ILLUSTRATIONS

Page
[Plays are Put up in Packages]Frontis
[First catch your play]23
[If actors roamed about at will]31
[A Stalwart Individual pushing a church]45
[The guild of Annanias]51
[Anna Held bathing in milk]55
[Sometimes things really do happen to actors]67
[The Theatrical Women's Parker Club]79
[It is very difficult to identify a good play]103
[A woman cut her play in half]109
[Clyde Fitch's ability to work]129
[Augustus Thomas shouts instructions]137
[Eugene Walter was lodging upon a park bench]143
[Margaret Mayo built a villa]161
[The malignant disease]165
["You're William A. Brady, ain't you?"]171
[A wrinkled old lady confided her desire]175
[How sweet to meet one's own image]183
[The Great White Way is a recumbent letter I]193
[The actor and the rest of the world]199
[Allan Dale came three nights running]203
[Gets eighteen dollars]209
[If actors really "felt their parts"]229
[The first time the director has seen them]251
[The interruption came on the spot]255
[Matches that cannot be lit]259
[Ensconced in a swing and two silk stockings]263
[Thought seems as material a thing as a handball]267
[Gillette flicked the ashes from his cigar]271
[Lady Macbeth swore that he grew during the performance]281
[A playwright whose stock has soared a hundred points in a single evening]289
[A Boston audience at train time]295
[Trilby died in every known way]299
[The author—as you imagine him, and as he is]303
[Venus rose from the sea]319
[Danced before a statue of Antony until it bit her]323
[You need bring to a vaudeville theatre nothing but the price of admission]327
[Their agents search every capital of Europe]335
[Known as a stock company]349
[Master Betterton had his nerves shaken]357
[The actress giving time to dress-makers]361
[Evening up matters on his books]369
[The great actors of an earlier time]385
[A play censor with a club]391
[Reputable scoundrels kill by machinery]399
[Comstockians wear blinders]403
[The peculiarities of royal love-making]413
[The lady may have come to prepare a rarebit]419
[Why women sin]425
[It simply isn't done]433

AN INTRODUCTION

Wherein, at union rates, the author performs the common but popular musical feat known as "blowing one's own horn."

"Good wine", according to the poet, "needs no bush." With the same logic, one may argue that a good book needs no introduction.... But then—how be sure that it is a good book?

Hallowed custom provides that every volume of essays—especially of essays on the theater—shall begin with a preface in which some celebrated critic dilates upon the cleverness of the author. However, celebrated critics are expensive, and, moreover, no one else seems to know as much about the cleverness of this author as does the author himself. In consequence of which two facts, I mean to write my own introduction.

One obstacle appears to be well-nigh insurmountable. It will be easy to inform you as to my merits and my qualifications, but I don't quite see how a man can speak patronizingly of himself. And, of course, the patronizing tone is absolutely essential to an introduction. Nobody ever wrote an introduction without it. I shall do my best, but I hope you will be lenient with me in the event of failure.