ought to be. Many theatres suffer severely from the lack of
satisfactory stage-management; some from the determination of an
actor-manager to be the central figure of every scene. Bitter complaints
are uttered by young players about not receiving sufficient suggestions
at rehearsal and finding that the stage-manager has so little authority
that not only the leading players act as they chose, but even the
smaller stars refuse successfully to obey him.

There is another point in Mr Bourchier's letter. He suggests that Mr Max
Beerbohm is not competent to criticize actors because he is not a master
of any branch of the difficult art of acting. This is a very foolish old
fallacy. People who do work essentially ephemeral, such as acting, do it
for those who are to witness it; and their merit is in direct proportion
to their impression upon the audience, and they can have no effect upon
anybody else. Actors, with trifling exceptions, do not form part of the
audience. Critics do, and the actor seeks to affect the audience and the
critics, and not the brother "pro." occasionally found in the
auditorium.

The merit of his work lies entirely in affecting an audience _in the
way intended by the author_. The technical devices adopted have nothing
to do with the question. No doubt there is much technical knowledge
involved in acting, but it must be remembered that it is all a means to
an end. The cult of technique for itself is perilous to an art.

After all, the matter may be reduced to an absurdity. Would Mr Bourchier
refuse to say that a man is well dressed, or a dinner ill cooked because
he is (presumably) ignorant of the mysteries of the arts of tailoring
and cooking? Moreover, some of us, perhaps even Mr Beerbohm, know a good
deal about the technique of acting, even if we could not "make-up" Mr
Bourchier to look like a costermonger. The actor must be very vain in
his conceit who has not had valuable hints concerning his acting from
the critics, unless he be one of those who, unlike Mr Bourchier, never
read notices--yet often complain of an unfavourable one. The article
called "Signor Borza on the English Theatre," which appears on page 252,
should be considered in relation to these remarks.

The Sicilian Players

During many years our stage has seen nothing like the success of the
Sicilians. They presented themselves at the Shaftesbury Theatre with
little in the shape of preliminary paragraphs to "boom" them. Most of
the