you who are interested in the stage as an institution which appeals
to the sober-minded and intelligent; for I take it that you have no
lingering prejudice against the theatre, or else I should not be
here. Nor are you disposed, like certain good people, to object to the
theatre simply as a name. These sticklers for principle would never
enter a playhouse for worlds; and I have heard that in a famous city
of Massachusetts, not a hundred miles from here, there are persons to
whom the theatre is unknown, but who have no objection to see a play
in a building which is called a museum, especially if the vestibule
leading to the theatre should be decorated with sound moral principles
in the shape of statues, pictures, and stuffed objects in glass cases.

When I began to think about my subject for the purpose of this
address, I was rather staggered by its vastness. It is really a matter
for a course of lectures; but as President Eliot has not proposed that
I should occupy a chair of dramatic literature in this University,
and as time and opportunity are limited, I can only undertake to put
before you, in the simplest way, a few leading ideas about dramatic
art which may be worthy of reflection. And in doing this I have the
great satisfaction of appearing in a model theatre, before a model
audience, and of being the only actor in my own play. Moreover, I am
stimulated by the atmosphere of the Greek drama, for I know that on
this stage you have enacted a Greek play with remarkable success. So,
after all, it is not a body of mere tyros that I am addressing, but
actors who have worn the sock and buskin, and declaimed the speeches
which delighted audiences two thousand years ago.

Now, this address, like discourses in a more solemn place, falls
naturally into divisions. I propose to speak first of the Art of
Acting; secondly, of its Requirements and Practice; and lastly of its