to gather about the doors at nine a.m., it was considered to be a record. But the earliest first-nighter arrived at the Gaiety at five a.m., and all day long, under the pitiless rain, the crowd was swelling until it reached the church, and hundreds, after hours of patient endurance, could not obtain admission. Another record was the presence of the King and Queen. Royalty scarcely ever honours a première by its presence.

NOTES

IME after time the old error, that has been fostered from

the days of Junius, that the actor was by law a rogue and a vagabond, is raked up by some enemy of the stage. During the present year there has been a long controversy in the columns of a daily newspaper upon this subject. Let me endeavour to state the case. I will begin with the much misunderstood statutes of Elizabeth and James, for the interpretation of which I shall once more quote the dialogue between Lovewit and Trueman in Wright's Historia Histrionica (1699):—

"LOVE.-After all, I have been told that stage-plays are inconsistent with the laws of this kingdom, and players made rogues by statute. TRUE. He that told you so strained a point of truth. I never met with any law wholly to suppress them; sometimes, indeed, they have been prohibited for a season, as in times of Lent, general mourning, or public calamities, or upon other occasions when the Government saw fit. Thus, by proclamation, 7th of April, in the first year of Queen Elizabeth, plays and interludes were forbid until All Hallowtide next following. (Hollinshed, p. 1184.) Some statutes have been made for their regulation or information, not general suppression. By the stat. 39 Eliz. cap. 4, 2 (which was made for the suppression of rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars), it is enacted: That all persons that be, or utter themselves to be, proctors, procurers, patent gatherers, or collectors for gaols, prisons, or hospitals, or fencers, bearwards, common players of interludes and minstrels wandering abroad (other than players of interludes belonging to any baron of this realm, or any other honorable personage of greater degree, to be authorised to play under the hand and seal of arms of such baron or personage), all juglers, tinkers, pedlars, and petty chapmen wandering abroad, all wandering persons, &c., able in body, using loytering, and refusing to

work for such reasonable wages as is commonly given, &c. These shall be adjudged and deemed rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and punished as such.

"LOVE.-But this privilege of authorizing or licensing is taken away by the stat. Jas. I. ch. 7, s. 1, and, therefore, all of them, as Mr. Collier1 says, p. 242, are expressly brought under the aforesaid penalty without distinction." "TRUE.-If he means all players, without distinction, 'tis a great mistake. For the force of the Queen's statute extends only to wandering players, and not to such as are the King's or Queen's servants, and established in settled houses by royal authority. On such the ill character of vagrant players (or, as they are now called, strollers) can cast no more aspersion than the wandering proctors in the same statute mentioned on those of Doctor's Commons. By a stat. made 3 Jac. s. 1, ch. 21, it was enacted: 'That if any person shall, in any stage-play, interlude, shew, maygame or pageant, jestingly or prophanely speak or use the holy name of God, Christ Jesus, or of the Trinity, he shall forfeit for every such offence £10.' The stat. 1 Charles I. ch. 1, s. 2, enacts: 'That no meetings, assemblies, or concourse of people shall be out of their own parishes on the Lord's Day, for any sport or pastime whatsoever, nor any bear-baiting, bull-baiting, interludes, common plays, or other unlawful exercises and pastimes used by any person or persons within their own parishes.' These are all the statutes that I can think of relating to the stage and players; but nothing to suppress them totally till the two ordinances of the Long Parliament, one of the 22nd October, 1647, the other of the 11th (9th) of February, 1647, by which all stage-plays and interludes are absolutely forbid, the stages, seats, galleries, etc., to be pulled down; all players, though calling themselves the King's or Queen's servants, if convicted of acting two months before such conviction, to be punished as rogues according to the law; the money received by them to go to the poor of the parish; and every spectator to pay five shillings to the use of the poor. Also cock-fighting was prohibited by one of Oliver's Acts of 31st March, 1654. But I suppose nobody pretends these things to be laws.”

From this we gather that it was only the Puritans who denounced the theatrical profession as unlawful; but as their views 1 Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. See p. 54.