to the hands of actors who play it in the proper
spirit; and if at the public performance the leader of the _claque_ sees
no hitch in it.

Reply to the second question: To compose a dramatic work which shall be
fine and shall live, have genius! There is no other way. In art talent
is nothing. Genius alone lives. A poet of genius combines in himself all
poets past and future, just as the first person you meet combines in
himself all humanity past and present. A man of genius will create for
his theater a form which has not existed before him and which after him
will suit no one else.

That, my friend, is all that I know, and I believe that anything further
is a delusion. Those who are called "men of the theater" (that is, in
plain words, unlettered men who have not studied anywhere but on the
stage) have decreed that a man knows the theater when he composes
comedies according to the particular formula invented by M. Scribe. You
might as well say that humanity began and ended with M. Scribe, that it
is he who ate the apple with Eve and who wrote the 'Legendes des
Siecles,' Good Luck!

Yours truly,

Theodore de Banville

* * * * *

III.

From Adolphe Dennery.

Take an interesting theme, a subject neither too new nor too old,
neither too commonplace or too original,--so as to avoid shocking either
the vulgar-minded or the delicate-souled.

Adolphe Dennery.

* * * * *

IV.

From Alexandre Dumas Fils.

My dear fellow-craftsman and friend:

You ask me how a play is written. You honor me greatly, but you also
greatly embarrass me.

With study, work, patience, memory, energy, a man can gain a reputation
as a painter, or a sculptor, or a musician. In those arts there are
material and mechanical procedures that he can make his own, thanks to
ability, and can attain to success. The public to whom these works are
submitted, having none of the technical knowledge involved, from the
beginning regard the makers of these works as their superiors: They feel
that the artist can always reply to any criticism: "Have you learned
painting, sculpture, music? No? Then don't talk so vainly. You cannot
judge. You must be of the craft to unders