Your anonymous contributor "of London" (mark the sarcasm!) was right in imagining that I would be drawn. I consider it my duty to Mr. HENRY ARTHUR JONES to say something about his "accustomed combative geniality," and to Mr. HADDON CHAMBERS to refer to his "cheery stoicism." I will also allude to Mr. PINERO, but as he is not writing for my theatre just now, merely record my conviction that he will be able to survive the sneers against _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_--"a play which has made a deep and lasting impression on the thinking public." And when I write "lasting," I am the more obliging, as I assume the _rôle_ of a prophet. It will be "lasting," I am sure. The "thinking public," of course, are those admirable and intellectual persons who fill the stalls and boxes of my theatre, and the stalls and boxes of kindred establishments.
And, while I am talking of "thinking," let me insist that the criticism of the piece by the anonymous one "of London" (mark the irony!) is not a personal matter, but a question that affects the freedom of the thinking community. This is a generation that has outgrown "the skirts of the young lady of fifteen"; and it behoves all to understand the meaning of that apt sentence, and to regard with a jealous eye any attempt to crib, cabin, and confine the development of contemporary thought. "Crib, cabin, and confine" is also good, and entirely worthy of your serious consideration. At a time when the stalls are 10_s._ 6_d._, and the family-circle available to those who will not run to gold, is a literary dandy (in whose stained forefinger I seem to detect the sign of an old journalistic hand) to pass a vote of censure on SHAKSPEARE because, forsooth, _Hamlet_ was not forgotten? I trust not. And shall the public (mark you the intellectual, the praiseworthy--in a word, the "thinking public") be debarred from taking their piece in their favourite theatre because, forsooth, there is an interesting correspondence in newspapers in the dullest season of the decrepit old year? Again--I trust not.
_Communication No. 3--once more dated Wednesday._
I beg to ask your permission, as an old playgoer, to see myself in print. I do not pretend to be able to write myself, but an eminent _littérateur_, in a recent number of a popular monthly magazine, has done good service by enforcing the untruthful character of the "problem" pieces recently presented to the public audiences. I have not the ability to comment on this unpleasant phase of the histrionic profession, so merely observe (with a recollection of an old-world story) "them's my sentiments."