efficient be the acting with which it is associated, may always fail
to "please the million"; it may be "caviare to the general."
Nevertheless, the sagacious manager, who, by virtue of comparatively
inexpensive settings and in alliance with a well-chosen company of
efficient actors and actresses, is able at short intervals to produce
a succession of Shakespeare's plays, may reasonably expect to attract
a small but steady and sufficient support from the intelligent section
of London playgoers, and from the home-reading students of
Shakespeare, who are not at present playgoers at all.


IV

The practical manager, who naturally seeks pecuniary profit from his
ventures, insists that these suggestions are counsels of perfection
and these anticipations wild and fantastic dreams. His last word is
that by spectacular method Shakespeare can alone be made to "pay" in
the theatre. But are we here on perfectly secure ground? Has the
commercial success attending the spectacular production of Shakespeare
been invariably so conspicuous as to put summarily out of court, on
the purely commercial ground, the method of simplicity? The pecuniary
results are public knowledge in the case of the two most strenuous and
prolonged endeavours to give Shakespeare the splendours of spectacle
which have yet been completed on the London stage. What is the message
of these two efforts in mere pecuniary terms?

Charles Kean may be regarded as the founder of the modern spectacular
system, though it had some precedents, and has been developed since
his day. Charles Kean, between 1851 and 1859, persistently endeavoured
by prodigal and brilliant display to make the production of