At other theatres an Author may try to assume the autocrat, but, unless he can be absolutely independent, and able to take his piece out of the theatre without damaging his chance of earning a livelihood, the attempt is only a ridiculous and palpable failure. True that times have changed, considerably for the better, since Albert Smith said that "there was only one person in the theatre lower than the call-boy, and that was the Author," yet, in spite of much improvement, a young Dramatist will still sympathize with the spirit of Albert Smith's observation; and, ordinarily, the most experienced Playwright, if not, as I have said, absolutely independent, has, in almost every instance, to accommodate himself to the exigencies of the theatre, and to the tempers of the Actors. From the moment he has a piece in rehearsal, there is no peace for him on the Stage. He is promised what he will never obtain; he has to accept just what he can get; he has to humour the ideas of others and sacrifice his own; he has to make the best of unintentional mistakes and deliberately intentional alterations; he has to accede to the Manager's date for producing the piece, and its first night of public performance is, in the majority of cases, really and truly only a dressed rehearsal, and, in some cases, it is the first real rehearsal the piece has had. Now nothing of this sort ought to take place at the Savoy. There Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan have only themselves to please, only themselves and their piece to consider; they are monarchs of all they Savoy--I should say "survey"--they are masters of the situation, and if they allow any piece of theirs to be produced in a hurry, with incomplete appointments, with inappropriate scenery, faulty dresses, or after insufficient rehearsal, on their own heads be it and on no one else's. The Actor-singers are only intelligent puppets in their Showman's hands, and the more faithfully they carry out the instructions given them by their masters, the greater their individual and collective chance of success. It delights me to see the precision of the action on the Stage of the Savoy, the result of a carefully-thought-out plan and well-regulated drill. The principals have been judiciously selected for the work, and they are suited by the two clever fellow-workers who, having taken their measure to a nicety, give them just what they can do, and no more; and who insist on their original conceptions being executed exactly according to their ideas. The result is that the ensemble is about the most effective thing in London--or in Paris for that matter--because the individuality of the Actor-singer is not destroyed, but is judiciously made use of, and worked up, as valuable material for the character he has to represent.