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or picture-palace, or " movies." During the decade, almost all of the London suburban theatres became picture-palaces. Many of the provincial theatres, especially in small towns, also became picture-palaces. A variety of reasons caused this change to take place, some of which were financial and others connected with altered taste. The kinemas were at once cheaper and more comfortable than the theatres and they offered a more con- sistently attractive programme. The inhabitants of a London suburb or a small provincial town were able to see as good a film at the local kinema as could be seen in a kinema in the centre of London, but they could not hope to see a play performed at the local theatre by a company as capable as that acting in the same play in the West End. On the contrary, they might expect with certainty to witness a very inferior exhibition of acting. Precisely the same process was observable in America, where, owing to the competition of the " movies " and the inferior quality of travelling companies, what were known as " one-night stands " ceased to be profitable enterprises and were almost entirely abandoned. '

Those were the three main changes in the nature of theatrical entertainment during the decade 1910-20; the disappearance of the actor-manager and the substitution for him of the commer- cial syndicate; the disappearance from the centre of London of the music-hall of marked personality and the substitution for it of the music-hall with elaborate effects and mechanical skill; and the collapse of the suburban and provincial theatre before the advancing kinema. These changes, although they hardly cause satisfaction, are of the nature of constructive changes, and they probably possess permanent characteristics. The commer- cial syndicate may result in more efficient administration in the theatre and a greater likelihood of continuous employment for the actor. It has not yet shown a desire to produce drama equal in merit to that produced by the actor-manager, but the system is still young and it was considerably handicapped by its in- auguration during the war and remains handicapped by the high cost of production. The great virtue of these syndicates is likely to be of an administrative character. Many theatres, in London and the provinces, are coming under the control of a single syndicate, and this trustification of theatres will enable a particular firm to arrange its tours on a more economical and comfortable system than has hitherto been the case. The old individual system unavoidably resulted in touring companies sometimes spending a week in Edinburgh, the next week in Bristol and the third week in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In a properly organized theatrical system, such tours will no longer take place, but will be arranged so that the journey from town to town will be short and easily accomplished by motor-car or lorry.

The change in the music-hall has brought about a great development of the mechanical and pictorial side of that en- tertainment, and if some of the spirited personality of the superseded form can be captured for the new form, the change will be of considerable value. The danger of it is that human qualities are subordinated to machinery and spectacular effects. In the case of the kinema development has been progressive and is likely to continue so. Film-manufacturers are constantly engaged in experiment, and they will in time invent a machine which will enable them to exhibit pictures in three dimensions, in natural colours and with some effect of the human voice. This will be done by means of an instrument which is a combination of gramophone and stereoscope, aided by some process of colour- photography. The film-firms, particularly in America, are en- deavouring to improve the quality of the film-play and, since they offer very handsome monetary rewards to authors, are likely to succeed in their attempt. Many of the most distin- guished dramatists of the world are engaged in writing scenarios for the " movies," and several of them have announced that they will in future write only for them.

Repertory Theatres. The survey in the earlier article (see 8.475) ended at a period when, in spite of many undesirable things, the drama was in a healthy condition. Plays of merit were being written and produced, not only in London, but also in the provinces where the activities of the repertory theatres were stimulating the imagina- tion of young authors. Conservative managers were receiving orig- inal work with less hesitation or hostility than had been accorded

to it for several generations. The long and, in many respects, valuable domination of the theatre by dramatists such as Sir Arthur Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones, was declining before the rising authority of such dramatists as Bernard Shaw and John Galsworthy. The repertory theatres were increasing in number. In 1910, there were three repertory theatres in the British Isles, one in England (the Gaiety theatre, Manchester, owned by Miss A. E. F. Horniman), one in Scotland (the Royalty, directed by Alfred Ware- ing) and one in Ireland (the Abbey, directed by Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats). The last was the oldest as it has proved to be the most durable of the three. In addition to these three repertory theatres, there was a most ambitious attempt to establish one in London, at the Duke of York's theatre, where the late Charles Frohman (who was drowned in the " Lusitania " when it was torpedoed by the Germans May 7 1915) enlisted the services of Harley Granville-Barker and Dion Boucicault. The scheme was to establish a repertory theatre more nearly corresponding to the strict definition of one than any of those operating in the provinces, which were identical with what used to be called " stock " com- panies. Mr. Frohman's gallant enterprise failed. It lasted for 17 weeks, from Feb. 21 to June 17 1910, and during that period eight new plays and two old ones were produced. The names of the plays and their authors are as follows: Justice by John Galsworthy; Misalliance by Bernard Shaw; Old Friends by J. M. Barrie; The Sentimentalists by George Meredith; The Twelve-Pound Look by J. M. Barrie; The Madras House by H. Granville-Barker; Helena's Path by Anthony Hope and Cosmo Gordon- Lennox; Chains by Elizabeth Baker; Trelawney of the Wells by A. W. Pinero and Prunella by H. Granville-Barker and Laurence Housrran. Three of these plays were in one act (the third, fourth and fifth in the list).

The original scheme, of a strictly repertory theatre similar to the Comedie Franchise, was not rraintained, nor does the history of the repertory theatres in Great Britain and Ireland indicate that such a scheme is ever likely to succeed in a country where the people are disinclined to make the research through newspaper advertiserr.ents which a programme of irregular performances involves. For good or ill, the system of continuous performances has obtained a hold on the British theatre which will not easily be shaken off and may never be shaken off. Trelawney of the Wells, the most popular of the plays produced during the season, was performed 42 times in a season of 17 weeks, which clearly signifies that the promoters of the scheme had to revise their plan, partly to satisfy the public demand and partly to recoup themselves for the losses sustained on the unpopular pieces. A similar history has attended the establishment of other repertory theatres on Corr.edie Franchise lines in England, for example the Everyman theatre at Harrpstead, established in 1920 by Norman MacDermott. The repertory theatres steadily increased in number until, at the outbreak of the World War, there were seven of them operating regularly and a number of others operating for short periods during each year. None of these theatres earned large sums of money. Some of them, indeed, were constantly embarrassed by insufficient funds. But they performed a n ost valu- able service to young actors and young dramatists: to the first, by giving them continuous and varied employrrent which, although not highly remunerated, enabled them to becorre accomplished in their craft; to the second, by giving them the greatest of all in- struction to a dramatist, the public performance of his work, and by bringing before them the work of established dram-atists, British and foreign, which otherwise they would not have known except in book form. Ibsen, Strindberg, Hauptmann, Schnitzler, Maeter- linck, Rostand, Verhaeren, Sudermann, Tolstoi, Chekhov, Shaw, Galsworthy, St. John Hankin, Granville-Barker, Arnold Bennett and John Masefield among the moderns ; and Euripides, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Congreve, Beaumont and Fletcher, Goldsmith and Sheridan among the classics the work, in quantity, of all these writers was brought to the knowledge and even to the intimacy of provincial playgoers who, but for the repertory theatres, would have had to subsist in the theatre on the more popular of the pieces produced in London and sent on tour. A sin ilar service is performed in America by what are called " little " or " community " theatres.

Out of these repertory theatres came a nun ber of young drama- tists, many of them resident in the city in which their plays were first performed, of whom at least one n an was a genius, John Mil- lington Synge (d. 1909) and three men of distinction, Stanley Hpugh- ton (d. 1913), John Drinkwater (b. 1882) and Lennox Robinson (b. Oct. 4 1886). Synge has been the subject of several biographies of which the principal and most authoritative one is John Millingtou Synge and the Irish Theatre by Maurice Bourgeois. He wrote six plays, a book of poems and translations and some impressionist articles of a newspaper character. Two of the plays are in one act. In the Shadow of the Glen and Riders to the Sea. The latter is common- ly regarded as the best of his work. One ot the plays, Deirdre of the Sorrows, is unfinished. Of the remaining three, The Tinker's Wedding (in 2 acts), The Well of the Saints (in 3 acts) and The Playboy of the Western World (in 3 acts), the last-named is the most widely known, partly because of its merits, but chiefly because of the anger which it aroused among the more sentimental of the Irish people who, accustomed to the romantic delusions in which subject or oppressed peoples live, could not endure the romantic realism of this play. A long succession of poets had insisted on one aspect of the Celtic