sonation of character. We enjoy it in private.
I confess that I am always pleased with the Parson in the character of
grumbler. He would be an immense success on the stage. I don't know but
the theatre will have to go back into the hands of the priests, who once
controlled it.

THE PARSON. Scoffer!

MANDEVILLE. I can imagine how enjoyable the stage might be, cleared of
all its traditionary nonsense, stilted language, stilted behavior, all
the rubbish of false sentiment, false dress, and the manners of
times that were both artificial and immoral, and filled with living
characters, who speak the thought of to-day, with the wit and culture
that are current to-day. I've seen private theatricals, where all the
performers were persons of cultivation, that....

OUR NEXT DOOR. So have I. For something particularly cheerful, commend
me to amateur theatricals. I have passed some melancholy hours at them.

MANDEVILLE. That's because the performers acted the worn stage plays,
and attempted to do them in the manner they had seen on the stage. It is
not always so.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I suppose Mandeville would say that acting has got into
a mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposed to
be natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in a
recognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulse from
within, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but of turning out
a piece of literary work. That's the reason we have so much poetry
that impresses one like sets of faultless cabinet-furniture made by
machinery.

THE PARSON. But you need n't talk of nature or naturalness in acting or
in anything. I tell you nature is poor stuff. It can't go alone. Amateur
acting--they get it up at church sociables nowadays--is apt to be as
near nature as a school-boy's declamation. Acting is the Devil's art.

THE MISTRESS. Do you object to such innocent amusement?

MANDEVILLE. What the Parson objects to is, that he isn't amused.

THE PARSON. What's the use of objecting? It's the fashion of the day to
amuse people into the kingdom of heaven.

HERBERT. The Parson has got us off the track. My notion about the stage
is, that it keeps along pretty evenly with the rest of the world; the
stage is usually quite up to the level of the audience. Assumed dress
on the stage, since you were speaking of that, makes people no more
constrained and self-conscious than it does off the stage.

THE MISTRESS. What sarca