Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/363

Rh gave to enthusiastic audiences "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh." Today, many who will not attend the theatre do attend the moving-picture show. One cannot annihilate an instinct of the races old as time: to legislate against it is to risk repressing only the better part; what is necessary is to make the undesirable unattractive.

THE DRAMA AND PUBLIC TASTE

The only sound basis for this result is a widespread taste in the public for good drama. While it is not true, as George Farquhar wrote, that "Plays are like suppers, poets are the cooks," there is yet truth in Samuel Johnson's saying that "The drama's laws the drama's patrons give." He who serves his dramatic meal, cooked and seasoned exactly for what he takes to be the tastes of his public, merely writes plays: he does not create drama. To try to hit public taste in the drama is like trying to hit the bull's-eye of a rapidly shifting target on a very foggy day. On the other hand, the public speaker who should try to present his subject to a public knowing nothing of it, and to a public of which he knows nothing, must skillfully interest them by finding in his subject some appeal of a general nature. In similar fashion works the dramatist. He cannot write comedies and farces for a community lacking in humor. He can do little in grim story play or tragedy with a laughter-loving public. Granted a public fond of the theatre, he is sure of a hearing and probably an appreciative one; but the fuller and the more accurate his public's knowledge of good drama in the past, the greater his chance for an attentive and comprehending hearing when he writes what should be good drama to-day.

HOW TO READ A PLAY

In reading plays, however, it should always be remembered that any play, however great, loses much when not seen in action. As John Marston wrote in 1606: "Comedies are writ to be spoken, not read; remember the life of these things consists in action"; or, as Molière put it: "Comedies are made to be played, not to be read." Any play is so planned that it can produce its exact effect only with its required scenery, lighting, and acting. And that acting means the gesture, movement, and voice of the actor. Above all, it means the