out of the situation, to "get up" their parts from their own ideas; and these ideas are interfered with only if they run definitely counter to the ideas of stage-manager or author. The smallness of the Abbey Theatre has saved them from the necessity of heightening effects that they may carry to the farthest corners of a large house, a necessity that leads so often to over-emphasis by our own actors. There are less than six hundred seats in the Abbey theatre (five hundred and sixty-two by actual count), and it is so arranged that the words uttered on the stage carry easily without emphasis all over the house.
It is an old saying that the English of Dublin is the most beautiful English in the world. However that may be, there can be no doubt whatsoever but that the English that is spoken in Dublin falls on the ear with a mellowness of sound that is a joy to all who cherish proper speech. In the earlier years of the company Mr. Yeats was very desirous of having his dramatic verse spoken with "the half chant men spoke it [poetry] with in old times." It was in some such way that Mr. Yeats had tried to have his lines in "The Land of Heart's Desire" spoken when it was put on at the Avenue Theatre, London, in 1894; and thirteen years later Miss Florence Farr, whom he believes to speak English more beautifully than anybody in the world, spoke his dramatic verses in a "half chant," and his lyrical verses, many of them, to a definite musical notation, on her American tour of 1907. It was noticeable, however, when she played one of the musicians in his "Deirdre" on its later presentations, that he method of intoning the verses differed a great deal from
