1905.] on Dramatic Thoughts : Retrospective— Anticipative, 65 



Standing idly now in that field where for many years I was a 

 daily labourer ; leaving me as a looker-on to ponder sometimes on 

 the sort of work in which the best and happiest share of my life 

 passed away, 1 often see much to admire and sometimes not a little 

 to find fault with ; I will try to avoid wearying you with my reflec- 

 tions, and am fortified by the remembrance that when the brief hour 

 we have to pass together ends, you will again be free. Time, however, 

 is not so hard upon me as upon the young American student who 

 competed for a prize in rhetoric, and to whom the stern professor, 

 sitting in judgment said, " Sir, there is the platform, your time, five 

 minutes, your subject, ' The Immortality of the Soul.' " With such 

 an example before me, I will spare you reference to those early 

 players, Thespis and his disciples, and myself the labour of re-learning 

 the little I ever knew about the ancient drama and its far-off origin. 

 One incident only will I recall from its archives. When Quintus 

 Roscius passed away, and that must be nearly two thousand years 

 ago, Cicero, who had been the great comedian's pupil, thus spoke 

 of him — " Who of us was so hard of heart as not to feel the 

 tenderest emotions from the death of Roscius. True, he died old ; 

 but, methinks, for the excellence and beauty of his art, he merited to 

 be exempt from death." 



I have, however, since my boyhood been a keen student of more 

 recent theatrical literature, and, it seems to me, that the drama must 

 ever be as mucli a part of the world as the very tide of the sea ; so 

 surely as that ebbs and flows, so surely is a curtain somewhere rising 

 and falling on the acting of a play. The stage, indeed, is so vener- 

 able as to be at least entitled to respect. I have often thought it 

 must be as brave as it is old, having for ages and for ages borne — 

 not without dignity — the worst abuse and wildest calumny ; remain- 

 ing in the main faithful, strong and true to its chief end and purpose 

 — the amusement of the human race. In every branch and phase of 

 art which enriches us, pleasure surely ought to be its first attainment, 

 although it should be remembered that the stage has the power of 

 teaching while the spectator often thinks he is merely being enter- 

 tained ; there is nothing in all the world that can so deeply reach the 

 heart, so profoundly stir the imagination, as acting in its supremest 

 form ; and some part of what is lofty in the drama may not be 

 altogether lost even upon the poor player, whose duty it becomes to 

 illustrate it. How sound was La Motte's belief that were the theatre 

 to be shut up, the stage silenced and suppressed, the world, bad as 

 it may be, would become far more wicked. While even Jeremy 

 Collier, its bitter enemy and violent detractor, admitted that the wit 

 of man could not invent anything more conducive to virtue or de- 

 structive of vice. 



My business with the drama this evening is not to hold a brief in 

 its defence. It speaks for itself — trumpet-tongued — and if life in 

 this world were to be spent in parting the tares from the wheat in all 

 Vol. XVIII. (No. 99) f 



