htened by the feelings of the crowd. These moments are generally
caused by pieces of acting or by what is rarely contrived, and can only
happen once in the history of a piece, a successful, effective surprise.
As an instance, there was a unanimous gasp of surprise and pleasure at
the brilliant _coup de theatre_ with which John Oliver Hobbes ended a
difficult scene in _The Ambassador_, and then came a prodigious outburst
of applause. What a loss to our stage the premature death of that
admirable novelist, who showed an amazing gift for the technique of the
theatre.

One reads not unfrequently accounts of an exhibition of this "collective
psychology" in the playhouse, even in the London theatres. Some of such
accounts are untrustworthy, and due to mere hysterical writing by those
who profess to record them. No doubt the curious shyness of the English
plays its part: a man will laugh, or clap his hands, or hiss, or "boo"
when others are so doing, who from mere _mauvaise honte_--a convenient
untranslatable term--would make no noise if alone. Perhaps one might
safely say that the smaller the crowd the smaller relatively as well as
absolutely the noise due to the exhibition of the emotion of its
component parts. This, however, has little to do with the phenomenon in
question, which very rarely operates in London, because the upper
classes think it ungenteel to express emotion in public.

People read stories of scenes of "tremendous enthusiasm" on a first
night, of Miss or Mrs A or Mr B receiving a dozen calls: as a rule they
are absurdly exaggerated--they mean that the bulk of the pit and gallery
have applauded heartily and persistently, and so, too, a small
proportion of people in the upper boxes, dress circle, and stalls, the
ratio steadily decreasing; that the employees of "the front of the
house" energetically did their duty; in many cases that the unrecognized
claque has earned its fee; that the curtain has been raised and lowered
with frantic energy, and that a large number of people, after some
preliminary clapping, regarded the scene with curiosity and amusement,
their pulses beating at quite a normal pace.

Things may be different in other lands. Perhaps our ancestors were less
"genteel," certainly there were fewer "non-conductors" in the houses;
but still it is doubtful whether belief should be given to some of the
old stories about tremendous exhibitions of emotion in the playhouse.
One has to discount many of th