mood was to be met with in his discussion of the players of Ellen
Tree's type. Here are his words of censure against the new order:

"If we old files are to be believed, the art of acting is dying out,
and the very tradition of the stage disappearing.... Very likely the
spirit, which in painting we call pre-Raphaelism, is obtaining its
influence on the stage, and that some of the actors are turning out of
doors the traditions and formal mannerisms of the schools, and going
back to nature and truth for their inspiration.... There were very
artificial methods, no doubt, among the old actors, but there was also
a very consummate knowledge of the art, a great deal of breadth,
force and skill, and a finished training, which the new schools do
not exhibit. In aiming to be natural, some of our actors seem to have
concluded that their profession is not an art. They grow heedless
in the delivery of language, weakening or obscuring its meaning, and
missing its significance; and in some way lose that rich and mellow
colouring that characterized the bygone performers. So marked is this,
that some of the old dramatic characters are abandoned altogether,
because in the hands of the Realists they fade away into ineffective
and colourless forms. The _Sir Peter Teazles_ and _Sir Anthony
Absolutes_ of the old comedy require indispensably the resources
of the old art, and no thin, water-gruel realism, so-called, can
personate them. In avoiding the declamatory Kembletonianism of the old
school, our actors are right enough; but they cannot safely disregard
the skill which sharpens and chisels, as it were, the sentences; nor
forego the care, study, precision and stern adherence to rules of art,
that marked the old stage."

Steeped in such belief, it is small wonder that two of Bunce's plays
had characteristics in them to suit a member of the Wallack family.