That was what I heard at the first dress rehearsal of _False Gods_, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree speaking with gesture to match his speaking. He had been watching the rehearsal with obvious satisfaction up to that. All had gone well and smoothly. In the first stage-setting his certain eye took in the fact that there was one false god too many on the terrace of the great Egyptian house. The bulk of that god spoiled the sky and the beautiful vista of the Nile. With a brief iconoclastic phrase that god was abolished. Then the races of Egypt took Sir Herbert Tree's attention. "Too pale, too pale! Something more of the Nile mud in your faces!" The crowd of "supers" were prompt with grease-paint to make their colour more Egyptian. But the producer was not quite satisfied, and mounting the stage took himself a stick of paint and, working on their faces like an artist at a canvas, tinted two "supers" to the proper shade of Egyptian darkness. Having so arranged the gods and the faces of men, Sir Herbert Tree turned to the firmament. The sky must have more light here, less light there. "It must get the burnished effect." In time, after many experiments in limelight, it does. But those are only details, which the chief of the theatre attends to between snatches of conversation, never dropping for a moment his air, a little that of a philosopher, a little that of a Beau Nash. When, however, in the great scene where the images of the false gods are torn down, the mob on the stage tears with but little noise and no rage, Sir Herbert Tree is moved out of himself. In a moment he is on the stage with the command, "You must go mad!" and giving a workmanlike imitation of what he wants. The "supers" accordingly go mad and all is peace again, and there is assurance that the big scene will "go" as it should. A curious study it was--the finishing touches being put on to a great London production. The final result must be such art as imitates Nature and yet creates illusion. Every detail has to be most carefully considered and revised again and again to fit harmoniously in with the whole scheme. The colour of a dress, the tint of a face, the shape of an eye, the placing of a flower or an ornament is changed and changed again until there is the harmony which apes perfection. Above all, the lights must be schemed--a little more purple, or green, or grey, or rose-red, or yellow; a softening here, a heightening there. A thousand-and-one combinations of light are tested until the right one is hit upon to suggest mystery, joy, sorrow, dawn, evening, superstition, cruelty, as the case may be. Much of the story the audience will read so clearly on the stage on the first night is written by the lights. The greatest trouble of the producer has been to get those lights right, not only for each scene, but for each minute of the scene, for with every phase of the play the lights must change.