oric acid upon marble, or of the working of a table of
logarithms. These last are less involved in the living of a normal human
being.

Here are signs of the time, which mark a revolution in thought. In the
light of such facts, it is curious to reflect upon the neglect of the
theater hitherto for centuries as an institution and the refusal to
think of the play as worthy until it was offered upon the printed page.
The very fact that it was exhibited on the stage seemed to stamp it as
below serious consideration. And that, too, when the very word _play_
implies that it is something to be played. The taking over of the
theaters by uneducated persons to whom such a place was, like a
department store, simply an emporium of desired commodities, together
with the Puritanic feeling that the playhouse, as such, was an evil
thing frowned upon by God and injurious to man, combined to set this
form of entertainment in ill repute. Bernard Shaw, in that brilliant
little play, _The Dark Lady of the Sonnets_, sets certain shrewd words
in the mouths of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth pertinent to this
thought:

SHAKESPEARE: "Of late, as you know, the Church taught the people by
means of plays; but the people flocked only to such as were full of
superstitious miracles and bloody martyrdoms; and so the Church, which
also was just then brought into straits by the policy of your royal
father, did abandon and discountenance playing; and thus it fell into
the hands of poor players and greedy merchants that had their pockets to
look to and not the greatness of your kingdom."

ELIZABETH: "Master Shakespeare, you speak sooth; I cannot in anywise
amend it. I dare not offend my unruly Puritans by making so lewd a
place as the playhouse a public charge; and there be a thousand things
to be done in this London of mine before your poetry can have its penny
from the general purse. I tell thee, Master Will, it will be three
hundred years before my subjects learn that man cannot live by bread
alone, but by every word that cometh from the mouth of those whom God
inspires."

The height of the incongruous absurdity was illustrated in the former
teaching of Shakespeare. Here was a writer incessantly hailed as the
master poet of the race; he bulked large in school and college,
perforce. Yet the teacher was confronted by the embarrassing fact that
Shakespeare was also an actor: a profession given over to the sons of
Belial; and a playwright who actually