_Mr. Gilbert:_ Then don't do so. As much light in the front as you like. Candles on the stage have a wonderful effect, I know. They would light up the abbey, no doubt; but even stage candles wouldn't light up the heavens beyond. A great objection was taken, both by the press and a large section of the public, to the title of _Ruddygore_, and the opera itself was not favourably criticised. About a week after its production, Gilbert turned up at the Savoy and said: "I propose altering the title of the piece, and calling it _Kensington Gore; or, Not so Good as The Mikado_." Gilbert very properly objects to any business being interpolated without his sanction, especially if its sole object is merely to raise a laugh, and thereby stop the action of the piece. In _The Mikado_, Miss Jessie Bond and I were kneeling side by side, with our heads on the floor, and she used to give me a push, and I accordingly rolled completely over. Gilbert asked me if I would mind omitting that action on my part. I replied: "Certainly, if you wish it; but I get an enormous laugh by it." "So you would if you sat on a pork-pie," replied he. It is a very easy thing to get a laugh on the stage, and a very difficult thing to sacrifice it. It has amused me intensely when some of the gentlemen who play my parts on the country tour inform me of certain laughs which they get when _they_ play. Some of them have even kindly advised me of "new business" which they have inserted. I quite agree with Mr. Gilbert in reference to the "pork-pie" method of obtaining laughter; and I have often stated that my ambition is, to play in a farce in which there is a bandbox placed carefully on an arm-chair, and that the curtain should finally fall _without_ my having sat on the box in question. I have no intention of dwelling on the incidents attending the production of each of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, but mine has been rather an odd career. I have been on the stage over ten years, and have only played regularly nine parts, including the Judge in _Trial by Jury_. At a great benefit _matinee_, I have sometimes taken some small part, but that I count as nothing: but of the above I have, in one or two of the pieces, played the same part night after night, and two performances on Saturday, for a year and a half; while Sir Joseph Porter, in _H.M.S. Pinafore_, I played incessantly for nearly two years. I have been asked if long runs affect the nerves. I do not think they affect the nerves so much as they affect the performance. Constant repetition begets mechanism, and that is a dreadful enemy to contend against. I try hard to fight against it personally, and I believe I succeed. There is one thing I always do--I always play my best to a bad house; for I think it a monstrous thing that an actor should slur through his work because the stalls are empty, and thereby punish those who _have_ come for the fault of those who have _not_.