utral ground, such as Ibsen plays, we have held our own
very well against any performances in London by Continental players;
Miss Janet Achurch was a more characteristic Nora than Duse or Rejane;
nor have we seen a Mrs Linden, Hedda Gabler or Hilda Wangle comparable
with that of Miss Elizabeth Robins. There is no need to multiply
instances.

English players do not represent certain foreign characters as well as
do the foreigners. Is this surprising? They are handicapped, obviously.
How often have we seen a French, German or Italian performance of an
English play concerning English people? Was the great Eleonora as
painfully truthful as Mrs Patrick Campbell in _The Second Mrs
Tanqueray_? No one can deny that her companions were almost ludicrous to
us. Can one imagine any foreign company able to present _His House in
Order_ without entirely destroying the stage illusion and losing the
colour? There was a very fine performance at the St James's, with
intense soberness of manner in important matters as a keynote.

It is largely a question of geography; the Englishman expresses rapture
by the phrase "not half-bad" where the foreigner piles superlative on
superlative of gush. It is our quality and our defect that we have a
strange shyness, which prevents the exhibition of emotion for fear of
ridicule. On our stage, as in our real life, the beloved son comes home
from a long voyage, and, meeting his father, shakes hands a little
warmly and says, "Hallo, governor!" or something poetic like that;
whilst abroad the two men kiss one another and utter highly emotional
phrases of rapture. Everyone knows that the feelings are equally deep in
the two cases, but our cross-Channel critics doubt the depth of the
English feeling, whilst our native players cannot do the kissing and
hugging with an air of sincerity.

Now, when taking these facts into account we should be very careful in
appraising the efforts of our own players. Not only ought we to avoid
comparing select teams of foreign players with our own scratch
companies, but also it is our duty to consider whether the strangers are
appearing in plays better or worse than the average of our own, and we
must take into account the fact that they are gaining from the advantage
of novelty. Lastly, there remains the question how far they would appear
to be better than ours if appearing on neutral ground.

It would be idle to assert that the average level of our acting is as
good as it