Old Mole read it, and found it clever, amusing, but sterilizing and exhausting, and, in its essence, he could not find that it was very different from "Lossie Loses" or the contrivances of the Butcher repertory. It was just as unimaginative. It had come into existence, not from any spiritual need, but entirely to rebut Butcherdom. Butcherdom shadowed it. The author in writing his play seemed first of all to have thought what would happen in a Butcher entertainment in order to decide on something different. He had not moved from Butcher back to life, but had run from Butcher down a blind alley. And the result was an almost brilliant hotchpotch with a strong savor of hatred and contempt and the tartness of isolation. Contempt for Butcher might be its strongest motive, but alone it could not account for it. Old Mole sought loyally for the best, but could find nothing nobler than the desire for admiration. The author was not scrupulous, nor was he ingenious; his bait for reputation was the ancient and almost infallible trick of measuring his cleverness by the stupidity of others. It lacked theatrical effectiveness and therefore it was impossible to get its meaning or even a drift of it into Matilda's head. She learned her lines like a parrot, delivered them like a parrot--(thoroughly to the satisfaction of the producer)--looked charming in her expensive gowns and attracted the notice of the critics. The author told an interviewer that his play was a masterpiece of its kind, and that Matilda was one of the most remarkable actresses on the English stage. The piece ran for its eight matinées and was then heard of no more, but to Old Mole it had much value. It set him wondering. The stage had nothing to show but the false emotions of Butcherdom and the absence of emotion of the "intellectuals." The theater must express the life of the country or it could not continue to exist, as it indubitably did. There was always a new playhouse being built. Money was poured into the theater through the stagedoor and through the box-office, but its best efforts were shown in childish fancy. It was at its healthiest and least odiously pretentious in the presentation of melodrama, with its rigid and almost idiotic right and wrong, its stupid caricature of the workings of the human heart. If it had a tradition, melodrama was its only representative. The plays of Shakespeare were melodrama in the hands of a man of genius. Without genius the national drama was heavy and lumpish, stolidly clinging to unquestioned and untested values, looking for no higher rewards in life than riches and public esteem.