The worst
of the evils, which are inherent in scenic excess, with its
accompaniment of long runs, is its tendency to sanction the
maintenance of the level of acting at something below the highest.
Phelps was keenly alive to this peril, and his best energies were
devoted to training his actors and actresses for all the roles in the
cast, great and small. Actors and actresses of the first rank on
occasion filled minor parts, in order to heighten the efficiency of
the presentation. Actors and actresses who have the dignity of their
profession at heart might be expected to welcome the revival of a
system which alone guarantees their talent and the work of the
dramatist due recognition, even if it leave histrionic incompetence no
hope of escape from the scorn that befits it. It is on the aspiration
and sentiment of the acting profession that must largely depend the
final answer to the question whether Phelps's experiment can be made
again with likelihood of success.
VII
Foreign experience tells in favour of the contention that, if
Shakespeare's plays are to be honoured on the modern stage as they
deserve, they must be freed of the existing incubus of scenic
machinery.
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