The production on two successive nights of two plays so violently contrasted in method as Mr. Harwood’s _Grain of Mustard Seed_ and Mr. Galsworthy’s _Skin Game_—the first a play mainly of talk, the second a play entirely of action—sets one thinking. According to the orthodox canons, the second is the right, nay, the only method. Drama, we are told, is a conflict of wills and all the interest is in the action, the external manifestation of the conflict. There should be just enough talk to carry that on and not an idle word should be spoken. Diderot, indeed, professed to think that words were almost superfluous, and went to the play with cotton-wool in his ears in order to judge its merits on the dumb show; yet he wrote the most wordy and tedious plays. And there is, or was, a certain school of theatrical criticism which forever quotes the old Astley maxim, “Cut the cackle and come to the ’osses”—which was no doubt a most appropriate maxim, for quadrupeds. Others have mistaken action for physical, preferably violent action—Maldonado sweeping the crockery off the chimney-piece or Lady Audley pushing her husband down the well—and have ignored the fact that talk also may be action, “and much the noblest,” as Dryden says. “Every alteration or crossing of a design, every new-sprung passion, and turn of it, is a part of the action, and much the noblest, except we perceive nothing to be action, till they come to blows; as if the painting of the hero’s mind were not more properly the poet’s work than the strength of his body.” How often we were told in the old days that Dumas _fils_ and Ibsen were too “talky,” when their talk was mainly psychological action. But this demand for action and nothing but action, so persistently uttered of late years, would deprive the world of much of its best entertainment. Apply it to Congreve, “cut the cackle” of his plays, and you come to the ’osses, spavined hacks, of plots childishly complicated and perfunctorily wound up. Would any one of taste suppress the “cackle” of Sheridan’s scandalous college? Is not, in short, much of the pleasure of comedy in resting from the action, in getting away from it, in the relief of good talk? Yes, and often enough the pleasure of tragedy, too. There is a bustling, melodramatic action in _Hamlet_. But with what relief Hamlet gets away from his revenge “mission” at every moment, puts it out of sight, forgets it! His interview with the players and advice to them on histrionics, his chat with the gravedigger, what else are these but the sheer delight of good talk? For him the joy of living is the joy of talking, and with the chance of these before him his revenge-mission may go hang!