your admirable criticisms and sharing sincerely your views about the
drama, now, alas! in such a deplorable condition, I feel that there is
sufficient sympathy between us for you to be anxious to read the MS.
that I enclose and give me your _candid_ opinion about it ["candid" is
generally underlined], and if you share the opinion that my friends
entertain concerning its merits you will perhaps be of assistance to me
in getting it brought to the attention of the managers." With this there
arrives, unaccompanied by stamps for its return, some work of a hopeless
character, often an indifferent specimen of the sort of mechanical farce
which, even when good, amuses us little.

Occasionally a romantic drama is received. Once there came a really
touching letter from a lady in great trouble on account of want of
money, such trouble that she not only failed to enclose stamps for
return of her MS. but did not use half enough to frank the heavy packet.
She felt sure that the novelty of her plot would make up for any
trifling defects due to inexperience. The drama, which was full of
"Gadzooks!" and the like, and Roundheads and Cavaliers, concerned Oliver
Cromwell and Charles I., and included a plot to rescue the unhappy
monarch on the scaffold, which was only frustrated by the direct
intervention of "Old Noll," who, after a struggle, used the axe with his
own hands. It had seven acts and thirty-three scenes.

We read scores of these pieces, and in most cases our "candid" criticism
is not well received. Ere now the reward for the unpaid labour of five
or six hours has been a postcard explaining that the author can well
understand the deplorable condition of our drama, seeing how incompetent
the critics are. There is, of course, another side to the matter. A few
pieces--a very small proportion, alas!--have merit, and a few of the
authors of the few pieces accept the unpaid critic's remarks reasonably.

Another crop consists of letters from indignant authors or players,
which contain argument or abuse, or both. The epistles from authors in
some cases are so interesting that it is sad to think we are too obscure
to have a biographer who might use them. Those of the players have their
humours, particularly when from the aggrieved actresses. One deserves to
be mentioned; it stated that, reading between the lines, the lady
understood the critic to suggest she was too old for the part of Juliet,
and therefore sent a copy of her birth cert