There was once a gentleman, lately appointed to assist in the control of the exuberance of plays, who stated in public print that there had been no plays of any value written since 1885, entirely denying that this new drama was any better than the old drama, cut to the pattern of Scribe and Sardou. Certainly, novelty is not necessarily improvement. Comparison must be left to history. But it is just as well to remember that we are not born connoisseurs of plays. Without trying the new we shall not know if it is better than the old. To appreciate even drama at its true value, a man must be educated just a little. When I first went to the National Gallery in London I was struck dumb with love of Landseer's stags and a Greuze damsel with her cheek glued to her own shoulder, and became voluble from admiration of the large Turner and the large Claude hung together in that perpetual prize-fight! At a second visit I discovered Sir Joshua's "Countess of Albemarle" and old Crome's "Mousehold Heath," and did not care quite so much for Landseer's stags. And again and again I went, and each time saw a little differently, a little clearer, until at last my time was spent before Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," Botticelli's "Portrait of a Young Man," the Francescas, Da Messina's little "Crucifixion," the Uccello battle picture (that great test of education), the Velasquez (?) "Admiral," Hogarth's "Five Servants," and the immortal "Death of Procris." Admiration for stags and maidens--where was it? This analogy of pictures does not pretend that our "new drama" is as far in front of the old as the "Death of Procris" is in front of Landseer's stags. Alas, no! It merely suggests that taste is encouraged by an open mind, and is a matter of gradual education. To every man his sincere opinion! But before we form opinions, let us all walk a little through our National Gallery of drama, with inquiring eye and open mind, to see and know for ourselves. For, _to know_, a man cannot begin too young, cannot leave off too old. And always he must have a mind which feels it will never know enough. In this way alone he _will_, perhaps, know something before he dies. And even if he require of the drama only buffoonery, or a digestive for his dinner, why not be able to discern good buffoonery from bad, and the pure digestive from the drug? One is, I suppose, prejudiced in favour of this "new drama" of sincerity, of these poor productions of the last fifteen years, or so. It may be, indeed, that many of them will perish and fade away. But they are, at all events, the expression of the sincere moods of men who ask no more than to serve an art, which, heaven knows, has need of a little serving. * * * * * So much for the principles underlying the advance of the drama. But what about the chances of drama itself under the new conditions which will obtain when the war ends?