Page:Foggerty.djvu/339

Rh state that upon the occasion of his recent revival of this play it was allowed to proceed to its legitimate conclusion.

The Taming of the Shrew, a five-act play, is usually reduced to three acts, sometimes to two, occasionally to one! The Comedy of Errors, a five-act play, loses nearly three thousand lines in representation!

But who cares? Who resents these atrocious liberties? I do and the reader does, but who else? A few, perhaps, but how many? Who calls out from the pit to the "star" who deliberately cuts out the last two acts of Henry VIII. because he has no part in it—"You insufferably vain and sacrilegious impostor, how dare you lay your mutilating hand upon the immortal work of a genius whom we revere as we revere our religion? Restore the fourth and fifth acts of this great play! Perform them at once, or up go your benches!" I am in the habit of publicly addressing the star-tragedian in these words, and so is the reader; but who else does so? No one else—probably because it is not generally known that two acts have been suppressed. As for the "star," in all probability he has never read those acts. Why should he? There is no Wolsey in them.

In truth—and it is a lamentable truth—the popular knowledge of Shakespeare is almost entirely derived from performances of mutilated versions of his plays. Of those plays in their entirety, and of the plays that are seldom or never performed, the mass of Englishmen know little or nothing.

I will point the moral of this paper with a quotation from the "Players' Preface to the Folio Edition of Shakespeare's plays."