We, the audience, must follow each step of a play with full belief in that step, but where the dramatist’s skill comes in is in being able to make of himself such a glamorous and subtle liar that what he feels to be true becomes the truth. It is the same with any of the arts of the theater; our skillfully placed lamps give us a feeling of sunlight, but they are not the sun. The great actor doesn’t die before your eyes, but he seems to die, just as he doesn’t live, he only seems to live. For a while, here in America, we playwrights fell very much under the Russian influence and rather wandered about in a fog. “Why?” we asked, “should this play be a failure? Isn’t it true?” The answer was of course that the probability is that if it had not been quite so laboriously true it wouldn’t have been quite such a bore. Bad smells are true, rainbows are lies. No man has ever put wisdom into simple and understandable words better than Shakespeare did and Hamlet’s advice to the players remains a marvelous guide both to the actor and the dramatist. “Hold the mirror up to nature” but show it reflected—a mirage. [Illustration: OWEN DAVIS, JR. Actor (_Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, Chicago_) ] [Illustration: DONALD DAVIS Playwright (_Photograph by White Studio_) ] 12. I have often been asked what was the most valuable trait in the equipment of the dramatist and I always answer, “Courage.” I put that ahead of everything but genius, and genius is to me just an expression, like “plovers’ eggs.” I’ve often read of “plovers’ eggs,” but up to now I’ve never eaten any. I think I know personally all of the dramatists of America and many of the best of England. I am sure that there are more able and talented men and women writing for the stage to-day than ever before, but Eugene O’Neill is the only one I know with what I would admit to be genius. I don’t always like Mr. O’Neill’s plays and I never like all of any of them, but there is always something under them that the rest of us don’t get. To me he is a mile above the rest of us.