Mr. George P. Goodale, a good citizen and an honest taxpayer, was lately accorded a great banquet in honor of his fifty years of continuous service as dramatic critic to the _Detroit Free Press_. At the banquet, it was said, repeated, and emphasized that, in all his half-century as a critic of the drama, Mr. Goodale had never made a single enemy. Where, than in this banquet and its import, a smarter satire on the American notion of what constitutes dramatic criticism? XXII The hero of a Broadway play may not be bald. This would seem, in the Broadway drama, to be the first rule of heroism and, with heroism, of intelligence and appeal. So, Julius Caesar, Bismarck, George Washington, Napoleon and Shakespeare would be low villains. XXIII It is a favourite challenge of the average Broadway playwright to the dramatic critic that if the latter knows so much about plays, why doesn’t he write one himself. The same question might be asked of the average Broadway playwright. XXIV The financial success of the Broadway play is conditioned on the proportion of theatergoers who believe that singeing keeps the hair from falling out and that the American Indians were accustomed to use the word “heap” before every adjective. The last season was the most successful Broadway has known in years. XXV It took Molière and Sheridan, as it now takes Shaw and Bahr, years to fashion their comedies. And yet, when all is said and done, what is funnier, what provokes a louder laughter, than the mere articulation of the name Gustav? XXVI Literature is an art wherein one observes the effects of the thematic action upon the protagonist’s mind. Drama is an art wherein one observes the effects of the thematic action upon the protagonist’s heart. Burlesque is an art wherein one observes the effects of the thematic action upon the protagonist’s trousers-seat. XXVII “Trying it on the dog”--a phrase referring to the trying out of a play in the provinces before bringing it into the metropolis. In other words, testing the effect of the play upon an intelligent community to predetermine, by its lack of success there, its subsequent prosperity in New York. XXVIII The so-called “laughs” in an American musical show must, if they would “get over,” be devised in such a manner and constructed of such basic materials that they shall be within the scope of the intelligence of persons who can neither read nor write. This is why nine-tenths of the persons in a Broadway audience fall out of their chairs with mirth when anybody on the stage refers to whiskers as alfalfa or when a character is named the Duc de Gorgonzola. XXIX Royalties.--The percentage of the gross receipts which playwrights get from producers, after lawsuits. XXX