attempt as if it were speculating round a problem. How many English actresses, I wonder, would have been capable of dealing adequately with such a scene as that? I take it, not because it is a good scene, but because it affords so rudimentary a test of the capacity for acting. The test of the capacity for acting begins where words end; it is independent of words; you may take poor words as well as fine words; it is all the same. The embodying power, the power to throw open one's whole nature to an overcoming sensation, the power to render this sensation in so inevitable a way that others shall feel it: that is the one thing needful. It is not art, it is not even the beginning of art; but it is the foundation on which alone art can be built. The other day, in "Ulysses," there was only one piece of acting that was quite convincing: the acting of Mr. Brough as the Swineherd. It is a small part and an easy part, but it was perfectly done. Almost any other part would have been more striking and surprising if it had been done as perfectly, but no other part was done as perfectly. Mr. Brough has developed a stage-personality of his own, with only a limited range of emotion, but he has developed it until it has become a second nature with him. He has only to speak, and he may say what he likes; we accept him after the first word, and he remains what that first word has shown him to be. Mr. Tree, with his many gifts, his effective talents, all his taste, ambition, versatility, never produces just that effect: he remains interestingly aside from what he is doing; you see his brain working upon it, you enjoy his by-play; his gait, his studied gestures, absorb you; "How well this is done!" you say, and "How well that is done!" and, indeed, you get a complete picture out of his representation of that part: a picture, not a man. I am not sure that melodrama is not the hardest test of the actor: it is, at least, the surest. All the human emotions throng noisily together in the making of melodrama: they are left there, in their naked muddle, and they come to no good end; but there they are. To represent any primary emotion, and to be ineffective, is to fail in the fundamental thing. All actors should be sent to school in melodrama, as all dramatic authors should learn their trade there. THE PRICE OF REALISM