The patience with which the audience endures the misconduct of some of its members is surprising. We hear inarticulate noises of disapproval when people gossip in the stalls and occasionally somebody goes so far as to whisper "Don't talk"; the result is that the chatterers chatter rather more quietly for a little while, and soon are as noisy as before. Frequently some members laugh scornfully at pathetic passages moving the heart of most of the house, and this laughter is often due to a snobbish desire to show superiority to those who weep. We have heard something lately of a phrase about "collective psychology and the psychology of crowds." The phenomenon referred to very rarely has much effect in the London playhouses at the first night: on these occasions there are too many discordant elements. Most of the critics form non-conductors to the passage of what has been regarded as analogous to an electrical current, and their non-conductivity is very little greater than that of many of the people who receive complimentary tickets or have the honour of being on the first-night list. Perhaps the general public is unaware that the more fashionable theatres have a list of people to whom is accorded a preferential allotment of seats. Sometimes there is a momentary thrill; one feels distinctly that the audience is in unison, and that the pitch of feeling of the individual is heightened by the feelings of the crowd. These moments are generally caused by pieces of acting or by what is rarely contrived, and can only happen once in the history of a piece, a successful, effective surprise. As an instance, there was a unanimous gasp of surprise and pleasure at the brilliant _coup de théâtre_ with which John Oliver Hobbes ended a difficult scene in _The Ambassador_, and then came a prodigious outburst of applause. What a loss to our stage the premature death of that admirable novelist, who showed an amazing gift for the technique of the theatre. One reads not unfrequently accounts of an exhibition of this "collective psychology" in the playhouse, even in the London theatres. Some of such accounts are untrustworthy, and due to mere hysterical writing by those who profess to record them. No doubt the curious shyness of the English plays its part: a man will laugh, or clap his hands, or hiss, or "boo" when others are so doing, who from mere _mauvaise honte_--a convenient untranslatable term--would make no noise if alone. Perhaps one might safely say that the smaller the crowd the smaller relatively as well as absolutely the noise due to the exhibition of the emotion of its component parts. This, however, has little to do with the phenomenon in question, which very rarely operates in London, because the upper classes think it ungenteel to express emotion in public.