t nothing less than a dynamite explosion can drown the
bad; even cotton wool in your ears or the wax employed by the sailors of
Ulysses will not keep it out.

Some time ago Miss Lena Ashwell added to the debt of playgoers towards
her by installing an admirable string quartet, which rendered real music
so well that many people went to her theatre almost as much for the
music as for the drama. Alas! the string quartet soon disappeared.
Inquiries--of course not of persons officially connected with the
theatre--disclosed the fact that there had been many complaints. People
found it difficult to hear themselves talk, and when they talked loud
enough playgoers who were enjoying the music said "Hush!" and in other
ways suggested that they thought it bad form to chatter whilst the
quartet was playing; so Miss Ashwell--very reluctantly--was forced to
change the system.

The Kingsway Theatre formed an exception--not, indeed, the only
exception--to these remarks. The whole question is very difficult.
Theoretically, at least, it is deplorable that there should be any
interruption from the beginning to the end of a play. Dramas, for full
effect, should be in one act, or if they are too long, and if a
concession must be made to human physical weakness, if an opportunity
must be given to people to stretch themselves or move in their seats,
there should be an interval of absolute silence or occupied by music
finely indicative of the emotional states intended to be created by the
drama.

This no doubt is a theory demanding perfection. Up to a certain point
efforts are made to realize it. Under the generous management of Sir
Herbert Beerbohm Tree, we often have music composed expressly for the
drama by musicians of quality, and sometimes it is well enough written
to deserve and afterwards obtain performance in the concert-room. Yet in
a sense it is a failure, since it is imperfectly heard in the theatre;
the fault lies with the audience, but it is hard to blame the members of
it. There is no crime in not being musical, despite Shakespeare's
prodigious phrase, "The man that hath no music in himself ... is fit for
treasons, stratagems, and spoils," or Congreve's phrase concerning music
and the savage breast. We know that there are many people otherwise
finely equipped and alert in matters of art who have no taste in or for
music; that there are some of irreproachable judgment in literature or
painting who, like the officer in the story,