e
newspapers for information, but how can any judgment be formed when either
indiscriminate praise or unqualified abuse is given to almost every new
piece and to the actors who interpret it? Criticism, if it is to be worth
anything, should surely be criticism, but nowadays the writing of a
picturesque article, replete with eulogy, or the reverse, seems to be the
aim of the theatrical reviewer. Of course, the influence of the Press upon
the stage is very powerful, but it will cease to be so if playgoers find
that their mentors, the critics, are not trustworthy guides. The public
must, after all, decide the fate of a new play. If it be bad, the
Englishman of to-day will not declare it is good because the newspapers
have told him so. He will be disappointed, he will be bored, he will tell
his friends so, and the bad piece will fail to draw audiences. If, on the
other hand, the play is a good one, which has been condemned by the Press,
it will quicken the pulse and stir the heart of an audience in spite of
adverse criticism. The report that it contains the true ring will go
about, and success must follow. In a word, though the Press can do very
much to further the interests of the stage, it is powerless to kill good
work, and cannot galvanize that which is invertebrate into life."

To determine Mary Anderson's true stage place, and to make a fair and
impartial criticism of her performances is rendered further difficult by
the fact, that the English stage offers in the last generation scarcely
one with whom she can be compared, if we except perhaps Helen Faucit.
Between herself and that great artist, middle-aged play-goers seem to find
a certain resemblance; but to the present generation of playgoers Mary
Anderson is an absolutely new revelation on the London boards. Recalling
the roll of artists who have essayed similar parts for the last five and
twenty years, we can name not one who has given as she did what we may
best describe as a new stage sensation. Never was the pride of a free
maiden of ancient Greece more nobly expressed than in Parthenia: never
were the gradual steps from fear and abhorrence to love more finely
portrayed than in the stages of her rising passion for the savage
chieftain, whose captive hostage she was. Her Pauline was the old
patrician beauty of France living on the stage, a true woman in spite of
the selfish veneer of pride and caste with which the traditions of the
ancient _noblesse_ had covered h