=The Play=


If it be true that the future is revealed in the past, then should
there be something in the dramatic season which is dead to indicate
the character of the season not yet born. By the straws of public
approval is the course of the dramatic current determined by those
master mariners of the stage, the managers of theatres. The late
season has left no great store of such buoys to mark the fair channel
to success. Of such as there are, the purport is not altogether
convincing.

To record that "Du Barry" and "Beauty and the Beast" are notable
successes is but to record that the public, as ever, is attracted by
display of rich vestments and spectacular effect. Such straws indicate
nothing more than that a Circus or a Wild West Show will seduce to
Madison Square Garden an audience that would fill a theatre for a
month.

Mr. Hawtrey's triumph at the Garrick Theatre is as little of a guide
to popular opinion as was Anna Held's or Weber and Fields'. No
manager in his senses would suggest that because Mr. Hawtrey
succeeded with "A Message from Mars," the public are prepared to
support a series of like Christmas ghost stories. It was the novelty
that took, and the personality of a refreshingly non-American actor.

For myself I would seek the trend of public opinion in a very
different group of plays; in a batch that did not chronicle one single