To the average Occidental the Chinese stage appears a very queer institution with ridiculous customs. This is due largely to the fact that in the Chinese make-believe world the conventions differ from those employed by us on the stages where we mock life. We accept our own stage conventions as something so natural that habit permits us to forget the strangeness of the devices employed. How many Americans among those who have been under the spell of the realistic action of “The Bat” have thought of the fact that the characters were at all times moving about in rooms with only three walls, that darkness was symbolized by lights carried by the actors, that the attic in the country home of the astute spinster was lighted by footlights, and that an actor who had been killed appeared a moment later for a curtain call? And if in a play that has been pushed approximately to the extreme of realism, an unsophisticated rustic on his first visit to New York might discover the above-mentioned ridiculous customs, what might his comments be on the fact that Mephistopheles sings melodiously in encouraging Faust to fight for his life, that stage whispers are heard by every one in the house except the one person most in need of hearing them, that a flimsy canvas door can shut out a stout villain, or that the last words of a dying man reach to the very highest seat in the top gallery? Thus it would seem that any one who laughs at the conventions of the Chinese stage simply displays his provincialism. Our forefathers tolerated almost the identical conventions on the medieval stage, as I have shown at length in Chapter Nine. Moreover, it is a very striking fact that there is in many of our theaters at present an extreme reaction against a minute and pedantic imitation on the stage of the realities of everyday life. Because it is felt that too much attention to external things deadens the imagination of the spectators, stage managers of to-day are beginning to prefer once more a conventional presentation.