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 actors and producer were annoyed to learn that Ambrose was not to be discovered in the theatre. The morning newspapers had proclaimed The Stafford Will Case a masterpiece; no less an epithet had been freely employed by the reviewers, who had further signalized their enthusiasm by writing long Sunday articles in which they had delved deeply into the motives and methods of the play. It was early advertised, for example, that Ambrose Deacon had invented an entirely novel technique, a technique developed naturally out of the characters and the situations. Ineluctable comparisons, indeed, with the folk plays of Synge and other European dramatists redounded only to the discredit of the latter.

Ambrose was bewildered before the interviewers arrived. Their invasion baffled him. It was simple enough, discounting the trifling hesitancies due to his shyness, to reply to queries which were merely historical or chronological in their nature. He managed, readily enough, all things considered, to tell the date and place of his birth and to give the correct name of the newspaper with which he had been associated, but when earnest young Harvard men peering through horn-rimmed glasses began to question him regarding the thirty-six dramatic situations, when they began to quote Schlegel and Freytag, and