if it is, all the reform that is wanted
will be best effected by the operation of public opinion upon the
administration of a good theatre. That is the true reforming agency,
with this great advantage, that reforms which come by public opinion
are sure, while those which come without public opinion cannot be
relied upon. The dramatic reformers are very well-meaning people. They
show great enthusiasm. They are new converts to the theatre, most of
them, and they have the zeal of converts. But it is scarcely according
to knowledge. These ladies and gentlemen have scarcely studied the
conditions of theatrical enterprise, which must be carried on as a
business or it will fail as an art. It is an unwelcome, if not an
unwarrantable intrusion to come among our people with elaborate
advice, and endeavor to make them live after different fashions from
those which are suitable to them, and it will be quite hopeless to
attempt to induce the general body of a purely artistic class to make
louder and more fussy professions of virtue and religion than other
people. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic profession
to exact or to expect any such thing. Equally objectionable, and
equally impracticable, are the attempts of Quixotic "dramatic
reformers" to exercise a sort of goody-goody censorship over the
selection and the text of the plays to be acted. The stage has been
serving the world for hundreds, yes, and thousands of years, during
which it has contributed in pure dramaturgy to the literature of
the world its very greatest master-pieces in nearly all languages,
meanwhile affording to the million an infinity of pleasure, all more
or less innocent. Where less innocent, rather than more, the cause has
lain, not in the stage, but in the state of society of which it was
the mirror. For though the stage is not always occupied with its own
period, the new plays produced always reflect in many particulars
the spirit of the age in which they are played. There is a story of
a traveller who put up for the night at a certain inn, on the door of
which was the inscription--"Good entertainment for man and beast." His
horse was taken to the stable and well cared for, and he sat down
to dine. When the covers were removed he remarked, on seeing his own
sorry fare, "Yes, this is very well; but where's the entertainment for
the man?" If everything were banished from the stage except that
which suits a certain taste, what dismal places our t