Among all innovations on the stage, perhaps the most far-reaching in its effect on dramatic construction was the act-drop. Elizabethan dramatists had to round off a scene to a conclusion, for there was no kindly curtain to cover retreat from a deadlock. The art of modern play-writing is to arrest the action suddenly upon a thrilling situation, and leave the characters between the horns of a dilemma. At a critical moment the act-drop comes down; and after the necessary interval goes up again, showing that the characters have in the meantime somehow got out of the difficulty. This leaves much to the fancy, but does not feed the imagination. This leading up to a terminal climax, a "curtain," is but the appetite for the feast, and not the food itself. It assumes that the palate of the audience is depraved in its taste, and that it is one for which the best work is perhaps not best suited; but it is a form of art, and plays can be written after this form, and well written. Apart, however, from the question as to the theatrical gain of such a crude device as a "curtain," Shakespeare wrote with consummate art to show the tide of human affairs, its flow and its ebb, and his constructive plan is particularly unsuited to the act-drop. Upon one of Shakespeare's plays the curtain falls like the knife of a guillotine, and the effect is similar to ending a piece of music abruptly at its highest note, simply for the sake of creating some startling impression. The way in which some modern managers, both here and in America, set about producing a play of Shakespeare's seems to be as follows: Choose your play, and be sure to note carefully in what country the incidents take place. Having done this, send artists to the locality to make sketches of the country, of its streets, its houses, its landscape, of its people, and of their costumes. Tell your artists that they must accurately reproduce the colouring of the sky, of the foliage, of the evening shadows, of the moonlight, of the men's hair and the women's eyes; for all these details are important to the proper understanding of Shakespeare's play. Send, moreover, your leading actor and actress to spend some weeks in the neighbourhood that they may become acquainted with the manners, the gestures, the emotions of the residents, for these things also are necessary to the proper understanding of the play. Then, when you have collected, at vast expense, labour, and research, this interesting information about a country of which Shakespeare was possibly entirely ignorant, thrust all this extraneous knowledge into your representation, whether it fit the context or not; let it justify the rearrangement of your play, the crowding of your stage with supernumeraries, the addition of incidental songs and glees, to say nothing of inappropriateness of costume and misconception of character, until the play, if it does not cease to be intelligible or consistent, thrives only by virtue of its