had a date. It is a mere statement of the fact that audiences have lost,
or never had, a distinguishing perception of emotion, whereas they have
every kind of perception of humour, distinguishing and general. Their
laugh never fails. If their friends behind would really care to improve
them, it might be done by exacting from them a little more temperance in
their sense of comedy. We shall never have a really good school of
audience without the exercise of some such severity.

For obviously when we call an average unchangeable, we mean that it is
unchangeable for its time merely. There might be a slow upraising of the
level. It would still be a level, and there would still be a compelling
law upon one thousand that it should do the same thing as another
thousand; but that same thing might become somewhat more intelligent.

When a fine actor does a fine thing, have we such a school of audience as
to merit this admirable supply to their demands?--this applause of their
understanding? Is there not in the whole excellent piece of work,
something all too independent of their part in the theatre?

If Caligula wished that mankind had but one neck for his knife, and Byron
that all womankind had but one mouth for his kiss, so the audience has
conceived that all arts should have but one mystery for its blundering,
and thus thinks itself interested in acting when it does but admire the
actor as in a drawing.

The time may come when a national school of dramatic audience shall not
accept artifices that could not convince the fool amongst them; when one
brilliant moment of simplicity on the one side of the footlights shall
meet a brilliant simplicity on the other. Which troupe, which side, to
begin?