haps the matter of languages is not of very great importance, seeing
that most of the critic's work concerns English Drama, or drama in what
is supposed to be English, which, too often, is quite a different thing.
What, then, are the necessary qualifications of the critic who takes his
work and himself seriously?

He should have some knowledge of music--enough, at least, to know
whether incidental or "melodrama" music is congruous with the time,
place and occasion of the play, and to be able to identify well-known
works. At a time when money is spent very lavishly upon scenery and
costumes, he ought to possess some theories, or at least ideas,
concerning pictorial art, the history of modern painting and the like,
and be capable of guessing what a daring experimentalist like Mr Gordon
Craig is aiming at and what relation his scene-pictures bear to the
current cant of the art critic. It is deplorable when one finds serious
critics gushing about the beauty of costly stage effects belonging to
the standard of taste exhibited by wedding-cakes, Christmas crackers,
old-fashioned valentines and Royal Academicians. Dancing must mean
something more to him than a whirling and twirling of human beings--he
should at the least know the distinctive styles and figures of different
countries, and not confuse an _entrechat_ with a _pirouette_, should be
aware of the meaning of the terms _arabesque_ and _rond de jambe_, and
understand to some extent the conventional language and history of grand
ballet. No one will deny that his study of history must be substantial
and, to put the matter compendiously, he must have a good general
education, which, however, will not carry him very far, since he must
own a special knowledge of the history of drama and of literature and
modern literary movements.

Then comes the question of theories of criticism--can he do with less
than, say, an acquaintance with Aristotle, and Lessing's "Laocoon," or
even with so little? With Shakespeare and some of his commentators he
ought to be at home; the "Paradoxe sur le Comedien" he can hardly
escape, and the works of some of the modern English and latest French
critics may not be overlooked. Of course he must have read and
considered a large number of plays, and the theories on which they are
based. Politics he may almost neglect unless there be successors to
_John Bull's Other Island_, though he will have to keep abreast of the
facts and fancies of modern life, i