moral convictions. And of course because he has a genuine dramatic
gift. Finally, because William J. Rea plays Lincoln with the utmost
nobility of emotional power.

Every audience has the same experience at ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and I laugh
privately when I think of that experience. The curtain goes up on a
highly commonplace little parlour, and a few ordinary people chatting
in a highly commonplace manner. They keep on chatting. The audience
thinks to itself: "I've been done! What is this interminable small
talk?" And it wants to call out a protest: "Hi! You fellows on the
stage! Have you forgotten that there is an audience on the other
side of the footlights, waiting for something to happen?" (Truly the
ordinary people in the parlour do seem to be unaware of the existence
of any audience.) But wait, audience! Already the author is winding
his chains about you. Though you may not suspect it, you are already
bound.... At the end of the first scene the audience, vaguely feeling
the spell, wonders what on earth the nature of the spell is. At the
end of the play it is perhaps still wondering what precisely the
nature of the spell is.... But it fully and rapturously admits the
reality of the spell. Indeed after the fall of the curtain, and after
many falls of the curtain, the spell persists; the audience somehow
cannot leave its seats, and the thought of the worry of the journey
home and of last 'busses and trains is banished. Strange phenomenon!
It occurs every night.

ARNOLD BENNETT _April 1919_