n drama on the stage. An actor hardly realises
the real force of the doctrine until he has had experience of the
potentialities of a series of the smaller characters by making
practical endeavours to interpret them. Adequate opportunities of the
kind are only accessible to members of a permanent company, whose
energies are absorbed in the production of the Shakespearean drama
constantly and in its variety, and whose programme is untrammelled by
the poisonous system of "long runs." Shakespearean actors should drink
deep of the Pierian spring. They should be graduates in Shakespeare's
university; and, unlike graduates of other universities, they should
master not merely formal knowledge, but a flexible power of using it.

Mr Benson's company is, I believe, the only one at present in
existence in England which confines almost all its efforts to the
acting of Shakespeare. In the course of its twenty-four years'
existence its members have interpreted in the theatre no less than
thirty of Shakespeare's plays.[21] The natural result is that Mr
Benson and his colleagues have learned in practice the varied calls
that Shakespearean drama makes upon actors' capacities.

[Footnote 21: Mr Benson, writing to me on 13th January 1906, gives the
following list of plays by Shakespeare which he has produced:--_Antony
and Cleopatra_, _As You Like It_, _The Comedy of Errors_,
_Coriolanus_, _Hamlet_, _Henry IV. (Parts 1 and 2)_, _Henry V._,
_Henry VI. (Parts 1, 2, and 3)_, _Henry VIII._, _Julius Caesar_, _King
John_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_, _The Merchant of Venice_, _The Merry
Wives of Windsor_, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Much Ado About
Nothing_, _Othello_, _Pericles_, _Richard II._, _Richard III._, _Romeo
and Juliet_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, _The Tempest_, _Timon of
Athens_, _Twelfth Night_, and _A Winter's Tale_. Phelps's record only
exceeded Mr Benson's by one. He produced thirty-one of Shakespeare's
plays in all, but he omitted _Richard II._, and the three parts of
_Henry VI._, which Mr Benson has acted, while he included _Love's
Labour's Lost_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _All's Well that Ends
Well_, _Cymbeline_, and _Measure for Measure_, which Mr Benson, so
far, has eschewed. Mr Phelps and Mr Benson are at one in avoiding
_Titus Andronicus_ and _Troilus and Cressida_.]

Members of Mr Benson's company have made excellent use of their
opportunities. An actor, like the late Frank Rodney, who could on one
night competently por