"Then what does sell?" asked Ferdinand.
"Anything that pleases the public--a sensational novel--a sparkling Society poem--a brilliant magazine article--a witty play--you'll get plenty of chances to make money with these things; you see people live so rapidly now that they have no time to study in their play hours, therefore they want the very froth and foam of the time served up to them for their reading, so as to take their thoughts off their work. We praise 'Tom Jones' and 'Clarissa' immensely, but who reads them when they can skim the last three volume novel or the latest pungent article on the state of Europe?--no one wants to be instructed now-a-days, but they do want to be amused."
"How do people live in London?" asked Pumpkin, who, being an unsophisticated country maiden, was absolutely ignorant of anything connected with the great metropolis.
"They live with a hansom cab at the door and their watch in their hand," retorted Beaumont cynically; "they give two minutes to one thing, five minutes to another, and think they are enjoying themselves--get a smattering of all things and a thorough knowledge of nothing--the last play, the last book, the last scandal, the latest political complication--they know all these things well enough to chatter about them, but alas for the deep thinker who puts his views before the restless world of London--he will have a very small circle of readers indeed, because no one has any time to ponder over his thoughtful prose."
"Still the power of the stage as a teacher," began Ferdinand, "is really----"
"Is really nothing," interrupted Beaumont sharply; "the stage of the present day is meant to amuse, not teach--no one cares to go to school after school hours; we are not even original in our dramas--we either translate from the French stage, or reproduce Shakespeare with fine scenery and tea-cup and saucer actors."
"Well, you cannot object to Shakespeare," observed Reginald, who was much interested in Beaumont's remarks.
"Certainly not. Shakespeare, like other things, is excellent--in moderation. I quite agree that we should have a national theatre, where the Elizabethan drama should be regularly acted, but our so-called National Theatre devotes itself to gingerbread melodramas, and tries to hide its poverty of thought under a brilliant mise-en-scene; but when you have Shakespeare's plays at three or four theatres and French adaptations at a dozen others, where does the local playwright come in?"
"But from what I hear there are so few good local playwrights," said Dick quickly.
"And whose fault is that?" asked Beaumont acidly, "but the fault of the English nation. France has a strong dramatic school because she produced her own drama to the exclusion of foreign writers; if the English people, who pride themselves on their patriotism, were to refuse to countenance French and German adaptations, the managers would be forced to produce English plays written by English playwrights, and though, very likely, for a time we would have bad workmanship and crude ideas, yet in a few years a dramatic school would be formed; but such an event will never happen while one of our leading playwrights adapts Gallic comedies wholesale and another dramatises old books of the Georgian period. England has not lost her creative power but she's doing her best to stamp it out."