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Footnotes:

[1] Berlioz did so literally, and married her.

[2] William Archer, Life of Macready.

[3] “Write me a drama,” said Macready to young Browning, “and save me having to go off to America.” The drama was written, but attained only a fourth performance, and did not save the actor from his impending expedition.

[4] As a matter of fact, Bulwer had not even the merit of inventing this arrangement for himself. His play was founded on the novel by X.-B. Saintine.

[5] Charles Mathews played at the Variétés, in French, in L’anglais timide, an adaptation of Cool as a Cucumber, by Blanchard Jerrold.

[6] 10 George II. cap. 19.

[7] In Thirty Years at the Play, Clement Scott gives an account of the first night of The Oonagh, which has come down to us as a tradition. At two o’clock in the morning the play was still in progress. The house was empty save for a few critics slumbering in their stalls. The actors were on the stage all in a line facing the public, as was then the custom, and there was no sign of the ending, when suddenly the machinists pulled back the carpet on which the chief characters were standing. They collapsed simply!—with the piece, which was never brought to its real conclusion.

[8] T. W. Robertson in The Illustrated Times.

[9] Founded on the famous French play Paillasse.

[10] To the fourth line he added a footnote to the effect that the name was not Johnson really.

[11] Henry Morley, Journal of a Playgoer.

[12] These lines appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, on September 15, 1895. Less than three months later the Kendals produced, for the first time in the provinces, a new drama by Mr. Grundy, The Greatest of These. This play, which was performed later in London, is a work of real value. In it Mr. Grundy has forgotten his French models, and has painted English life and English characters with a freedom, a fidelity, a power, worthy of that Ibsen to whom he will not have it that he owes anything. He has put aside his wit in order to be more moving. There is not a weak spot or a trace of bad taste in the whole piece. The scene which takes up most of the third act is equally beautiful, whether regarded from a psychological, a literary, or a purely dramatic standpoint.

[13] His début was in 1874, when he was nineteen. He has given an account of some of his Edinburgh experiences about this time in a pleasant Preface to Mr. William Archer’s Theatrical World in 1895.

[14] When this episode was reached on the night of the first performance of The Master Builder, a critic turned to Mr. Archer and said, “Will you explain that symbol to us?” “I am not sure,” Mr. Archer replied quietly, “that it is a symbol.” Upon which, a lady sitting near them interposed: “Excuse my breaking in upon your conversation,” she said, “but you may be interested to know that many women are like Mrs. Solness in this. I myself have all the dolls of my childhood safely preserved at home, and I look after them tenderly.” It is well known, too, that the Queen’s collection of her dolls is preserved at Windsor Castle.

[15] I should have wished to determine the influence exerted by the contemporary German drama upon the dramatic movement in England, but I can find no trace of any such influence at all. Only a single work of Sudermann’s has so far been translated, and this came from America. An attempt was made in 1895 to found a permanent Deutsches Theater in London, and works by Freytag, Sudermann, Hauptmann, Otto Hartleber, Max Halbe, and Blumenthal were produced there. I do not know whether the attempt, made under modest, and indeed almost mean, conditions, will be renewed. The critics attended the performance, but the general public paid but little attention to them.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been corrected without note.

Other than the corrections noted by hover information, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.