he misconceives the purpose of education. Declaring without warrant that all colleges and all schools were meant for the poor, he proceeds to denounce those who administer our educational endowments. But Mr Thorne forgets one thing. Even if his assumption were correct, which it manifestly is not, he can prove no hardship. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Oxford and Cambridge were devised for the poor, and the poor alonethey were devised also for education. To the poor who demand education, their portals have always been wide open. Those who are willing to study Greek, Latin, and the mathematics have always been welcome at the Universities. Of the scholarships annually awarded at Oxford, we are told that no more than 6 per cent are held by those who could purchase education without their aid; and, though we should like to see that 6 per cent given also to the needy, we do not think that many endowments are administered with so small a leakage. At the same time, it cannot be too clearly understood that poverty of itself has no claim to support. The day that Oxford admits within her walls a single man merely because he is poor, or on any other than her own terms, there is an end of her dignity and usefulness. The sole passport to an assisted entrance to Oxford or Cambridge is zeal for learning. Mr Thorne and his friends, we believe, have no zeal for learning. They want to get their hands about the fabric of the colleges; they demand "popular control," whatever that may mean, and from the security of their own inexperience they assert that they must declare what education is and should be. Thus, if they had their way, they would turn our Universities into industrial schools, where nothing should be taught that it did not become a Trade Unionist to learn, and they would not be satisfied until they had killed the goose that lays the golden eggs. But they will not have their way. Mr Thorne will not be permitted to burn down Christ Church or Trinity to prove the possibility of roast pork. He spoke, as he told his respectable black-coated audience, as forward their "hardy annuals" with as little sense of humour as the Trade Unionists. They are still puzzling their heads over the problem of dramatic criticism. To the conundrum, how shall a critic leave the theatre at 11.30 and provide the world with a reasoned discourse at its breakfast - table next morning, no final answer has been found. This one suggests a dress rehearsal for the satisfaction of the critics. That one proposes to begin the first night's performance at an early hour. Perhaps a combination of the two methods might make the critic's burden bearable. It would be a better plan if the papers would be content to announce on the first day after the performance that it had taken place, and would give their critics another fourand-twenty hours to form a deliberate judgment. This of course is a counsel of perfection. Criticism became news many years ago, and in forty-eight hours most masterpieces are forgotten. goblets are of papier-maché, as, Especially is it a rash enterprise to hang the trappings of realism about the drama of Shakespeare, who, being an artist, wrote with a keen sense of his artistic limitations. None understood better than he the laws imposed by the shape and structure of his theatre. It is idle for our modern managers to gloze over Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree their own extravagances by took advantage of the debate declaring that Shakespeare, to protest against the temer- too, was a lover of pageants. ity of a novelist who had The finest pageantry that he dared to criticise the produc- knew was a pageantry of tion of "Henry VIII." at His phrase. His wooden O would Majesty's Theatre. The critic, have restrained him, had he rashly assuming that certain needed restraint, from the vulcups and goblets were of garity of to-day. Mr Harold real silver, proceeded to con- Child, in a chapter contribdemn the realism of the per- uted to the Cambridge Hisformance. "If a real wine- tory of Modern Literature-a cup," he said, "why not real work which gives us by far wine? if real wine, why not the best account we have of real blood?" Unfortunately our early drama,-sets forth for his argument, the cups and the difference between the The sur anicent and the modern stage No Elizabethan could have with perfect lucidity. "The been guilty of the absurdity, capital difference," says he, not unknown in our own day, "lies in the fact that the of staging "Hamlet in acpre-Rebellion public stage was cordance with the habits and a platform stage, while the customs of ancient Denmark. modern stage is a picture Hamlet was an Elizabethan, stage. The modern audience and most properly wore the sees the drama as a moving garb of the age to which he picture in a frame, or as in and his creator both belonged. a room with one wall, and If his velvet and lace were only one, knocked out. superior to the velvet and lace Elizabethan audience affected by the spectators, they rounded the stage on three did not interfere with the action sides, partly encroaching even of the piece. Was he not a on the fourth; they saw the prince? And did he not stand drama as a scene enacted in upon his floor and trestles to their midst and-in the case of confront the world? For the the groundlings, the spectators rest it was the play, and standing in the yard - very the play alone, which was the close to them. It is practi- thing. The scenery was naught. cally impossible for performers There was no machinery until on the stage to compose groups Inigo Jones came to Court that shall show an equally and sowed the seeds of corartistic shape on three sides ruption, whereof a rich harat once, and the use of day- vest has been garnered. And light prevented many of the even Inigo Jones did not invisual effects that have been fect the popular playhouse practised since the time of with his disease of inapposite Garrick." Here is the best ingenuity. The verse of the answer to those indiscreet poet still enchanted the popular managers who would excuse ear. The spectator throbbed their own popular and irrel- with the emotions or echoed evant magnificence by an ap- to the laughter evoked by the peal to Shakespeare. He and poet. In other words, as Mr his contemporaries knew none Child says, "the drama was of the modern shifts to catch rhetorical"; and this fact was an audience. It was their not merely the best encouragepurpose rather to charm the ment to the dramatist: it enear than to seduce the eye. sured a proper competence in The one concession that they the actor. Being asked to made to splendour was in the recite the poet's lines, Burbage matter of costumes, and in and his colleagues were set a costume they aimed not at task that was all the more realism but at a handsome difficult on account of its effect. The dress was the simplicity. They had nothing dress of their own time, what else to rely upon for their ever the period of the play. effect than dignity of bear ing and perfection of speech. If they failed in elocution, they had no furniture to distract the attention of the house; they had no limelight to dazzle the eye and dull the ear of the spectator. Their speech must be noble, their gesture grand in its restraint, or they failed utterly. In the sixteenth century an actor who could neither speak nor walk would have been an impossibility. Such a one has triumphed in our time, because his imperfections are easily obscured in a welter of the false picturesque. How vastly changed are the conditions of the drama! The modern manager, rather than stimulate the imagination of his spectators, would make no demand upon it at all. Everything on his stage shall be as "real" as money and ingenuity can make it. In the old days of the Gaiety burlesque, Miss Farren apostrophised a donkey, contrived on the model of the celebrated Brothers Griffiths. "Real donkey," said she, "real dramatic art." That might serve as a motto for many of our stage-managers. If only the donkeys are real, they think, the dramatic art will be real. Well, the donkeys are real, and everything else on the stage is lifeless and jéjune. But the manager of to-day will not accept the obvious truth that unreality is the very essence of stage-illusion. No real sun shines in the heaven of the stage; the forest-glades lead but to the green-room; the foot-lights throw a bril liance upon the picture, which will ever be strange to the world of our common experience. We accept these conventions cheerfully, on condition that everything else on the stage harmonises with their charming unreality. And it is this harmony which is denied to us. We have seen real water trickling over the boards amid rootless primroses fresh from Covent Garden. No drawing-room comedy is complete nowadays that may not boast for its elucidation a fine collection of Chippendale or Sheraton furniture. And yet the artistic conditions of the drama would be far better fulfilled if all the chairs which did not actually support actor and actress were painted on the backcloth. Indeed, it is only by a return to a conventional simplicity that we shall ever assist at a true revival of dramatic art. For the the weight of the trappings, to which the last thirty years have accustomed us, has crushed the spirit of the theatre. Amid the heavy sets, amid the expensive chairs and tables, which encumber the stage, the poor playwright has but little chance of emerging. He must fight for his life with the actor, the carpenter, the upholsterer, the electriclight merchant, and the purveyor of motor - cars, whose names compete with his in the play - bill. Economically, as well as artistically, he is at a disadvantage. Where the production of a drama involves so vast an outlay in accessories as does the drama of to-day there is little room for experiment. No manager will hazard his thousands upon an unknown play, even though genius shine in every line of it. It is this outlay in accessories, indeed, which encourages the foolish dream of a national theatre. England needs no national theatre. She needs only a return to sane stage-management and simple decoration. In thus retracing her steps lies the one hope of her theatre. Will she retrace them? Or will she still persist in as gross a confusion of the arts as would be manifest if a painter hung a real gold chain about the neck of a portrait, or a sculptor had a statue measured for a pair of trousers? It is well known that a limb which ceases to be used becomes atrophied. And this truth explains, perhaps, the decay of the drama. Why should it exist as a form of literature, if the carpenter and wigmaker have beaten the dramatist in the struggle for life? As the dramatist is nowadays of the least importance, so he has fallen rapidly upon a decline. It is true that if he succeeds with the mob he becomes richer than the owner of a diamondmine. But his success is a thing of accident, which lies far apart from literary excellence, a thing which can be neither foreseen nor estimated. Whatever artistic credit may attach to a play is commonly divided between the actor and the stage-manager, and it is As not surprising that the drama is no longer a living form. In the age of Elizabeth the situation was completely reversed. It was the play, and the play alone, which drew the town. The dramatists made little money, that is true. Perhaps there was not a great deal of money to be made; perhaps they had not discovered their economic value. But the honour and the glory were theirs, and bravely they fought for them. No period of our history can show so noble a body of work as was produced by the dramatist who flourished under "Eliza and our James." we read their plays to-day, we cannot but marvel at their splendour and variety. How brave a record is set forth in the Cambridge History, already cited! What a wealth of poetry and invention lies between Marlowe and Ford! In many respects the dramatists are unsympathetic to our flippant and uniform age. They delight in primitive passions and sombre tragedy. Hate and jealousy, murder and revenge, are commonplaces with them. They cheerfully exhaust all the crimes committed in all the Italian republics. The demon of Machiavellian craft, as they understood it, strides through their plays. And yet with how fine a fancy do they lull us to forgetfulness of murder and rapine! At a touch of Shakespeare's wand we are in fairyland. Beaumont and Fletcher carry us into the golden age of pastoral comedy. Ben Jonson, with his eye |