The recent realism seen on our own stage shows a deadness of wit in our life--the sad unresponsive seriousness of persons who do not habitually live in the world of imagination. That world seems flat to them. Nevertheless, the same persons will, with a little encouragement, begin to enjoy humor, and trust poetry. Put them where they have no critical responsibility and they will blossom into enjoyment. O blessed amateurs! I wish someone would write a book and show that the whole history of art has been but the history of amateurs; and that every revival of painting, drama, music, architecture, and poetry has been due to them. They cannot, perhaps, make great music themselves, but they hand the lyre to Apollo. They have not the training, but they have the passion that finds talent in others and protects the flame while it is young. They suspect the secret of a lost art and go in search of it as for the Golden Fleece. And amateurs, yes the amateurs are the persons who will keep the drama from ever quite losing all relation to its ancestor--its good genius--the charade. The great aim of any drama is to make all the audience and all the actors think of the same thing at the same moment during the entire evening. The “argument,” as they used to call it, is the main thing. It is astonishing what a good name this is for the exposition of ideas that takes place in a very good play either ancient or modern. The argument is what both audience and actors breathlessly follow. We err only when we begin to define what the argument is. It seems, in truth, to be something too subtle for analysis. In some plays we think we find it in the plot, in others in the characters, in others in the language, and so forth. But there is hardly a definition of it which some famous example will not instantly confute. There is, for instance, a charm that comes out of As You Like It, and which for three hundred years has made audiences consent to sit through its three hours of happy trifling. That charm is the “argument” of As You Like It. You cannot state the charm. It is as subtle as the ether and as real as the power of light that moves across the ether. Our senses are not at fault, but only our theories. There is a fluctuating mystery about all that happens in the theatre, and perhaps this indefinable power is what most attaches us to the place. It is not a place of learning, nor of scholarship, nor of information or ethics, nor even of such flights of mind as accurate thought can always follow. It is a place of enchantment. NORWAY.