_The Romantic Age_ appeared first at the Comedy, and (like _Mr. Pim_) found, in its need, a home at The Playhouse. Miss Gladys Cooper has a charming way of withdrawing into a nursing home whenever I want a theatre, but I beg her not to make a habit of it. My plays can be spared so much more easily than she. By the way, a word about Melisande. Many of the critics said that nobody behaved like that nowadays. I am terrified at the thought of arguing with them, for they can always reduce me to blushes with a scornful, "My dear man, you _can't_ do that in a _play_!" And when they tell me to remember what Strindberg said in '93 (if he were alive then; I really don't know) or what Aristotle wrote in--no, I shan't even guess at Aristotle, well, then, I want to burst into tears, my ignorance is so profound. So, very humbly, I just say now that, when Melisande talks and behaves in a certain way, I do not mean that a particular girl exists (Miss Jones, of 999 Bedford Park) who talks and behaves like this, but I do mean that there is a type of girl who, in her heart, secretly, _thinks_ like this. If, from your great knowledge of the most secret places of a young girl's heart, you tell me that there is no such type, then I shall only smile. But if you inform me sternly that a dramatist has no business to express an attitude in terms of an actress, then you reduce me to blushes again. For I really know nothing about play-writing, and I am only sustained by two beliefs. The first is that rules are always made for the other people; the second is that, if a play by me is not obviously by me, and as obviously not by anybody else, then (obviously) I had no business to write it. Of the one-act plays, _The Camberley Triangle_ and _The Stepmother_, nothing much need be said. The former was played at the Coliseum; the latter, written for Miss Winifred Emery, was deemed by the management too serious for that place of amusement. This, however, was to the great advantage of the play, for now it has appeared only at Charity _matinées_ with an "all-star" cast. As before, the plays are printed in the order in which they were written; in this case between October 1918 and June 1920. May the reader get as much enjoyment from them as I had in their writing. But no; that is plainly impossible. A.A. MILNE. MAKE-BELIEVE A CHILDREN'S PLAY IN A PROLOGUE AND THREE ACTS _Make-Believe_ was first produced at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, on December 24, 1918. The chief parts were played by Marjory Holman, Jean Cadell, Rosa Lynd, Betty Chester, Roy Lennol, John Barclay, Kinsey Peile, Stanley Drewitt, Ivan Berlyn, and Herbert Marshall--several parts each. MAKE-BELIEVE PROLOGUE