the accomplishment of these aims, it is bound by no laws that art is not bound by. There is but one rule: there are no rules. Art laughs at locksmiths. It has been a favourite diversion of critics since Aristotle’s day to argue that drama is drama, whether one reads it from a printed page or sees it enacted in a theatre. Great drama, they announce, is great drama whether it ever be acted or not; “it speaks with the same voice in solitude as in crowds”; and “all the more then”--again I quote Mr. Spingarn--“will the drama itself ‘even apart from representation and actors,’ as old Aristotle puts it, speak with its highest power to the imagination fitted to understand and receive it.” Upon this point of view much of the academic criticism of drama has been based. But may we not well reply that, for all the fact that Shakespeare would still be the greatest dramatist who ever lived had he never been played in the theatre, so, too, would Bach still be the greatest composer who ever lived had his compositions never been played at all? If drama is not meant for actors, may we not also argue that music is not meant for instruments? Are not such expedients less sound criticism than clever evasion of sound criticism: a frolicsome and agreeable straddling of the æsthetic see-saw? There is the printed drama--criticize it. There is the same drama acted--criticize it. Why quibble? Sometimes, as in the case of “Gioconda” and Duse, they are one. Well and good. Sometimes, as in the case of “Chantecler” and Maude Adams, they are not one. Well and good. But where, in either case, the confusion that the critics lay such stress upon? These critics deal not with theories, but with mere words. They take two dozen empty words and adroitly seek therewith to fashion a fecund theory. The result is--words. “Words which,” said Ruskin, “if they are not watched, will do deadly work sometimes. There are masked words droning and skulking about us just now ... (there never were so many, owing to the teaching of catechisms and phrases at school instead of human meanings) ... there never were creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words: they are the unjust stewards of men’s ideas....” III. THE PLACE OF THE THEATRE III. THE PLACE OF THE THEATRE I