Another thing. The _répétition générale_ is a trial performance. Effects which don’t “tell,” incidents which shock or provoke ridicule, are often cut out next morning, so that the play actually presented at the _première_ differs, sometimes vitally, from that presented to the critics, so that the “notice” not seldom describes and criticizes various matters which the public are never shown. If the English manager imitated this example—and as a practical man of business he would be sure to imitate it—the unhappy critic after writing his notice would have to go to the play again, before printing it, in order to assure himself that it still represented the facts. It would have to be two bites at a cherry. Now, new plays are often produced on two nights running, in which case two bites at the same cherry would be impossible. In the most favourable case, two successive visits to a play would be a heavy addition to the burden of life. But would criticism benefit in quality? I venture to doubt that, too. I think that theatrical “notices” are all the better for being piping hot. One’s impressions of the play are stronger, more definite in outline, richer in colour, when one leaves the theatre than next morning, when they have had time to cool and to fade into “second thoughts,” which in criticism are far from being always the best. When Jules Lemaître went from the _Débats_ to the _Deux Mondes_ he found that his thoughts about the play, instead of maturing with the longer interval for writing, were apt to become simply vague and general. If the play happened to be one “of ideas,” not so much harm was done, because ideas stick in the mind, and are revolved there. But a play of emotion or a play dependent on fine shades of acting is bound to suffer by the gradual waning of the first impression. And my own experience is that in writing about a play of which one has lost the first hot impression, and which one has to recall by an effort of memory, the proportions get altered, so that the criticism is thrown out of gear. Some point, a mere minor point, perhaps, that attracted one’s attention, remains in the mind and assumes an undue importance in relation to other details that have faded. I went to see _Grierson’s Way_ revived the other night after a quarter of a century. When I asked myself beforehand what I remembered of it, I could only answer that I had been originally much struck by its merits, but that the only one of these merits that remained in my mind was a conversation wherein, under a surface of small talk, two people were revealing depths of tragic emotion. I had forgotten the characters, the _motif_, the very story. And when my conversation turned up (in Act III.), though I was as delighted as ever, I saw, of course, that it was only an item, not the sole memorable thing in the play.