CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER or on the weather. Give the playgoing public
what it wants and no consideration of National Waste or of Daylight Saving
will keep it from the theatre.

And that brings me to my point. Whence comes the playgoing public of
to-day, and what does it want?

From the commercial point of view (and in the long run as in the short all
art must be judged by its monetary value) the drama depends for its support
on what used to be known as the better-dressed parts of the house.
Now-a-days the majority of the paying patrons of these seats come from the
ranks of the new custodians of the nation's wealth. These people, who have
the business instinct very strongly developed, insistently and very rightly
demand value for their money; and the problem is how to give them value as
they understand the meaning of the word. My friend Mr. ARTHUR COLLINS gives
it to them in sand; but that is a shifting foundation on which to build up
a prosperous run.

Those who, like myself, have studied closely the tastes and intelligence of
this new force that is directing the destiny of the modern theatre must
have come to the conclusion that the essential factor in dramatic success
is "punch," or, as our cross-Atlantic cousins would term it, "pep." The day
of anæmic characterisation and subtle dissection of motives is past. The
audience (or the only part that really counts) has no desire to be called
upon to think; it can afford to pay others to do its thinking for it. There
is much to be said for this point of view. The War and its effects
(especially the Excess Profits Duty) have imposed on us all far too many
and too severe mental jerks; in the theatre we may well forget that we
possess such a thing as a mind.