This emphasis of stage illusion is fraught with certain dangers to the art of acting. In the modern picture-play the lines themselves are often of such minor importance that the success or failure of the piece depends little on the reading of the words. Many young actors, therefore, cannot get that rigid training in the art of reading which could be secured in the stock companies of the generation past. Poor reading is the one great weakness of contemporary acting. I can think of only one actor on the American stage to-day whose reading of both prose and verse is always faultless. I mean Mr. Otis Skinner, who secured his early training playing minor parts with actors of the "old school." It has become possible, under present conditions, for young actresses ignorant of elocution and unskilled in the first principles of impersonation to be exploited as stars merely because of their personal charm. A beautiful young woman, whether she can act or not, may easily appear "natural" in a society play, especially written around her; and the public, lured by a pair of eyes or a head of hair, is made as blind as love to the absence of histrionic art. When the great Madame Modjeska last appeared at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, presenting some of the most wonderful plays that the world has ever seen, she played to empty houses, while the New York public was flocking to see some new slip of a girl seem "natural" on the stage and appear pretty behind the picture-frame proscenium. IV A comparison of an Elizabethan audience with a theatre-full of people at the present day is, in many ways, disadvantageous to the latter. With our forefathers, theatre-going was an exercise in the lovely art of "making-believe." They were told that it was night and they forgot the sunlight; their imaginations swept around England to the trampling of armored kings, or were whisked away at a word to that Bohemia which is a desert country by the sea; and while they looked upon a platform of bare boards, they breathed the sweet air of the Forest of Arden. They needed no scenery by Alma-Tadema to make them think themselves in Rome. "What country, friends, is this?", asked Viola. "This is Illyria, lady." And the boys in the pit scented the keen, salt air and heard the surges crashing on the rocky shore.