representations.

Readings of this character, it is curious to reflect for a moment,
resemble somewhat in the simplicity of their surroundings the habitual
stage arrangements of the days of Shakspere. The arena, in each
instance, might be described accurately enough as a platform, draped
with screens and hangings of cloth or of green baize. The principal
difference, in point of fact, between the two would be apparent in this,
that whereas, in the one case any reasonable number of performers might
be grouped together simultaneously, in the other there would remain
from first to last before the audience but one solitary performer.
He, however, as a mere matter of course, by the very necessity of his
position, would have to be regarded throughout as though he were a noun
of multitude signifying many. Slashed doublets and trunk hose, might
just possibly be deemed by some more picturesque, if not in outline, at
least in colour and material, than the evening costume of now-a-days.
But, apart from this, whatever would meet the gaze of the spectator
in either instance would bear the like aspect of familiarity or of
incongruity, in contrast to or in association with, the characters
represented at the moment before actual contemporaries. These later
performances partake, of course, in some sense of the nature of a
monologue. Besides which, they involve the display of a desk and a book
instead of the almost ludicrous exhibition of a board inscribed, as
the case might be, "Syracuse" or "Verona." Apart from this, however,
a modern reading is, in the very nature of it, like a reverting to
the primitive simplicity of the stage, when the stage, in its social
influences, was at its highest and noblest, when, for the matter of
that, it was all but paramount. Given genius in the author and in the
impersonator, and that very simplicity has its enormous advantages.

The greatest of all the law-givers of art in this later civilisation
has more than merely hinted at what is here maintained. Goethe has said
emphatically, in Wilhelm Meister, that a really good actor makes us
soon enough forget the awkwardness, even the meanness, of trumpery
decorations; whereas, he continues, a magnificent theatre is precisely
the very thing that makes us feel the most keenly the want of actors of
real excellence. How wisely in this Goethe, according to his wont, has
spoken, we all of us, here in England, know by our own experience. Of
the truth of his opini