Mme. Nazimova has been quoted as saying that she would never act a play in verse, because in speaking verse she could not be natural. But whether an actor may be natural or not depends entirely upon the kind of verse the author has given him to speak. Three kinds of blank verse are known in English literature,--lyric, narrative, and dramatic. By lyric blank verse I mean verse like that of Tennyson's _Tears, Idle Tears_; by narrative, verse like that of Mr. Stephen Phillips's _Marpessa_ or Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_; by dramatic, verse like that of the murder scene in _Macbeth_. The Elizabethan playwrights wrote all three kinds of blank verse, because their drama was a platform drama and admitted narrative and lyric as well as dramatic elements. But because of the development in modern times of the physical conditions of the theatre, we have grown to exclude from the drama all non-dramatic elements. Narrative and lyric, for their own sakes, have no place upon the modern stage; they may be introduced only for a definite dramatic purpose. Only one of the three kinds of blank verse that the Elizabethan playwrights used is, therefore, serviceable on the modern stage. But our poets, because of inexperience in the theatre, insist on writing the other two. For this reason, and for this reason only, do modern actors like Mme. Nazimova complain of plays in verse. Mr. Percy Mackaye's verse in _Jeanne d'Arc_, for example, was at certain moments lyric, at most moments narrative, and scarcely ever dramatic in technical mold and manner. It resembled the verse of Tennyson more nearly than it resembled that of any other master; and Tennyson was a narrative, not a dramatic, poet. It set a value on literary expression for its own sake rather than for the purpose of the play; it was replete with elaborately lovely phrases; and it admitted the inversions customary in verse intended for the printed page. But I am firm in the belief that verse written for the modern theatre should be absolutely simple. It should incorporate no words, however beautiful, that are not used in the daily conversation of the average theatre-goer; it should set these words only in their natural order, and admit no inversions whatever for the sake of the line; and it should set a value on expression, never for its own sake, but solely for the sake of the dramatic purpose to be accomplished in the scene. Verse such as this would permit of every rhythmical variation known in English prosody, and through the appeal of its rhythm would offer the dramatist opportunities for emotional effect that prose would not allow him; but at the same time it could be spoken with entire naturalness by actors as ultra-modern as Mme. Nazimova.