!"] Whether that development is in store
for us I do not know, but I can imagine certain social benefits that
would accrue from the municipal incorporation of a dramatic
conservatoire. It might check the rush of incompetent persons into the
theatrical profession. Some persons who were intended by Nature to adorn
an inviolable privacy are thrust upon us by paragraphers and
interviewers, whose existence is a dubious blessing--[laughter]--until
it is assumed by censors of the stage that this business is part and
parcel of theatrical advertisement.

Columns of this rubbish are printed every week, and many an actor is
pestered to death for tit-bits about his ox and his ass and everything
that is his. [Laughter.] Occasionally you may read solemn articles about
the insatiable vanity of the actor, which must be gratified at any cost,
as if vanity were peculiar to any section of humanity. But what this
organized gossip really advertises is the industry of the gentlemen who
collect it, and the smartness of the papers in which it is circulated.
"We learn this," "We have reason to believe"--such forms of intolerable
assurance give currency too often to scandalous and lying rumors which I
am sure responsible journalism would wish to discourage. But this, I
fear, is difficult, for contradiction makes another desirable paragraph,
and it is all looked upon as desirable copy. [Laughter.]

Of course, gentlemen, the drama is declining--it always has been
declining since the time of Roscius and beyond the palmy days when the
famous Elephant Raja was "starred" over the head of W. C. Macready, and
the real water tank in the Cataract of the Ganges helped to increase the
attractions of John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. But we ourselves are
evidently in a parlous state at the present day, when actors vainly
endeavor to struggle through twenty lines of blank verse--when we are
told mechanical effects and vast armies of supers make up the production
of historical plays--when pathological details, we are told, are always
well received--when the "psychonosological" (whatever that may
be)--[laughter], is invariably successful--and when Pinero and Grundy's
plays do not appeal to men of advanced thought, as I read the other day.

In all the lament about the decline of the drama there is one recurring
note: the disastrous influence of long runs. If the manager were not a
grossly material person, incapable of ideals, he would take off a
successful piece a