kespeare, because, after all, it is seeing
Shakespeare: it will not go to see a bad performance of a play by Sir
Arthur Pinero, merely because, after all, it is seeing Pinero. The
extraordinary success of _The Master Builder_, when it was presented in New
York by Mme. Nazimova, is an evidence of this. The public that filled the
coffers of the Bijou Theatre was paying its money not so much to see a play
by the author of _A Doll's House_ and _Hedda Gabler_ as to see a
performance by a clever and tricky actress of alluring personality, who was
better advertised and, to the average theatre-goer, better known than
Henrik Ibsen.

Since the public at large is much more interested in actors than it is in
dramatists, and since the first-night critics of the daily newspapers write
necessarily for the public at large, they usually devote most of their
attention to criticising actors rather than to criticising dramatists.
Hence the general theatre-goer is seldom aided, even by the professional
interpreters of theatric art, to arrive at an understanding and
appreciation, for its own sake, of that share in the entire artistic
production which belongs to the dramatist and the dramatist alone.

For, in present-day America at least, production in the theatre is the
dramatist's sole means of publication, his only medium for conveying to the
public those truths of life he wishes to express. Very few plays are
printed nowadays, and those few are rarely read: seldom, therefore, do they
receive as careful critical consideration as even third-class novels. The
late Clyde Fitch printed _The Girl with the Green Eyes_. The third act of
that play exhibits a very wonderful and searching study of feminine
jealousy. But who has bothered to read it, and what accredited
book-reviewer has troubled himself to accord it the notice it deserves? It
is safe to say that that remarkable third act is remembered only by people
who saw it acted in the theatre. Since, therefore, speaking broadly, the
dramatist can publish his work only through production, it is only through
attending plays and studying what lies beneath the acting and behind the
presentation that even the most well-intentioned critic of contemporary
drama can discover what our dramatists are driving at.

The great misfortune of this condition of affairs is that the failure of a
play as a business proposition cuts off suddenly and finally the
dramatist's sole opportunity for publishing his though