1905.] on Dramatic Thoughts : Retrospective — Anticipative. 73 



parade its secrets, and the gainer, in my judgment, would be he who 

 sometimes shields himself behind the veil. When the young actor 

 enters the stage-door, he soon learns that the palace or the hovel are 

 alike, but paint and canvas ; he should be careful, however, to keep the 

 disillusion to himself, instead of being in a hurry to let his friends know 

 that he has found his new world out. Let novices recollect that they 

 have embarked upon a life which, so to speak, begins backwards — 

 being one of the professions in which youth is an asset — sometimes, 

 I fear, the only stock-in-trade ; the outlook then is sad indeed. Let 

 them start with a resolve to leave their calling richer than they found 

 it, by striving to add a stone to the monument of its greatness, and 

 to write, if not a page, at least a phrase in its history ; for I contend 

 that although the gifts and qualities essential to make a really great 

 actor are as rare as those needed to excel in the other arts, moderate 

 adaptability, backed up by patience, will earn a fair and useful 

 position on the stage. Let Shakespeare's precepts to the players 

 abide in their memory, and let this verse by Wordsworth live there 

 also : 



" Keep, ever keep, as if by touch 

 Of self-restraining art, 

 The modest charm of not too much — 

 Part seen, imagined part," 



Let me remind them that the refined and cultured Barton Booth 

 — to whose memory there is also a monument in Poet's Corner, 

 although his bones rest elsewhere — argued that the longest life was 

 too short for the endless study of the actor. Let them remember 

 that Rubinstein said if he neglected one day's practice he knew it 

 the next day, the critics knew it the day after, and the public knew 

 it the day after that. Let them not be too elated when praised, nor 

 too cast down when found fault with : accepting criticism, when it 

 comes from a capable pen, as a valuable stimulant. Let them beware 

 of the tendency of the day to overdo the necessary use of cosmetics — 

 even the light of genius cannot shine through a mask. One final 

 warning : let them believe that they would lose little but gain much 

 in standing more aloof from some forms of notoriety ; fewer inter- 

 views, fewer paragraphs, and fewer photographs, would in the end 

 better serve them than their perpetual and irritating so-called ad- 

 vertisement ; Shakespeare knew well the meaning of his words " All 

 the world's a stage," and would not admire their corruption by any 

 of its followers into " The stage is all the world." 



My closing thoughts will concern a subject on which I find 

 myself in part at variance with many abler minds, the question of a 

 State-endowed theatre, and I will at once say that I do not believe 

 in such a project for England. So far as I am able — for the clock, 

 which takes the place of stageland's prompter's bell, warns me of the 

 brief time at my disposal — I will give reasons for my non-belief, and 



