74 Sir Squire Bancroft [March 17, 



will add a few words on my entire belief in the establishment of a 

 National or Repertory Theatre. 



In the spring of last year a series of interesting papers on what 

 effort conld be made to help the British stage, appeared in a leading 

 magazine, signed by authorities in the Church, Literature, Art in all 

 its branches — including poor little Cinderella — and by men and women 

 of light and leading. This splendid collection of autographs did 

 not, in many cases, mean support to a given scheme but discontent 

 with existing conditions and general agreement that something should 

 be done to promote a better state of things ; while it was admitted 

 that, in speaking of a subsidised theatre, the point was in no way 

 settled whether it should be helped, as in certain foreign cities, out 

 of the reigning sovereign's privy purse, from the coffers of the 

 exchequer, or conducted by the municipality. 



Mr. Frederic Harrison, whose words on any subject claim respect, 

 is in hearty sympathy with the plea for the foundation of a subsidised 

 high-class permanent theatre ; although inclined to the belief that 

 there is more hope of the object being attained by private munificence 

 than by State aid. He thinks : " The evil complained of is both deep 

 and wide. The drama is suffering just as literature is suffering, or as 

 public life is suffering, and even society. The evil is an impatience 

 of continuous attention, of serious thought, of any hitch in our ease, 

 our luxuries, or our indulgences. We are all afflicted with a sort of 

 tarantula of restlessness, w^hich makes us skip from one pleasant spot 

 to the next, without quietly enjoying any one in peace. AYe hurry 

 from one crush to the next, glance at one short story after another, 

 drop in to see the new acrobat or skirt-dancer, smoke a cigarette, and 

 arrange a party for to-morrow. The people who sit steadily through 

 three hours of an intellectual drama is really very limited. The 

 difficulties are enormous. The immense distances, the five or six 

 millions who almost force long runs of plays on managers, the fact 

 that in London there are every night some two hundred thousand 

 casual visitors who simply want a little excitement." 



Mr. Pinero used the voice of authority to say : " A fine play is 

 the rarest product of any country. But where other countries are 

 ahead of us — at least, I hold so — is that when a fine play is produced, 

 they do something for it. They preserve it ; they take a reasonable 

 amount of pride in it ; they do not allow it , when it has once been 

 seen and admired, to be neglected, forgotten ; they take good care 

 that from time to time it shall be displayed as evidence of what they 

 can do in that particular department of art and literature. And there 

 you have one of the great uses — I do not by any means say the 

 only use — of a theatre which, whether established by the State, or by 

 a municipal corporation, or by private munificence, shall be indepen- 

 dent of the purely commercial conditions which too frequently govern 

 the drama in Great Britain." 



