lar effects, plus a seduction story occasionally
hurt by needlessly plain phrases.

It may be said that this is the jam used to induce us to swallow the
powder; but really there is so much jam and so little powder that the
benefit of the dose is doubtful. To be just to Sir Herbert Tree--his
_Faust_ sinned no more in the matter than did the Lyceum setting;
perhaps even a little less. Certainly there is rather more Goethe in the
matter than Wills introduced.

It may be said that Shakespeare's plays were intended for the stage, and
that he introduced "ghosts," as in _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_ and _Richard
III._; possibly he believed in them. Yet, so far as one can judge from
such knowledge as we have of the stage as he knew it and its resources,
the treatment of his ghosts must have been really quite conventional and
scenically unimpressive. There was some gain in this, for the more
directly the ghost business is effective the more the attention of the
audience is drawn to it; though the interest of the scene is not in the
ghost but the effect it produces on the other characters; the case is
one that may be summed up in the phrase quoted for us by Bacon--the
better the worse.

CHAPTER V

PLAYS OF PARTICULAR TYPES

Unsentimental Drama

It was suggested long ago that all the conceivable tunes would soon have
been written, and possibly, if for "conceivable" one substitutes the
word "obvious," there was truth in the suggestion. On the other hand
experience breeds in us the belief that composers of genius could go on
inventing novel melodies for centuries to come. Things have been
happening lately, and threaten soon to occur again, which appear to show
that our popular dramatists imagine that there are no new plots or
subjects open to them. It is said that one playwright is busily engaged
upon a novel version of _La Dame aux Camellias_ which is to be
distinguished from Dumas' novel and drama by the fact that the heroine
is chaste and does nothing worse than "a bit of flirting." It is to be
hoped that Dumas will never hear of this astounding impudent perversion
of his play. Perhaps ere now he has become hardened by the fact that the
Duse has represented Marguerite as a creature of exquisite purity.

Moreover, it is alleged that somebody is going to write another version
of _Faust_--presumably the pantomime edition by Wills is copyright. In
addition, it appears that Mr Stephen Phillips has concocted an
adaptation of _Th