n, have chosen themes that do not appeal to
our people. But was Shakespeare, "Shakespeare"?

It is not merely a want of the knack of playwriting--a vulgar, useful
term--that kept Browning or Tennyson from success on the stage. No one
ever had such a prodigious "knack" as Ibsen, and _Rosmersholm_ is the
most amazing _tour de force_ of craftmanship. Yet despite his influence
upon modern drama, Ibsen--a great poet, a great thinker, a great
observer, and the greatest of craftsmen--has been unpopular as a
dramatist in England.

One begins to see that an element in the answer to be given to the
question is the fact that some of the great writers who have failed upon
the stage owe their want of success in part to their over-estimation of
the power of the acting play to convey ideas, and consequently to their
putting so much more into their work than the average audience can get
out that the public shirks the task of grappling with them at all.
Shakespeare, under peculiar circumstances, was grappled with before our
time, and has been predigested for us; but the others have had no such
fortune. Moreover, much of the national dramatist's finest work is cut
when his works are produced and some are rarely given, others never.

Several able writers, such as Robert Buchanan, have rushed to the
opposite extreme and obtained ephemeral success by empty plays injurious
to their reputation as men of letters, and a few of us think that one of
our most successful and brilliant novelist-playwrights has a dangerous
tendency in this direction. It is, of course, given to few to judge so
perfectly as Pinero what is the extreme quantity of thought that can be
put into a play without frightening the public, and he has had more than
one splendid failure from taking too hopeful a view of the intelligence
of playgoers.

The Ending of the Play

A large number of readers begin a novel at the wrong end, particularly
those of the sex many members of which are threatened with moustaches,
according to the latest hysterical shriek of certain medicine-men,
because of their weakness for putting cigarettes between their dainty
lips. They look at the last chapter before reading the first; the
practice is indefensible, criminal. Authors take an immense amount of
trouble in working up logically to a conclusion and preparing the minds
of their readers for it, and most of this trouble goes by the board if
you begin by reading the last chapter. In the case of