laws.[1] Creative artists always smash these ancient tablets and it does not seem to me that interpreters need be less progressive. Acting changes. Judged by the standards by which Edwin Booth was assessed, John Drew is no actor. But we have become aware at last that it is a different kind of acting. Acting has been flamboyant, extravagant, and intensely emotional, something quite different from real life. The present craze for counterfeiting the semblance of ordinary existence on the stage will also die out, for the theatre is not life and representing life on the boards, except in a conventionalized or decorative form, is not art. Our new actors, with our new playwrights, will develop a new and fantastic form of expression which will supersede the present fashion. Rubinstein certainly did not play the piano like Chopin. Presently, a virtuoso will appear who will refuse to play the piano at all and a new instrument will be invented without a tempered scale so that he may indulge in all the subtleties between half-tones which are denied to the pianist.
It is all very well to cry, Halt! and Who goes there? but you can't stop progress any more than you can stop the passing of time. The old technique of the singer breaks down before the new technique of the composer and the musician with
- ↑ So they are, my son, but not for long.
