cloistered students study for their wisdom and their style!

And let us not forget, in this connection, that a similar breadth of appeal
is neither necessary nor greatly to be desired in those forms of literature
that, unlike the drama, are not written for the crowd. The greatest
non-dramatic poet and the greatest novelist in English are appreciated
only by the few; but this is not in the least to the discredit of Milton
and of Meredith. One indication of the greatness of Mr. Kipling's story,
_They_, is that very few have learned to read it.

Victor Hugo, in his preface to _Ruy Blas_, has discussed this entire
principle from a slightly different point of view. He divides the theatre
audience into three classes--the thinkers, who demand characterisation; the
women, who demand passion; and the mob, who demand action--and insists that
every great play must appeal to all three classes at once. Certainly _Ruy
Blas_ itself fulfils this desideratum, and is great in the breadth of its
appeal. Yet although all three of the necessary elements appear in the
play, it has more action than passion and more passion than
characterisation. And this fact leads us to the theory, omitted by Victor
Hugo from his preface, that the mob is more important than the women and
the women more important than the thinkers, in the average theatre
audience. Indeed, a deeper consideration of the subject almost leads us to
discard the thinkers as a psychologic force and to obliterate the
distinction between the women and the mob. It is to an unthinking and
feminine-minded mob that the dramatist must first of all appeal; and this
leads us to believe that action with passion for its motive is the prime
essential for a play.

For, nowadays at least, it is most essential that the drama should appeal
to a crowd of women. Practically speaking, our matinee audiences are
composed entirely of women, and our evening audiences are composed chiefly
of women and the men that they have brought with them. Very few men go to
the theatre unattached; and these few are not important enough, from the
theoretic standpoint, to alter the psychologic aspect of the audience. And
it is this that constitutes one of the most important differences between a
modern theatre audience and other kinds of crowds.

The influence of this fact upon the dramatist is very potent. First of all,
as I have said, it forces him to deal chiefly in action with passion for
its motive. And this nece