ittle theatre a luxurious place of resort, and faithfully
imitating in their productions the accent, costume and furniture of
upper and upper-middle class life, the Bancrofts had initiated a
reconciliation between society and the stage. Throughout the middle
decades of the century it was the constant complaint of the managers
that the world of wealth and fashion could not be tempted to the
theatre. The Bancroft management changed all that. It was at the Prince
of Wales's that half-guinea stalls were first introduced; and these
stalls were always filled. As other theatres adopted the same policy of
upholstery, both on and off the stage, fashion extended its complaisance
to them as well. In yet another way the reconciliation was promoted--by
the ever-increasing tendency of young men and women of good birth and
education to seek a career upon the English stage. The theatre, in
short, became at this period one of the favourite amusements of
fashionable (though scarcely of intellectual) society in London. It is
often contended that the influence of the sensual and cynical stall
audience is a pernicious one. In some ways, no doubt, it is detrimental;
but there is another side to the case. Even the cynicism of society
marks an intellectual advance upon the sheer rusticity which prevailed
during the middle years of the 19th century and accepted without a
murmur plays (original and adapted) which bore no sort of relation to
life. In a celebrated essay published in 1879, Matthew Arnold (whose
occasional dramatic criticisms were very influential in intellectual
circles) dwelt on the sufficiently obvious fact that the result of
giving English names and costumes to French characters was to make their
sayings and doings utterly unreal and "fantastic." During the years of
French ascendancy, audiences had quite forgotten that it was possible
for the stage to be other than "fantastic" in this sense. They no
longer thought of comparing the mimic world with the real world, but
were content with what may be called abstract humour and pathos, often
of the crudest quality. The cultivation of external realism, coinciding
with, and in part occasioning, the return of society to the playhouse,
gradually led to a demand for some approach to plausibility in character
and action as well as in costume and decoration. The stage ceased to be
entirely "fantastic," and began to essay, however imperfectly, the
representation, the criticism of life. It cann