[Transcriber's Note: so in original.]
Of those who have written recently in favour of the scheme of a
municipal theatre many speak with the authority of exceptional
experience. The actor Mr John Coleman, one of the last survivors of
Phelps's company at Sadler's Wells Theatre, argued with cogency,
shortly before his death in 1903, that the national credit owed it to
itself to renew Phelps's experiment of the middle of last century;
public intervention was imperative, seeing that no other means were
forthcoming. The late Sir Henry Irving in his closing years announced
his conviction that a municipal theatre could alone keep the classical
and the poetic drama fully alive in the theatres. The dramatic critic
Mr William Archer, has brought his expert knowledge of dramatic
organisation at home and abroad to the aid of the agitation. Various
proposals--unhappily of too vague and unauthoritative a kind to
guarantee a satisfactory reception--have been made from time to time
to raise a fund to build a national theatre, and to run it for five
years on a public subsidy of L10,000 a year.
The advocates of the municipalising principle have worked for the most
part in isolation.
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