Hardly less important is Mr Benson's new-old principle of "casting" a play of Shakespeare. Not only in the leading roles of Shakespeare's masterpieces, but in subordinate parts throughout the range of his work, the highest abilities of the actor can find some scope for employment. A competent knowledge of the poet's complete work is needed to bring this saving truth home to those who are engaged in presenting Shakespearean drama on the stage. An actor hardly realises the real force of the doctrine until he has had experience of the potentialities of a series of the smaller characters by making practical endeavours to interpret them. Adequate opportunities of the kind are only accessible to members of a permanent company, whose energies are absorbed in the production of the Shakespearean drama constantly and in its variety, and whose programme is untrammelled by the poisonous system of "long runs." Shakespearean actors should drink deep of the Pierian spring. They should be graduates in Shakespeare's university; and, unlike graduates of other universities, they should master not merely formal knowledge, but a flexible power of using it. Mr Benson's company is, I believe, the only one at present in existence in England which confines almost all its efforts to the acting of Shakespeare. In the course of its twenty-four years' existence its members have interpreted in the theatre no less than thirty of Shakespeare's plays.[21] The natural result is that Mr Benson and his colleagues have learned in practice the varied calls that Shakespearean drama makes upon actors' capacities. [Footnote 21: Mr Benson, writing to me on 13th January 1906, gives the following list of plays by Shakespeare which he has produced:--_Antony and Cleopatra_, _As You Like It_, _The Comedy of Errors_, _Coriolanus_, _Hamlet_, _Henry IV. (Parts 1 and 2)_, _Henry V._, _Henry VI. (Parts 1, 2, and 3)_, _Henry VIII._, _Julius Caesar_, _King John_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_, _The Merchant of Venice_, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Much Ado About Nothing_, _Othello_, _Pericles_, _Richard II._, _Richard III._, _Romeo and Juliet_, _The Taming of the Shrew_, _The Tempest_, _Timon of Athens_, _Twelfth Night_, and _A Winter's Tale_. Phelps's record only exceeded Mr Benson's by one. He produced thirty-one of Shakespeare's plays in all, but he omitted _Richard II._, and the three parts of _Henry VI._, which Mr Benson has acted, while he included _Love's Labour's Lost_, _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _All's Well that Ends Well_, _Cymbeline_, and _Measure for Measure_, which Mr Benson, so far, has eschewed. Mr Phelps and Mr Benson are at one in avoiding _Titus Andronicus_ and _Troilus and Cressida_.]