nce which is totally ignorant of the story
he has to tell; he must also bear in mind that it is very easy to
exaggerate the proportion of any given audience which will know his plot
in advance, even when his play has been performed a thousand times.
There are inexhaustible possibilities of ignorance in the theatrical
public. A story is told, on pretty good authority, of a late eminent
statesman who visited the Lyceum one night when Sir Henry Irving was
appearing as Hamlet. After the third act he went to the actor's
dressing-room, expressed great regret that duty called him back to
Westminster, and begged Sir Henry to tell him how the play ended, as it
had interested him greatly.[3] One of our most eminent novelists has
assured me that he never saw or read _Macbeth_ until he was present at
(I think) Mr. Forbes Robertson's revival of the play, he being then
nearer fifty than forty. These, no doubt, are "freak" instances; but in
any given audience, even at the most hackneyed classical plays, there
will be a certain percentage of children (who contribute as much as
their elders to the general temper of an audience), and also a
percentage of adult ignoramuses. And if this be so in the case of plays
which have held the stage for generations, are studied in schools, and
are every day cited as matters of common knowledge, how much more
certain may we be that even the most popular modern play will have to
appeal night after night to a considerable number of people who have no
previous acquaintance with either its story or its characters! The
playwright may absolutely count on having to make such an appeal; but he
must remember at the same time that he can by no means count on keeping
any individual effect, more especially any notable trick or device, a
secret from the generality of his audience. Mr. J.M. Barrie (to take a
recent instance) sedulously concealed, throughout the greater part of
_Little Mary_, what was meant by that ever-recurring expression, and
probably relied to some extent on an effect of amused surprise when the
disclosure was made. On the first night, the effect came off happily
enough; but on subsequent nights, there would rarely be a score of
people in the house who did not know the secret. The great majority
might know nothing else about the play, but that they knew. Similarly,
in the case of any mechanical _truc_, as the French call it, or feat of
theatrical sleight-of-hand, it is futile to trust to its takin