PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI Volume 108, February 23rd, 1895. _edited by Sir Francis Burnand_ THE O. W. VADE MECUM. _Question._ Is it easy to become a dramatist? _Answer._ As easy as anything else. _Q._ What are the requisites? _A._ A West-end theatre, a first-rate troupe of artists, a trained audience, and a personality. _Q._ What do you mean by a trained audience? _A._ An assembly accustomed to accept everything as wit, and to laugh at anything. _Q._ Would such a gathering consider it amusing for someone to say "Flirting with one's husband is quite indelicate: it is like washing one's clean linen in public"? _A._ Certainly; and would find much to admire in a dialogue given over for something like ten minutes to an exhaustive consideration of muffins. _Q._ And what do you mean by a personality? _A._ More or less--an _insouciant_ manner, and a rather startling button-hole. _Q._ Does the personality require a speech or a cigarette? _A._ Neither now, as both have ceased to be the fashion. _Q._ Given the requisites you have specified for creating a dramatist, what is the product? _A._ A trivial comedy for serious people. _Q._ Why give a play such a title? _A._ Why not? _Q._ Can a comedy occupying two or three hours in representation be entirely trivial? _A._ Not to the members of the audience. _Q._ And are they serious people? _A._ That depends upon the condition of their brains and their capacity of enjoyment. _Q._ Does the trivial comedy require a plot? _A._ Nothing to speak of. _Q._ Or characterisation? _A._ No, for the same kind of dialogue will do for all the company--for London ladies, country girls, justices of the peace, doctors of divinity, maid-servants, and confidential butlers. _Q._ What sort of dialogue? _A._ Inverted proverbs and renovated paradoxes. _Q._ Is this kind of dialogue entirely new? _A._ Not entirely, as something rather like it has been heard at the Savoy for the last ten or twenty years. _Q._ But is it good enough for a British Public? _A._ Quite good enough. They will laugh when a London lady expresses surprise at finding flowers growing in the country, and roar when they hear the retort, that plants are as common in the provinces as people in town. _Q._ But surely this vein of sarcasm, satire, or whatever it is, will some day be worked out. What can the dramatist then do? _A._ Act upon precedent, and try something else. * * * * * [Illustration: A PURIST IN ENGLISH. "YOU CALLED ME VERY _LATE_ THIS MORNING, JENKINSON!" "YES, SIR, I'M SORRY TO SAY I _OVERLAID_ MYSELF!"] * * * * * TONING IT DOWN. (_See the Daily Papers of Last Week._) JAPANESE VERSION. CHINESE VERSION.