reward. How common is it to see some player overstressing his part, who,
instead of being boohed and hissed as he deserves and as he infallibly
would be in some countries, receives but the more applause for his
inexcusable overstepping of the modesty of his art. It becomes part of
the duty of our intelligent play-goer to teach such pseudo-artists their
place, for as long as they win the meed of ill-timed and ignorant
approval, so long will they flourish.

Nor will the critic of the acceptable actor fail to observe that the
latter prefers working for the ensemble--_team work_, in the sporting
phrase--to that personal display disproportionate to the general effect
which will always make the judicious grieve. In theatrical parlance,
"hogging the stage" has flourished simply for the reason that it
deceives a sufficient number in the seats to secure applause and so
throws dust in the eyes of the general public as to its true iniquity.
The actor is properly to be judged, not by his work detached from that
of his fellows, but ever in relation to the totality of impression which
means a play instead of a personal exhibition. It is his business to
cooeperate with others in a single effect in which each is a factor in
the exact measure of the importance of his part as conceived by the
dramatist. Where a minor part becomes a major one through the ability of
a player, as in the famous case of the elder Sothern's Lord Dundreary,
it is at the expense of the play; _Our American Cousin_ was negligible
as drama, and hence it did not matter. But if the drama is worth while,
serious injury to dramatic art may follow.

Again, the intelligent play-goer will carefully distinguish in his mind
between actor and playwright. Realizing that "the play's the thing," he
will demand that even the so-called star (too often an actor foisted
into prominence for a non-artistic reason) shall obey the laws of his
art and those of drama, and not unduly minimize for personal reasons the
work of his coadjutors in the play, nor that of the playwright who
intended him to go so far and no further. The actor who, whatever his
fame, and no matter how much an unthinking audience is complaisant when
he does it, makes a practice of giving himself a center-of-the-stage
prominence beyond what the drama calls for, is no artist, but a show
man, neither more nor less, who deserves to be rated with the
mountebanks rather than with the artists of his profession. But it may