fice is founded on this psychologic truth. Even puns as
bad as Mr. Zangwill's are of value early in a play to set on some quantity
of barren spectators and get the house accustomed to a titter. Scenes like
the foot-ball episodes in _The College Widow_ and _Strongheart_, or the
battle in _The Round Up_, are nearly always sure to raise the roof; for it
is usually sufficient to set everybody on the stage a-cheering in order to
make the audience cheer too by sheer contagion. Another and more classical
example was the speechless triumph of Henry V's return victorious, in
Richard Mansfield's sumptuous production of the play. Here the audience
felt that he was every inch a king; for it had caught the fervor of the
crowd upon the stage.

This same emotional contagion is, of course, the psychologic basis for the
French system of the _claque_, or band of hired applauders seated in the
centre of the house. The leader of the _claque_ knows his cues as if he
were an actor in the piece, and at the psychologic moment the _claqueurs_
burst forth with their clatter and start the house applauding. Applause
begets applause in the theatre, as laughter begets laughter and tears beget
tears.

But not only is the crowd more emotional than the individual; it is also
more sensuous. It has the lust of the eye and of the ear,--the savage's
love of gaudy color, the child's love of soothing sound. It is fond of
flaring flags and blaring trumpets. Hence the rich-costumed processions of
the Elizabethan stage, many years before the use of scenery; and hence, in
our own day, the success of pieces like _The Darling of the Gods_ and _The
Rose of the Rancho_. Color, light, and music, artistically blended, will
hold the crowd better than the most absorbing story. This is the reason for
the vogue of musical comedy, with its pretty girls, and gaudy shifts of
scenery and lights, and tricksy, tripping melodies and dances.

Both in its sentiments and in its opinions, the crowd is comfortably
commonplace. It is, as a crowd, incapable of original thought and of any
but inherited emotion. It has no speculation in its eyes. What it feels was
felt before the flood; and what it thinks, its fathers thought before it.
The most effective moments in the theatre are those that appeal to basic
and commonplace emotions,--love of woman, love of home, love of country,
love of right, anger, jealousy, revenge, ambition, lust, and treachery. So
great for centuries has been the