To the true dramatist the players are as the colours on the palette, the instruments in the orchestra--or, perhaps, the players of them--the stone of the sculptor; their task is to give bodily form to his ideas, clothes and flesh to the "soul" of his drama, and, as far as possible, to efface themselves in doing their duty. The player, on the other hand, regards the dramatist as someone intended to write splendid parts for him--parts in which, to use the stock phrase, he "sees himself"--sees _himself_. Unfortunately the dramatists have, on the whole, been the sufferers, the slaves. Sardou enslaved himself to Bernhardt; there are grounds for thinking that but for this slavery he might have been a great dramatist and not merely a rich, supremely skilful play fabricator. For a long time the players have had the upper hand, mainly because of the servility of the dramatists, but there are signs of a change. Already the "ten or twelve subsidiary actors" phrase is becoming out of date. We have seen play after play at the Court with parts of different degrees of importance, but hardly any "subsidiary" characters in the sense in which Yvette Guilbert uses the term. There are moments when the letter of Guilbert seems a joke or a hoax. One does not like to think that she said, "The true comedian finds his success in himself, and can do without the dramatic author. He easily utilizes his own comic or tragic gifts, as is witnessed in Shakespeare, Molière, and a hundred others." To think that we do not know whether Shakespeare was "a true comedian," and that it is not unlikely that he was a poor actor! The lady is wise not to attempt to name the "hundred others" presumably _ejusdem generis_ with Shakespeare and Molière. "There have always been, since the beginning of the ages, mimics and improvisators who did without the text of others." Possibly this is true but it does not follow that there are many players who could hold an audience by their mimicry or improvisations; not a few of the greatest actors and actresses might starve if they had to rely upon their own ideas. It is even notorious that some of our most illustrious actors have had their brilliant after-dinner impromptu speeches written for them. After reading the whole letter one may hint that Guilbert's own ideas might not serve her very well if she tried to appear as improvisator. CHAPTER XIII MISCELLANEOUS Finance in Plays