found often to include the maintenance of or subsidies to
municipal theatres, bands, and orchestras, as well as grants to
dramatic and musical societies of a miscellaneous order. In this
provision the theatre takes an altogether dominant position, and the
fact is significant as reflecting the great importance which in
Germany is attributed to the drama as an educational and elevating
influence in the life of the community. It may be that the practice of
subsidizing the theatre is not altogether independent of the fact that
the repertory theatre is universal in Germany, except in the smallest
of provincial towns, with the result that a far more intimate tie
exists between the drama and the community than is possible in the
case of travelling companies."

"If the question be asked, Is the higher drama encouraged by the
municipal theatre? the answer must be an emphatic affirmative of the
high standard of education in Germany. Speaking generally, no theatres
in Germany maintain the drama at a higher level than the municipal
theatres in the large towns. The lower forms of the drama will find no
home here, for public taste looks for the best that the stage can
offer, and as the demand is, so is the supply. Many a provincial
theatre of this kind presents more Shakespearean plays in a week than
the average English theatre outside London presents in a couple of
years. A glance at the repertory of any of the municipal theatres
which have been named is enough to convince one that an elevated aim
is steadily kept in view. For example, in a recent year the two
Mannheim municipal theatres presented 161 separate works, including 93
dramas, 62 operas and operettas, and 6 ballets, and of these works 442
repetitions were given in the aggregate, making for the year 604
performances, a number of which were at popular prices. The dramas
given included fifteen by Schiller, ten by Shakespeare, three by
Goethe, three by Lessing, five by Moliere, four by Hans Sachs, four by
Sheridan, eleven by Grillparzer, two each by Kleist and Hebbel, and
several by Ibsen, while the operas included three by Beethoven, three
by Cherubini, six by Mozart, three by Weber, and several by Wagner.
Could an English provincial theatre--could all English provincial
theatres together--show a record equal to this? That plays of this
kind are given is proof that the German public looks to the municipal
theatre for the cultivation of the highest possible standard of
dram