of epithets.

We all feel--and correctly--that when the play is new our greatest
energy should be devoted to it. Indeed, there is a strong tendency to
adopt the idea contained in a phrase of Mr Gordon Craig's to the effect
that the players are "performers in an orchestra," and since a play is
not like a piece of chamber-music, where the performers are treated
individually, but rather resembles a work performed by a full band,
there is an almost valid excuse for paying comparatively little
attention to the acting. Sometimes one makes desperate endeavours to
avoid dealing with the company in a lump at the end by referring in the
descriptive account (which is the journalistic contribution to the
criticism) to the individual performers; but it is not easy to do so
without interfering with the course of the description.

There are many difficulties in treating the work of the actors and
actresses briefly, but to handle it at length and in proportion would
require a space which editors are unable to give. No doubt the first of
the difficulties is the one already indicated. Wrongly or rightly, it is
felt (even by journalists who do not accept the traditions of _The Daily
Telegraph_) that there is a poverty-stricken air about the use of the
same adjective in consecutive sentences, and though we try to be honest
in opinion, we have a workman's vanity in our efforts which asserts
itself strongly and causes us, at some sacrifice of accuracy, to vary
the epithets.

Moreover, single adjectives tell very little.

To say that Mr X. acted admirably, Miss Y. gave a capital performance,
Mr Z. played in excellent style, gives little information, and when
there are half-a-dozen to be named it is almost impossible to ring the
changes. Furthermore, perhaps unconsciously, we are moved, fatuously no
doubt, by the feeling that the earlier part of the article is intensely
interesting to all the world, but that no one save the players and their
personal friends and enemies will even glance at these concluding
sentences. Yet one knows that they are of serious importance to the
persons actually concerned, though some of them say that they never read
them.

The fact that so many theatres are in the hands of actor-managers is one
reason why these phrases are important, for the actor-manager is
compelled very often to choose or refuse a player on the strength of
hearsay testimony: ours is hearsay evidence in the most accessible form,
and even th