Dramatic Opinions and Essays, with an Apology Volume 2; Containing as Well a Word on the Dramatic Opinions and Essays of Bernard Shaw (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: laugh in the first act. For the rest, he outrages his nature and genius faithfully in support of his wife in a hopeless part; and the audience, if not delighted, is at least moved by the melancholy dignity of the sacrifice. SOME OTHER CRITICS Dramatic Essays. By John Forster and George Henry Lewes. Reprinted from the Examiner (1835-38) and The Leader (1850-54). With Notes and an Introduction by William Archer and Robert Lowe. London: Walter Scott. 1896. Mam'zelle Nitouche: a musical comedy in three acts by MM. Meilhac, Millaud, and Herve. Royal Court Theatre, i June, 1896. THE rate of production at the theatres has been so rapid lately that I am conscious of putting off my remarks on performances just as I habitually put off answering letters, in the hope that the march of events will presently save me the trouble of dealing with them. My labors, it must be remembered, are the labors of Sisyphus: every week I roll my heavy stone to the top of the hill; and every week I find it at the bottom again. To the public the tumbling down of the stone is the point of the whole business: they like to see it plunging and bounding and racing in a flying cloud of dust, blackening the eyes of a beautiful actress here and catching an eminent actor-manager in the wind there, flattening out dramatists, demolishing theatres, and generally taking a great deal on itself, considering its size. But the worst of it (from my point of view) is that when it is all over I am the only person who is a penny the worse. Theactresses are as beautiful and popular as ever; the actor- managers wallow in the profits of the plays I have denounced; the dramatists receive redoubled commissions; the theatres reopen with programmes foolisher than before; and nothing remains of my toy avalanche but the stone...