We need not fear that the first-night reporting would be ill done if competent reporters were instructed that they were not to consider themselves as critics, and that it was their sole duty to report, as they would report anything else, conscientiously and accurately. The difficulty would not be in finding reporters able to discharge this duty, it would be in the discovery of dramatic critics possessing the fourfold qualifications of insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and sympathy, which every critic must be endowed with whatever the art he undertakes to analyze. And the difficulty would be increased by the fact that the dramatic critic needs an understanding of three different arts, the art of acting, the art of literature, and the art of the drama--of play-making as distinct from literature. It would be idle to hope that even if this method were adopted we should soon be able to develop in the United States and in Great Britain a group of dramatic critics of the capacity and the quality of Lessing and Sarcey, of George Henry Lewes and William Archer. Yet it is solely by the adoption of this method that we can hope to provide the opportunity for the appearance of the true dramatic critic, who can fit himself for his finer work only by being set free from the necessity of doing work quite unworthy of him, altho necessary to the newspaper itself. And the development of a group of dramatic critics of a higher type than can be found to-day--except possibly in a scant half-dozen dailies and weeklies and monthlies--is a condition precedent to the development of our drama. Of course, these dramatic critics, whatever their endowment, could give little help directly to the dramatic authors, since it is a mistake to suppose that the critic is capable of counselling the author, or that he is charged with any such duty. Where the critic can help is by disseminating knowledge about the dramatic art, and by raising the standard of appreciation in the public at large--that public which even the mightiest dramatist has to please or else to fail of his purpose. (1915.) TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS. Throughout the document, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "OE". The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next the text they illustrate. Thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List of Illustrations, and the order of illustrations may not be the same in the List of Illustrations and in the book. Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted below: Throughout the book, "avalanch" was replaced with "avalanche". On page 56, the single quotation mark was removed from the block-quoted paragraph. On page 116, "denial of of" was replaced with "denial of".