himself. So we merely toned down the levity by leaving old Mr. Browne out of the cast entirely. There is a great difference, as in the case of Routledge left out of the first act, between what the audience sees and what it only hears talked about; and none of the laws of dramatic construction are more important than those which concern the questions whether you shall appeal to the ear of an audience, to its eye, or both. Old Mr. Browne was only talked about then, and as long as the English audience did not know him personally, it was perfectly willing to laugh at him after Mrs. Browne was a widow. Another change made for the London version will interest American business men. In our own version, Lilian's father and his partner close up their affairs in the last act and retire from their business as private bankers. "That will never do in England," said Mr. Alberry. "An old established business like that might be worth £100,000. We must sell it to some one, not close it." So we sold it to Mr. George Washington Phipps. This last character illustrates, again, the stubbornness of dramatic law. Mr. Alberry and I tried to make him an Irishman, or a Scotchman, or some kind of an Englishman. But we could not. He remains an American in England in 1886, as he was in Chicago in 1873. He declined to change either his citizenship or his name; "G. Washington—Father of his Country—Phipps."

The peculiar history of the play is my only justification for giving you all these details of its otherwise unimportant career. I only trust that I have shown you how very practical the laws of dramatic construction are in the way they influence a dramatist. The art of obeying them is merely the art of using your common sense in the study of your own and other people's emotions. All I now add is, if you want to write a play, be honest and sincere in using your common sense. A prominent lawyer once assured me that there was only one man he trembled before in the presence of a jury—not the learned man, nor the eloquent man; it was the sincere man. The public will be your jury. That public often condescends to be trifled with by mere tricksters, but, believe me, it is only a condescension and very contemptuous. In the long run, the public will judge you, and respect you, according to your artistic sincerity.

NOTES

This lecture was originally delivered in March, 1886, in the Sanders Theater, before the Shakspere Society of Harvard University; and it was repeated before the Nineteenth Century Club in New York in December, 1889. On the latter occasion two other dramatic authors were requested to debate the points made by the speaker; and as a result he added a few supplementary remarks: