cedents, and has been developed since
his day. Charles Kean, between 1851 and 1859, persistently endeavoured
by prodigal and brilliant display to make the production of
Shakespeare an enterprise of profit at the Princess's Theatre, London.
The scheme proved pecuniarily disastrous.

Subsequently Kean's mantle was assumed by the late Sir Henry Irving,
the greatest of recent actors and stage-managers, who in many regards
conferred incalculable benefits on the theatre-going public and on the
theatrical profession. Throughout the last quarter of the last
century, Irving gave the spectacular and scenic system in the
production of Shakespeare every advantage that it could derive from
munificent expenditure and the co-operation of highly endowed artists.
He could justly claim a finer artistic sentiment and a higher
histrionic capacity than Charles Kean possessed. Yet Irving announced,
not long before his death, that he lost on his Shakespearean
productions a hundred thousand pounds. Sir Henry added:

The enormous cost of a Shakespearean production on the
liberal and elaborate scale which the public is now
accustomed to expect makes it almost impossible for any
manager--I don't care who it is--to pursue a continuous
policy of Shakespeare for many years with any hope of profit
in the long run.

In face of this authoritative pronouncement, it must be conceded that
the spectacular system has been given, within recent memory, every
chance of succeeding, and, as far as recorded testimony is available,
has been, from the commercial point of view, a failure.

Meanwhile, during and since the period when Sir Henry Irving filled
the supreme place among producers of Shakespeare on the stage, the
simple method of Shakespearean production has been given no serious
chance. The anticipation of its pecuniary failure has not been put in
satisfactory conditions to any practical test. The last time that it
was put to a sound practical test it did not fail. While Irving was a
boy, Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre gave, in well-considered
conditions, the simple method a trial. Phelps's playhouse was situated
in the unfashionable neighbourhood of Islington. But the prophets of
evil, who were no greater strangers to Phelps's generation than they
are to our own, were themselves confuted by his experience.

V

On the 27th of May 1844 Phelps, a most intelligent actor and a serious
student of Shakespeare, opened the