nd what a joy! I
know no answer to that save the aggressive, objectionable fact. Simply
look at the stage of to-day and observe that these two branches of the
matter never do happen to go together. There is evidently a corrosive
principle in the large command of machinery and decorations--a germ
of perversion and corruption. It gets the upperhand--it becomes the
master. It is so much less easy to get good actors than good scenery
and to represent a situation by the delicacy of personal art than by
"building it in" and having everything real. Surely there is no reality
worth a farthing, on the stage, but what the actor gives, and only when
he has learned his business up to the hilt need he concern himself with
his material accessories. He hasn't a decent respect for his art unless
he be ready to render his part as if the whole illusion depended on that
alone and the accessories didn't exist. The acting is everything or it's
nothing. It ceases to be everything as soon as something else becomes
very important. This is the case, to-day, on the London stage: something
else is very important. The public have been taught to consider it so:
the clever machinery has ended by operating as a bribe and a blind.
Their sense of the rest of the matter has gone to the dogs, as you may
perceive when you hear a couple of occupants of the stalls talking, in a
tone that excites your curiosity, about a performance that's "splendid."

Amicia. Do you ever hear the occupants of the stalls talking? Never,
in the _entr'actes_, have I detected, on their lips, a criticism or a
comment.

Dorriforth. Oh, they say "splendid"--distinctly! But a question or
two reveals that their reference is vague: they don't themselves know
whether they mean the art of the actor or that of the stage-carpenter.

Auberon. Isn't that confusion a high result of taste? Isn't it what's
called a feeling for the _ensemble?_ The artistic effect, as a whole, is
so welded together that you can't pick out the parts.

Dorriforth. Precisely; that's what it is in the best cases, and some
examples are wonderfully clever.

Florentia. Then what fault do you find? Dorriforth. Simply this--that
the whole is a pictorial whole, not a dramatic one. There is something
indeed that you can't pick out, for the very good reason that--in any
serious sense of the word--it isn't there.

Florentia. The public has taste, then, if it recognizes and delights in
a fine picture.

Dorriforth. I n