It was some sage of long ago who wrote:

I quite agree with the gentleman who penned those lines. I disagree with any suggestion or device that dwarfs the beauty and art of a play. That is why I strenuously object to the term "atmosphere" as applied to any of our present day productions. It is only a cloak and an excuse to conceal incompetency.

Let the scenery be well painted, attractive and fitted to the frame, but don't take off your roof to pile Pelion upon Ossa! Endeavor to please the eye—with processions and real running water, if you like, but keep all in due subordination to the acting. Realism was strangled after some ungodly years of struggling life. For a time acting became subservient to railroad trains, buzz saws and waterfalls. Ships were sunk in full view of the audience, ice floats cracked and dialogue was smothered in the dust of stage cloth and salt. Public opinion soon demonstrated this was wrong. "Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl" was relegated to the farm to ascertain "Why Women Sin" until laundered Hebraic managers rescued those ladies and atmospheric plays became the vogue.

During the year 1911 I had splendid opportunities for reflection, retrospect and thought, finding consolation in books pertaining to the drama of the past, present and future. I have found great consolation in going over the theatrical situation under existing conditions. True, I note the devastating results of commercialism, the self-interested remarks regarding the welfare of the drama (and all concerned in it), the fact that too many theatres are being built by managers and stars (with disgusting flaunting of the means employed to construct these playhouses).

I have noticed this and I have marvelled. But I found relief in reviewing the conditions of long ago. More than three hundred years have played havoc with the theatres truly. The men of Shakespeare's time are no more—and few worthy successors have been born. That "inspired intellectual spendthrift," as Shakespeare was called by Robert Ingersoll, failed to measure the wonder of the journey to be traversed. I discover that we have gone back, artistically, in the last fifty years.

The only atmosphere in the theatre of Shakespeare was furnished by the hooting, jostling crowd as it wended its way over London bridge for a night at the Fox Under the Hill, to be joined later on by the "merry fellow" and his companions at the Falcon or Mermaid. No doubt they criticised his play to their own, if not his entire satisfaction. However, irrespective of any of their opinions and without "atmosphere," these criticisms apparently had the same value as the condemnations of the self-styled censors of our modern theatre and its players.

What does it matter after all? In the words of Ben Jonson, "Let them know the author defies them and their writing tables!"

One never heard of atmospheric plays in my early life. It is a delightful coinage. Personally I prefer the aeriform fluid in front of the curtain. I never discovered the intrinsic value of a painting in a fog, neither did a frame ever enhance its value. I want the playhouse to furnish its own nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and other organic matter before the play is produced. Then let the performance proceed on its merits, sans atmosphere.

Widen your stage to allow your forests to be seen; paint your oceans to flow into space, apparently interminable; dress your characters as befits the times, with corresponding architecture, but, for heaven's sake, don't add incense to injury! Let the play proceed and the dialogue be heard; let your ear as well as the eye, decide the verdict and devote whatever atmosphere you consider necessary to the Theatre proper, as did Irving, the colossal. When one entered the portals of the London Lyceum Theatre, as managed by Henry Irving, one felt that sense of intellectual environment and cultivating influence experienced on entering Notre Dame.

A theatre will lose its atmosphere when the lessee vacates the premises just as a small town will when the inhabitants leave it. We remember the cities that appealed to us in early life and note the changes that advancement and progress have made architecturally. Maybe we admire the improvements, but that charm of something has vanished. What is it? Some will answer, "Atmosphere." I say, "the people"—those who talked and invented the architecture and painting of the earlier day.

We want a Papin or a Newcombe to give us back the so-called atmosphere of our youth, but that kind of atmosphere talked and said something.

Chapter XXI