ard the Pinero incident closed and
in ten years his theatre will be considered as old-fashioned and as
inadept as that of Robertson or Bulwer-Lytton.

Having no Shaw in America, no man who can write brilliant prefaces and
essays about his own plays until the man in the street is obliged
perforce to regard them as literature, we find ourselves in the
condition of benighted France. Dulness is mistaken for literary
flavour; the injection of a little learning, of a little poetry
(so-called) into a theatrical hackpiece, is the signal for a good deal
of enthusiasm on the part of the journalists (there are two brilliant
exceptions). Which of our playwrights are taken seriously by the
pundits? Augustus Thomas and Percy MacKaye: Thomas the dean, and
MacKaye the poet laureate. I have no intention of wrenching the laurel
wreathes from these august brows. Let them remain. Each of these
gentlemen has a long and honourable career in the theatre behind him,
from which he should be allowed to reap what financial and honourary
rewards he may be able. But I would not add one leaf to these
wreathes, nor one crotchet to the songs of praise which vibrate around
them. I turn aside from their plays in the theatre and in the library
as I turn aside from the fictions of Pierre de Coulevain and Arnold
Bennett.

I love to fashion wreathes of my own and if two young men will now
step forward to the lecturer's bench I will take delight in crowning
them with my own hands. Will the young man at the back of the hall
please page Avery Hopwood and Philip Moeller?... No response! They
seem to have retreated modestly into the night. Nevertheless they
shall not escape me!

I speak of Mr. Hopwood first because he has been writing for our
theatre for a longer period than has Mr. Moeller, and because his
position, such as it is, is assured. Like Feydeau in France he has a
large popular following; he has probably made more money in a few
years than Mr. Thomas has made during his whole lifetime and the
managers are always after him to furnish them with more plays with
which to fill their theatres. For his plays do fill the theatres.
_Fair and Warmer_, _Nobody's Widow_, _Clothes_, and _Seven Days_,
would be included in any list of the successful pieces produced in New
York within the past ten years. Two of these pieces would be near the
very top of such a list. An utterly absurd allotment of actors is
sufficient to explain the failures of _Sadie Love_ and _O