our clowns speak no more than is set down for them." The
applause which welcomed Shakespeare's masterpieces on their first
representation is adequate evidence that the leading Elizabethan
actors in the main obeyed these instructions.

VIII

Nevertheless the final success of a great imaginative play on the
stage does not depend entirely on the competence of the actor.
Encircling and determining all conditions is the fitness of the
audience. A great imaginative play well acted will not achieve genuine
success unless the audience has at command sufficient imaginative
power to induce in them an active sympathy with the efforts, not only
of the actor, but of the dramatist.

It is not merely in the first chorus to _Henry V._ that Shakespeare
has declared his conviction that the creation of the needful dramatic
illusion is finally due to exercise of the imagination on the part of
the audience.[8] Theseus, in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, in the
capacity of a spectator of a play which is rendered by indifferent
actors, makes a somewhat depreciatory reflection on the character of
acting, whatever its degree or capacity. But the value of Theseus's
deliverance lies in its clear definition of the part which the
audience has to play, if it do its duty by great drama.

[Footnote 8: See pp. 20-1, _supra_.]

"The best in this kind," says Theseus of actors, "are but shadows, and
the worst are no worse, _if imagination amend them_." To which
Hippolyta, less tolerant than Theseus of the incapacity of the players
to whom she is listening, tartly retorts: "It must be your imagination
(_i.e._, the spectator's), then, and not theirs (_i.e._, the
actors')."

These sentences mean that at its very best acting is but a shadow or
simulation of life, and that acting at its very worst is likewise a
shadow or simulation. But the imagination of the audience is supreme
controller of the theatre, and can, if it be of adequate intensity,
even cause inferior acting to yield effects hardly distinguishable
from those of the best.

It would be unwise to press Theseus's words to extreme limits. All
that it behoves us to deduce from them is the unimpeachable principle
that the success of the romantic drama on the stage depends not merely
on the actor's gift of imagination, but to an even larger extent on
the possession by the audience of a similar faculty. Good acting is
needful. Scenery in moderation will aid the dramatic illusion,
although excess