people. In fact, it is a downright insult to the dramatic profession
to exact or to expect any such thing. Equally objectionable, and
equally impracticable, are the attempts of Quixotic "dramatic
reformers" to exercise a sort of goody-goody censorship over the
selection and the text of the plays to be acted. The stage has been
serving the world for hundreds, yes, and thousands of years, during
which it has contributed in pure dramaturgy to the literature of
the world its very greatest master-pieces in nearly all languages,
meanwhile affording to the million an infinity of pleasure, all more
or less innocent. Where less innocent, rather than more, the cause has
lain, not in the stage, but in the state of society of which it was
the mirror. For though the stage is not always occupied with its own
period, the new plays produced always reflect in many particulars
the spirit of the age in which they are played. There is a story of
a traveller who put up for the night at a certain inn, on the door of
which was the inscription--"Good entertainment for man and beast." His
horse was taken to the stable and well cared for, and he sat down
to dine. When the covers were removed he remarked, on seeing his own
sorry fare, "Yes, this is very well; but where's the entertainment for
the man?" If everything were banished from the stage except that
which suits a certain taste, what dismal places our theatres would be!
However fond the play-goer may be of tragedy, if you offer him nothing
but horrors, he may well ask--"Where's the entertainment for the man
who wants an evening's amusement?" The humor of a farce may not seem
over-refined to a particular class of intelligence; but there are
thousands of people who take an honest pleasure in it. And who, after
seeing my old friend J.L. Toole in some of his famous parts, and
having laughed till their sides ached, have not left the theatre more
buoyant and light-hearted than they came? Well, if the stage has
been thus useful and successful all these centuries, and still is