Adequate opportunities of the
kind are only accessible to members of a permanent company, whose
energies are absorbed in the production of the Shakespearean drama
constantly and in its variety, and whose programme is untrammelled by
the poisonous system of "long runs." Shakespearean actors should drink
deep of the Pierian spring. They should be graduates in Shakespeare's
university; and, unlike graduates of other universities, they should
master not merely formal knowledge, but a flexible power of using it.
Mr Benson's company is, I believe, the only one at present in
existence in England which confines almost all its efforts to the
acting of Shakespeare. In the course of its twenty-four years'
existence its members have interpreted in the theatre no less than
thirty of Shakespeare's plays.[21] The natural result is that Mr
Benson and his colleagues have learned in practice the varied calls
that Shakespearean drama makes upon actors' capacities.
[Footnote 21: Mr Benson, writing to me on 13th January 1906, gives the
following list of plays by Shakespeare which he has produced:--_Antony
and Cleopatra_, _As You Like It_, _The Comedy of Errors_,
_Coriolanus_, _Hamlet_, _Henry IV.
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