tists have to learn, they will not learn it in Paris; and
I was charmed once to hear a popular New York playwright, one who
sincerely and frankly wrote for money alone, assert boldly that the
notoriously successful French plays were bad, and clumsily bad. It was a
proof of taste. As a rule, one finds the popular playwright taking off
his hat to contemporaries who at best are no better than his equals.

A few minor cases apart, the drama is artistically negligible throughout
the world; but if there is a large hope for it in any special country,
that country is the United States. The extraordinary prevalence of big
theaters, the quickly increasing number of native dramatists, the
enormous profits of the successful ones--it is simply inconceivable in
the face of the phenomena, and of the educational process so rapidly
going on, that serious and first-class creative artists shall not arise
in America. Nothing is more likely to foster the production of
first-class artists than the existence of a vast machinery for winning
money and glory. When I reflect that there are nearly twice as many
first-class theaters in New York as in London, and that a very
successful play in New York plays to eighteen thousand dollars a week,
while in London ten thousand dollars a week is enormous, and that the
American public has a preference for its own dramatists, I have little
fear for the artistic importance of the drama of the future in America.
And from the discrepancy between my own observations and the
observations of a reliable European critic in New York only five years
ago, I should imagine that appreciable progress had already been made,
though I will not pretend that I was much impressed by the achievements
up to date, either of playwrights, actors, or audiences. A huge popular
institution, however, such as the American theatrical system, is always
interesting to the amateur of human nature.

The first thing noted by the curious stranger in American theaters is
that American theatrical architects have made a great discovery--namely,
that every member of the audience goes to the play with a desire to be
able to see and hear what passes on the stage. This happy American
discovery has not yet announced itself in Europe, where in almost every
theater seats are impudently sold, and idiotically bought, from which it
is impossible to see and hear what passes on the stage. (A remarkable
continent, Europe!) Apart from this most important poin