understand the conditions under which the dramatic artist works. He is the author of a very special kind of work; and it is special just because the dramatist has to remember the environment, the conditions, the circumstances which surround and limit his artistic industry. There are at least four limiting conditions. Firstly, there is the structure of the theatre. Next, there is the fact that the dramatist has to work through living personages, namely, actors and actresses. Then, thirdly, there is the audience, and the public taste. And, lastly, there are the technical possibilities of the art.

The dramatic author is limited, we say, by his theatre. Take the theatre in Greek times-a huge semicircle, exposed to the air, an enormous distance between the speaker on the stage and his audience, a raised platform for the principal characters, below which, in a semicircle, is grouped the Chorus. Now it is clear that under conditions of this kind we must help the actor, to begin with. If he is doing a big, tragic part, he must be made to look conspicuous and fine. He must have on the tragic cothurnus. He must have some means of getting his voice to the furthest confines of the theatre. The mask which he wears must have some arrangement for facilitating speech. It follows, also, that in a great auditorium like this, with all its advantages, there is at least this drawback, that only the large, broad, simple gestures, and only the large, broad, simple emotions, can possibly reach the main body of spectators. You can have no particular refinement of acting. Everything must be wide and simple, majestic, even colossal. And yet it is wonderful how much of subtle psychology the Greek dramatists managed to get into their characters, however little some of these subtleties may have appealed to their immediate audiences.

For the most part, however, you observe that the conditions of the theatre in Greek times had a very powerful influence on the nature of the drama and of the acting. Very likely, if the audience had not known the stories which the Greek tragedians illustrated, so that there was no necessity for scènes à faire, they might have been at a positive disadvantage. But they did know them. They were part of the myths of Greece: so that when Edipus, or Agamemnon, or Antigone, or

Heracles was represented on the stage, at all events the large body of the spectators were quite aware of the general outlines of the story which was to be presented for their hearing. How different are the conditions if we consider Molière's time! Molière and his troupe acted in a tennis-court. Or take the Elizabethan stage. Here you have an inner and an outer stage; and the outer stage, with its 'apron,' comes right into the audience. It is a platform stage, on which some of the exquisites of the time were allowed to sit and show their cleverness in manipulating their pipe-smoke, and sometimes to interfere with the action. If you have a platform stage, you will have to come down and deliver orations before the people; and, truly enough, we find in the Elizabethan drama great speeches, oratorical exercises, such as the conditions inevitably demand. Think, again, how different is our picture stage. It is separated from the audience, both by its structure and by its rows of footlights. It is kept apart, and we look upon it as a picture. There is not the same room for declamation. That belongs to the platform stage. We cannot bear such long speeches; and, as Ibsen and others have taught us, we can do perfectly well, under the modern conditions of a theatre, without soliloquies, which were found so necessary by an earlier generation. Or take one curious difference, due to the conditions of the stage, and apparently to nothing else. In an Elizabethan drama we have a turning-point, and then the play ends quietly, with some general reflections. Why? Because in the absence of a curtain, Shakespeare and his fellow-workers had to get their actors off the stage. But in the modern theatre the curtain drops on a situation. There is no necessity to get the actors off the stage. The curtain coming down shuts the picture off; and therefore we end, as it were, with the climax. Many other reflections might be made on the effects which the structure of a theatre has on the kind of drama produced within it. But enough has been said to show that the theatre itself is one of the limiting conditions which the dramatic author has to recognise and accept.

The second of the limiting conditions under which dramatic work takes place is the influence of the actors, the interpreters. An author is necessarily limited by his

actors. I am quite aware that this is a point in which some of the younger dramatic artists and critics are inclined to be a little supercilious. They scorn the idea that in writing a play an author has certain actors and actresses in view. And, indeed, no one would wish to limit the exercise of the dramatic art by too rigorous a regard for those whose lot it may be to interpret it. But it stands to reason that there must be a sort of collaboration between the dramatic author and the artist, because the author has to work, not as the novelist has to work, by means of pen, ink and paper, but by living · agencies, whose various qualities and defects make a good deal of difference in the total effectiveness.

In the history of the drama there have been notable examples of the way in which the actor has done more towards the success of a play than the author. There is a classical instance in the case of the piece which we know as 'Robert Macaire.' The piece, as originally written, in the form of 'L'Auberge des Adrets,' was composed by its authors, of whom Benjamin Antier is the best known, as a sombre melodrama, full of tears and extravagance. The celebrated actor, Frederick Lemaître, took it in hand, and transformed it into a colossal piece of buffoonery. Bored, we may suppose, by the task of having to play an insipid rôle of wickedness, and of going through the experience of being hissed every night, Lemaître interpreted the character of the hero as a facetious, cynical, paradoxical ruffian, ridiculing every touch of pathos, and carrying through his wonderful crimes as much by his sense of humour as by his own criminal skill. We may therefore say that Lemaître was the veritable author of 'Robert Macaire'; and it is a piece which has enjoyed a very long period of popularity and fame, because Robert Macaire' belongs to a famous type of light-hearted, jovial, humorous ruffian. The 'Mercadet' of Balzac is one of his brothers, and so also is the immortal Falstaff. Take another example of the same kind of thing nearer our own times. The play of 'Becket,' as produced by Henry Irving, was a very different thing from the play as it left the hands of Alfred Tennyson. Indeed, it is reported that Irving went with some trepidation to the author, to suggest some of the changes which his own theatrical instincts told him were

necessary. But, fortunately, he found the great poet in a genial mood, modestly aware of the limitations of the art he was trying to practise, and therefore ready to listen to the suggestions of an actor of great experience and resource. Or take one more instance. There is no question that Edmond Rostand, when he wrote 'Cyrano de Bergerac' had Coquelin in mind; and there is equally little doubt that the character of Cyrano is so identified in our minds with the personality of Coquelin that we can hardly conceive the possibility of its being played in any other fashion.

The third point which the dramatic author has to keep in mind is the relation in which his play stands to his audience and the public taste. Here we touch on the essential difference between the work which a man does in his study and the public effect of that work; or, to put the same thing in another fashion, the difference between the work of a novelist and the work of a dramatist. The novelist appeals to a succession of single readers. The dramatist appeals to a crowd, all watching at the same time, and all, unconsciously perhaps, having their own opinions qualified by those of their neighbours. The psychology of a crowd is a subject (started, if I remember rightly, by M. Gustave Le Bon) which has lately interested a great many writers. We have not worked out the psychology of a crowd, for, indeed, it is rather a mysterious thing. In the first place, of course, we must remember that it is a crowd, and not a mob. That is to say, it is a mass of people who have assembled for a particular purpose, in order to watch a particular thing. It is not a heterogeneous collection of unrelated atoms. Those who do not know much about the matter may sometimes feel surprise that experienced managers of theatres and equally experienced writers of plays are capable of making such mistakes, and are, indeed, for the most part unable to prophesy as to the success or want of success of their most diligent efforts. Well, the answer is a very simple one. You have to hit the common point between three or four different levels of opinion and feeling. You have to find something which will equally please the welldressed crowd in the stalls and dress circle, the wiseacres of the pit, the noisy emotionalists of the gallery; and it is not easy to bring these different elements under a common

denominator. Fortunately drama is the most democratic of the arts; and the people assembled in a theatre, even though they may belong to very different strata of society, are more or less animated by a sort of communal feeling, which could hardly have been expected a priori.

Exactly what the ingredients in this communal feeling are is very difficult to say. An audience, as a rule, is strong in emotion and weak in thought. Therefore, speaking generally, a story, a plot, will naturally appeal to it more than careful analytic psychology. The excellence of a character may be in certain instances caviare to the general. Fortunately the character has to be shown in action, which makes it easier for the majority to understand. But we thus discover one argument to reinforce the old Aristotelian doctrine, that in a play the main element is the story, the μôlos-character only coming in the second place. The point may be pushed too far, obviously. Audiences can be educated by a particular school of acting, or a particular management, to appreciate other and finer excellences. Another element is that the theatrical crowd comes into the theatre possessed of certain conventions, expecting a particular kind of treatment, looking for well-known clichés. Thus, for instance, a theatrical crowd is nearly always on the side of the angels,' because men and women in public only wish to show the most honourable sentiments. They dare not applaud a villain, because, if they did, they might be supposed to have some secret sympathy with villainy. Nor must you confuse an audience. You must not make it suppose that the wrong man is the sympathetic character. There must be no mistake between the villain and the hero. The public has its conventions about certain historic personages. It would never, for instance, accept a Richard III who was not deformed and was a good king. And unfortunately it has its own pet solutions for moral questions. That is why the unconventional drama has such a hard struggle. Nothing is, I am afraid, less artistic than a crowd. It could with the utmost difficulty appreciate an art which existed solely for artistic reasons. At the bottom of its heart the theatrical crowd wants some kind of moral; and apparently, too, it wants the kind of moral to which it has been habituated. So that, when a