Towards Barrie as a playwright _Punch_ was at first much less benevolent than he had been to Barrie the novelist, and Mr. Granville Barker's plays depressed more than they impressed him. But for rather more than half the period under review _Punch's_ critiques of plays were primarily a medium for jocular comment, for fun at all costs, for explosions of puns. As a devotee of cheerfulness he resented gloom; as a professional humorist he found himself out of touch with a good deal of the new humour, the new whimsicality, the new wit. These editorial limitations were made good by the oblique methods of parody adopted with brilliant results by some of his collaborators, but it is not too much to say that theatrical criticism was never so impartially and tactfully conducted as under the fifth editor of _Punch_, the only one who had never written for the stage. Turning from the creative aspect of the drama to the organization and regulation of the theatre, we have to notice two important factors, one of which was increasingly active throughout these years. Societies for the production of new, and the revival of old plays on a non-commercial basis were already in existence, but an impetus was given to the movement by the establishment of the Independent Theatre by Mr. Grein in the 'nineties, and the Stage Society and other similar bodies have carried it on with undiminished vigour down to the present time. These activities did not always commend themselves to _Punch_, but at least he did not ignore them. [Illustration: PEEPS INTO BIBLICAL THEATRICAL LIFE Arrival of Actor-Manager, Leading Lady, and other members of the cast.] Then there was the Censorship. The Lord Chamberlain intervened pretty frequently in the 'nineties where plays dealing with Scriptural motives came under his scrutiny. Maeterlinck's _Mona Vanna_ was barred on moral grounds, and in 1907 the apparently blameless _Mikado_ was temporarily withdrawn for political reasons. It must be admitted that in these years _Punch_ was less inclined to criticize these interventions when they were aimed at the frank discussion of disagreeable themes than when they sought to restrict the unseemly vivacities of the Variety Stage--witness his continued hostility to the L.C.C. in regard to their licensing policy and his comments on the Puritan protests against the programme at the Empire in 1894. An altered mood, however, is distinctly revealed in a cartoon in 1907 where the Censor is shown preferring the claims of musical comedy to those of the serious drama, and _Punch's_ sympathies are clearly with the latter. Since then, though Scriptural and political plays have not always escaped the ban, restrictions on the didactic drama, where it deals with the "social evil," have been largely withdrawn in deference to modern conceptions of the needs of education and the responsibilities of the State. [Sidenote: _English Plays and Foreign Players_]