ate the play, but they certainly formed
the minority last Saturday week, and will be rare during the later
performances. It was not they who laughed in the wrong places, or
laughed with the wrong laughter, or coughed, during the uneventful
scenes.

It will be said that thousands have gone and will go to this revival and
enjoy it, and, therefore, these views must be wrong. These remarks are
not in disparagement at all of this particular revival. It is, however,
certain that the pleasure of the majority of those who visit this
revival would be none the less if the work had been written by a
second-rate playwright; indeed, Mr Cecil Raleigh who, compared with
Shakespeare, may, perhaps, be called second-rate, could write them a new
_Hamlet_ on the old plot which would give them far greater pleasure than
they get at present.

Critics ought to speak with perfect sincerity about the drama; great
harm is done by people who, with excellent motives, write insincerely.
The average schoolboy is prevented from enjoying the classics by being
bored with them when he is too young to understand them. The average man
never reads the Bible for pleasure, because he has been brought up to
regard it as a kind of religious medicine; and it is unlikely that the
great half-educated will be brought to a taste for Shakespeare by a
stage performance of his works. This is no plea against the performance
of his plays, but against writing carelessly and conventionally about
them. Nobody will deny Lamb's love of the dramatist. He would say that
if Shakespeare is to be played to the masses there should be some
preliminary training of them. At least they might be broken in gently.
To present _Hamlet_ as successor to the pantomime and not long after
some of the simple melodramas acted at this theatre seems rather
irrational.

A better service is done to the public and to drama by presenting modern
English plays, written sincerely and on a reasonably high standard of
truth, than by reviving works that can only appeal to most of the
half-educated despite, and not because of, their finer qualities.
Shakespeare, indeed, might ask the gallery in the phrase of Benedick,
"For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?" The
important matter is to get rid of humbug, to try to see things truly.
Drama is worthy of serious consideration as a great branch of art and a
great force, but will never fulfil its mission if it is to lie in a
mortmain to