and good plays into bad plays; and whenever he fails to do this, as is too often the case, he becomes highly culpable, and provokes the most rigid censure by his negligence.

Aside from this, representatives of the Drama, of all other professionals, should be exemplary as well as moral individuals; for, notwithstanding the public, properly speaking, has naught directly to do with the private life of those who administer to its amusement, still it is much to know that such individuals are equally worthy as talented;—and such knowledge, whenever substantially guaranteed, is quite as beneficial to the interests of the individual as gratifying to the public.

It is useless to declare that patrons of the Drama neither expect nor care to find a combination of talent and respectability in its representatives. It is equally useless to produce, as evidence in support of such declaration, custom of the past; for neither the declaration nor the proposed evidence is substantially either reasonable or logical, true or sound. The public, it is true, as well as individuals, is sometimes patient and long-suffering; frequently endures in silence what it cannot cure by bluster. But because it does this, we are by no means to mistake mere indulgence for positive approval. Hitherto the public has patiently borne with many glaring inconsistencies and foibles (not to say imperfections and insults from the representatives of the Drama), solely for the Drama's sake; and, although we are no advocates of the erratic doctrine sometimes disseminated under these and similar circumstances, viz. that of suffering evil that good may come of it, still we can readily understand, and fully appreciate, the spirit of indulgence and lenity which, in such instances, has ever governed its perpetrators; and we are in no wise disposed to misconstrue it.

Not so, however, the profession itself. It has not only mistaken the true opinions and feelings of the public on this subject, but it has most unwisely taken advantage of the indulgence thus extended towards it. Instead of abolishing the evils thus leniently endured, it has year by year gone on enhancing them until longer indulgence has already quite ceased to be a virtue until the enormity of its vices has actually

impelled the public to assume towards it a defensive attitude.

The time has been, when the Drama was sustained and patronized by the most respectable as well as most intelligent portion of the people, both in Europe and America. That such is no longer the case, is no fault of the public itself. It is the last feather that breaks the camel's back. It was the extreme indifference with respect to decency and decorum on the part of representatives of the Drama, on the stage, in their manners, their customs, their reading, their conduct generally, and their mode of life, both public and private, that severed from them and it all existing public sympathy; that drove from their temples the crême de la crême of their patrons.

Even the most intelligent and refined audiences may condescend to smile at stage dialogue of questionable propriety in exceptional instances; precisely as wise men frequently relish a little nonsense, when opportunely introduced, in the ordinary conversation of every-day life. But once attempt to make such dialogue a feature of entertainment or diversion for them, and nothing can be more certain than that you will provoke disgust instead of applause; censure instead of sanction; absence instead of presence. Sensitive minds are not to be incessantly shocked by beastly allusions. Refined tastes are not to be insulted with impunity by irreverent and vulgar insinuations; as experience as already amply demonstrated.

Do you remind us that a shrewd manager will always understand, appreciate, and cater to the wants and tastes of his audiences? We reply: there are remarkably few sufficiently shrewd managers; far too few to supply the public demand; for nothing can be truer than that our own, as well as the theatres of Europe, have been almost entirely deserted by the better portion of their best patrons simply because few or no such managers were to be found.

And as these more intelligent classes withdrew their presence and patronage from the theatres, as their places became filled by persons far less discriminating, if not far less respectable; filled, indeed, by patrons whose lack of acute sen

sibility and refined taste permitted them to sanction and applaud the very objectionable features of the play once so palpably condemned by their predecessors, managers and actors alike became more and more indifferent to the dictates of propriety, as well as to a proper sense of modesty, until theatres no longer invited either the presence or the patronage of those whose presence and patronage alone could properly sustain or give to them permanence and character.

Another consequence of the withdrawal of their patronage from the theatres of the more intelligent classes was the substitution of modern sensation dramas and plays for those of a much higher order of merit. To speak within bounds, not one out of every hundred of the innumerable plays latterly produced on the English and American stages ought ever to have seen the light of day; not one out of every hundred can possibly survive the most careless criticism, and fewer still, by any possibility, can survive their authors and producers; which, all things considered, is about the only really consoling feature of the whole case.

The method by which these monstrosities are manufactured and produced, is no less curious to the generality of individuals than the fact of their ever being produced at all. The time has been, when a play was not accepted by managers unless it possessed a certain degree of merit; at least something of originality, even though it lacked intrinsic worth and perfectness of construction. Then, too, it was deemed essential to the ultimate success of a play that it should possess a tolerable plot. Nowadays, however, no such appliances are required, it would seem; at least, they are seldom exhibited. Why they are not deemed essential, or why they are so seldom exhibited, is only to be reasonably accounted for from the fact that the industrious bards (?) and patient scriveners who compile them, and who continually infest the sanctums and persons of managers much as birds of prey infest decaying carcases, borrowing now a dollar and begging then another,must be made useful in one way or another, and so they are set to work to undermine the reputation and prosperity of managers, actors, actresses, and the Drama-the only enter

prise, begging and borrowing excepted,—in which they ever even moderately excel.

True, it would seem, that, with the startling experience of European managers before them for careful reference, American managers would have hesitated before they adopted the identical ruinous policy which instigated and completed the destruction of their foreign contemporaries, besides bringing into ill repute the Drama itself. They did not, however; and the result, in both cases, has been comparatively the same.

Now, we urge no objection whatever to a healthy Modern Drama. Our present strictures apply only to the so numerous wretched caricatures thus miscalled. To these monstrosities, we certainly take "most just exception." We hold, moreover, that to apply even the term Drama to such a concatenation of blasphemous words and nonsensical sentences as are nowadays employed in the construction of plays, is little less than positive sacrilege.

The Drama!—why, we sincerely wonder that the very ashes of the long departed true dramatists, especially those of the Bard of Avon, do not rise up in judgment against us for even suffering its desecraters.

But what description of three and five-act plays ought we to expect from the pens, discrimination, scissors, and paste of illiterate and unscrupulous pseudo-literary vagabonds at five dollars per act? What quality of philosophy or genuine wit and humor from the muse of saloon loafers and bar-room graduates? What degree of truthful portrayal of bonâ fide drawing-room etiquette and conversation from the pencils of scribblers, not an individual of whom in the whole course of his life ever did, ever could, or ever can gain admittance into the homes of those parties whose looks, manners, conversation, and conduct he so boldly pretends to describe, and of whose particular mode of life he consequently knows quite as little as he does of either good sense or good grammar?

The fact is, no competent writer will take pains to construct a good play unless liberally remunerated; nor even then if he must subsequently extend to managers the privilege of mutilating his production ad libitum; cutting out whole sen

tences here, and adding the worst of verbiage there, until both author and play alike completely lose their identity; but above all, not until relieved of a sort of premonition that some remorseless Bourcicault will ruthlessly purloin the plot, if not the entire detail of the piece, and deliberately appropriate it to himself and to his individual interests.

To adapt, is somewhat easier than to compose, for our modern literary and dramatic vultures. Hence, so long as managers continue to cultivate the already so prevalent Jewish propensity of purchasing second-hand articles, the public may continue to sigh but sigh in vain, for originality of thoughts, ideas, or plots; and the Drama may and will still continue to linger out a fitful and feverish exist

ence.

Now all this is sufficiently lamentable; still we must hold in reserve a portion of our mingled grief and displeasure for yet another inroad upon our patience and propriety. If we feel in duty bound to condemn the practice of producing garbled dramas, tragedies, comedies, farces, etc., which pretend to represent phases of human nature, states of human civilization, and individual character, but seldom accomplish what they pretend to, where shall we find words sufficiently strong to express our heartfelt disgust at the still deeper prostitution of the stage by attempting to represent upon it the grossest habits of various descriptions of animals? To represent the habits of certain classes of individuals is bad enough; to descend still lower the scale of moral and social degradation and presume to portray the characteristics of elephants, dogs, and apes; to behold men of decided genius and ability,— merely for the sake of pandering to the vitiated tastes of the depraved and ignorant, or of provoking laughter at the expense of decency and propriety,-degrade their humanity by assuming the form, manner, and appearance of loathsome animals: flirting, floundering, capering, and climbing here and there all over the stage; now flinging about an assumed vertebral appendage of ridiculous length and proportions; now chattering absurdly; now yelling or roaring in the most indescribably unnatural manner; all this is inexpressibly