A country squire, whose hobby was horses, once told me that although at twenty he thought himself a good judge of a thoroughbred, after fifty more years of experience he hesitated a long while in determining a nag's good points. It is the same with the student of Shakespeare; the oftener he has read one of the poet's plays, and the more study he has given to it, the longer he hesitates to criticize. The art of the dramatist is too thorough and too subtle to be lightly discussed. To all stage-managers who wish to mend or improve Shakespeare I say: "Hands off! Produce this play as it is written or leave it alone. Don't take liberties with it; the man who does that does not understand his own limitations!" Let us uphold that there is but one rule to be followed when it becomes necessary to shorten one of the poet's plays; and that is to omit lines, but never an entire scene. Shakespeare, of all his contemporaries, unless it be Ford, gave to his dramas--especially to his later ones--unity of design; so that each scene has a relation to the whole play. But in the preparation of this stage-version of "King Lear" it must be admitted that no rule, no method, no love, nor respect has been shown; and, what is the least pardonable fault, no knowledge is apparent. Scenes and passages have been torn out of the play, just as children might tear up bank-notes, regardless of the value of the parts to the whole. No matter if the story to modern minds is unintelligible, the characters incoherent, and the ethics of the play unconvincing, the management presumes that, as everything in "King Lear" took place among the early Britons, eight hundred years before Christ, only the costumes and scenery of the producer can be expected to elucidate the barbarities of the play or its people. Stowed away in an odd corner of the drama, Shakespeare generally introduces some words to indicate his point of view, and, in regard to "King Lear," his view is thus expressed: "EDMUND: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune [often the surfeit of our own behaviour], we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion ... and all that we are evil in, by divine thrusting on" (Act I., Scene 2). And Shakespeare repeats the warning in "Coriolanus": "The gods be good unto us!... No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us," etc. (Act V., Scene 4).