It is the misfortune of the theatre that critics have almost always approached it, and entered it, with a defiant and challenging air. I have, during the eighteen years of my active critical service, met with and come to know at least fifty professional critics in America, in England and on the Continent, and among all this number there have been but four who have approached the theatre enthusiastically prejudiced in its favour--two of them asses. But between the one large group that has been critically hostile and the other smaller group that has been uncritically effervescent, I have encountered no sign of calm and reasoned compromise, no sign of frank and intelligent willingness to regard each and every theatre as a unit, and so to be appraised, instead of lumping together good and bad theatres alike and labelling the heterogeneous mass “the theatre.” There is no such thing as “the theatre.” There is this theatre, that theatre, and still that other theatre. Each is a unit. To talk of “the theatre” is to talk of the Greek theatre, the Elizabethan theatre and the modern theatre in one breath, or to speak simultaneously of the Grosses Schauspielhaus of Max Reinhardt and the Eltinge Theatre of Mr. A. H. Woods. “The theatre,” of course, has certain more or less minor constant and enduring conventions--at least, so it seems as far as we now can tell--but so, too, has chirography, yet we do not speak of “the chirography.” There are some theatres--I use the word in its proper restricted sense--that glorify drama and enhance its beauty; there are others that vitiate drama. But so also are there some men who write fine drama, and others who debase drama to mere fodder for witlings.... The Shakespeare of the theatre of Gordon Craig is vivid and brilliant beauty. Call it art or not art as you will--what does a label matter? The Molière of the theatre of Alexander Golovine is suggestive and exquisite enchantment. Call it art or not art as you will--what does a label matter? The Wagner of the opera house of Ludwig Sievert is triumphant and rapturous splendour. Call it anything you like--and again, what does a label matter? There are too many labels in the world. IV. THE PLACE OF ACTING IV. THE PLACE OF ACTING I “When Mr. Nathan says that acting is not an art, of course he is talking arrant rot--who could doubt it, after witnessing a performance by the great Duse?” So, the estimable actor, Mr. Arnold Daly. Whether acting is or is not an art, it is not my concern at the moment to consider, yet I quote the _riposte_ of Mr. Daly as perhaps typical of those who set themselves as defenders of the yea theory. It seems to me that if this is a satisfactory _touche_ no less satisfactory should be some such like rejoinder as: “When Mr. Nathan says that acting _is_ an art, of course he is talking arrant rot--who could doubt it, after witnessing a performance by Mr. Corse Payton.”