, who understands better than anybody else how to plunge
the rapier into the vulnerable spot and twist it in the wound, making
the victim writhe, have been having some fun with the art of acting
lately, or to be exact, with the art of actors. Now actor-baiting is
no new game; as a winter sport it is as popular as making jokes about
mothers-in-law, decrying the art of Bouguereau or Howard Chandler
Christy, or discussing the methods of Mr. Belasco. Ever so long ago
(and George Henry Lewes preceded him) George Moore wrote an article
called "Mummer Worship," holding the players up to ridicule, but
George really adores the theatre and even acting, goes to the
playhouse constantly, and writes a bad play himself every few years.
None of these has achieved success on the stage. The list includes
_Martin Luther_, written with a collaborator, _The Strike at
Arlingford_, _The Bending of the Bough_ (Moore's version of a play by
Edwin Martyn), a dramatization of "Esther Waters," _Elizabeth Cooper_,
and the fragment, _The Apostle_, on which "The Brook Kerith," was
based. Now he is at work turning the novel back into another play....
When the Sunday editor of a newspaper is at his wit's end he
invariably sends a competent reporter to collect data for a symposium
on one of two topics, Is the author or the player more important? or
Does the stage director make the actor? The amount of amusement this
reporter can derive in gathering indignant replies from mountebanks
and scribblers is only limited by his own sense of humour. Even the
late Sir Henry Irving felt compelled on more than one occasion to
defend his "noble calling."

The actor, when he slaps back, usually overlooks the point at issue,
but sometimes he has something to say over which we may well ponder.
Witness, for example, the following passage, quoted from that justly
celebrated compendium of personal opinions and broad-shaft wit called
"Nat Goodwin's Book": "The average author and manager of today are
prone to advertise themselves as conspicuously as the play (as if the
public cared a snap who wrote the play or who 'presents'). I doubt if
five per cent of the public know who wrote 'The Second Mrs.
Tanqueray,' 'In Mizzoura,' or 'Richelieu,' but they know their stage
favourites. I wonder how many mantels are adorned with pictures of the
successful dramatist and those who 'present' and how many there are on
which appear Maude Adams, Dave Warfield, Billie Burke, John Drew,
Bern