Spite of this degrading meanness, however, there is no doubt that actor-authors have so far written the greatest number of good plays that hold the stage, in consequence of just one thing, their experience, which reveals itself as the first quality necessary in the dramatist. After experience of the stage, the next qualification that meets us in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Dumas, Lope de Vega, and Boucicault, is their marvellous fecundity of invention, implying an amount of information on various subjects simply amazing. Nothing comes amiss to them, and they seem to have a smattering of every science, to have skimmed the private history of the whole world. Variety of information comes next after stage experience. A man may be a great fool on most subjects, and yet write a fair acting play from stage experience alone, if he filches enough, but if he have plenty of general information, he will be able to double the value of his play, while some plays have been made quite successful by the use of nothing but stage experience and some special line of information, by men who could not have written an original story to save their necks.
Last of the qualifications for dramatic success come ideas, and the possession of ideas implies also genius or at least talent, without which, after all, the really successful dramatist cannot work and leave enduring work behind him. All the ephemeral successes of the stage lack this one element, the one thing that cannot be taught, but must be born in a man. With genius, with real talent, everything is at last possible to a writer ambitious of stage success. Like Bulwer, he may make failure after failure, before he gets the entrée to theatrical life, but once there he will get past the portal and command success at last. Experience and information will be acquired with more or less labor, but he will get them at last, and then will be content to add his voice to the last canon of theatrical conditions to success:
| XVII. | Stage experience, varied information, and talent, are the sine quâ non of the dramatist who hopes for success. |
Frederick Whittaker.
SAINT LAMBERT'S COAL.
Wild hordes had sacked the minster: scattered
Upon the broken pavement, lay
The crash of blazon'd windows, shattered