_Being inside information regarding a kind of entertainment at which one requires intelligence no more than the kitchen range_
_Concerning Camille, ice cream, spirituality, red silk tights, Blanche Bates, Thomas Betterton, second-hand plays, parochialism, matinee girls, Augustin Daly, and other interesting topics_
_Being an old manuscript with a new preface--the former dealing with a lost art, and the latter subtly suggesting who lost it_
_Wherein the author considers comedies of manners, and players who succeed illy in living up to them_
_Sometimes things really do happen to actors_
_It is very difficult to identify a good play_
_Eugene Walter was lodging upon a park bench_
_A wrinkled old lady confided her desire_
_The Great White Way is a recumbent letter I_
_The first time the director has seen them_
_Ensconced in a swing and two silk stockings_
_Thought seems as material a thing as a handball_
_Gillette flicked the ashes from his cigar_
_Lady Macbeth swore that he grew during the performance_
_A playwright whose stock has soared a hundred points in a single evening_
_The author--as you imagine him, and as he is_
_Danced before a statue of Antony until it bit her_
_You need bring to a vaudeville theatre nothing but the price of admission_
_Their agents search every capital of Europe_
_The actress giving time to dress-makers_
_The lady may have come to prepare a rarebit_
Wherein, at union rates, the author performs the common but popular musical feat known as "blowing one's own horn."
"Good wine", according to the poet, "needs no bush." With the same logic, one may argue that a good book needs no introduction.... But then--how be sure that it _is_ a good book?
Hallowed custom provides that every volume of essays--especially of essays on the theater--shall begin with a preface in which some celebrated critic dilates upon the cleverness of the author. However, celebrated critics are expensive, and, moreover, no one else seems to know as much about the cleverness of this author as does the author himself. In consequence of which two facts, I mean to write my own introduction.
One obstacle appears to be well-nigh insurmountable. It will be easy to inform you as to my merits and my qualifications, but I don't quite see how a man can speak patronizingly of himself. And, of course, the patronizing tone is absolutely essential to an introduction. Nobody ever wrote an introduction without it. I shall do my best, but I hope you will be lenient with me in the event of failure.