, at least at one
theatre in London, and at all the great theatres out of London, to
an extent unprecedented in the history of the stage--then they get
Shakespeare. If they want our modern dramatists--Albery, Boucicault,
Byron, Burnand, Gilbert, or Wills--these they have. If they want
Robertson, Robertson is there for them. If they desire opera-bouffe,
depend upon it they will have it, and have it they do. What then do
I infer? Simply this: that those who prefer the higher drama--in the
representation of which my heart's best interests are centred--instead
of querulously animadverting on managers who give them something
different, should, as Lord Beaconsfield said, "make themselves into a
majority." If they do so, the higher drama will be produced. But if we
really understand the value of the drama, we shall not be too rigid in
our exactions. The drama is the art of human nature in picturesque
or characteristic action. Let us be liberal in our enjoyment of it.
Tragedy, comedy, historical-pastoral, pastoral-comical--remember
the large-minded list of the greatest-minded poet--all are good, if
wholesome--and will be wholesome if the public continue to take the
healthy interest in theatres which they are now taking. The worst
times for the stage have been those when play-going was left pretty
much to a loose society, such as is sketched in the Restoration
dramatists. If the good people continue to come to the theatre in
increasing crowds, the stage, without losing any of its brightness,
will soon be good enough, if it is not as yet, to satisfy the best of
them. This is what I believe all sensible people in these times see.
And if, on the one hand, you are ready to laugh at the old prejudices
which have been so happily dissipated; on the other hand, how
earnestly must you welcome the great aid to taste and thought and
culture which comes to you thus in the guise of amusement. Let me put
this to you rather seriously; let me insist on the intellectual and
moral use, alike to the most and least cultivated of us, of this
art "most beautiful, most difficult, most rare," which I stand here
to-day, not to apologize for, but to establish in the high place
to which it is entitled among the arts and among the ameliorating
influences of life. Grant that any of us understand a dramatist better
for seeing him acted, and it follows, first, that all of us will be
most indebted to the stage at the point where the higher and more
ethereal fa