I must add, as an additional reason for valuing the theatre, that while there is only one Shakespeare, and while there are comparatively few dramatists who are sufficiently classic to be read with close attention, there is a great deal of average dramatic work excellently suited for representation.  From this the public derive pleasure.  From this they receive—­as from fiction in literature—­a great deal of instruction and mental stimulus.  Some may be worldly, some social, some cynical, some merely humorous and witty, but a great deal of it, though its literary merit is secondary, is well qualified to bring out all that is most fruitful of good in common sympathies.  Now, it is plain that if, because Shakespeare is good reading, people were to give the cold shoulder to the theatre, the world would lose all the vast advantage which comes to it through the dramatic faculty in forms not rising to essentially literary excellence.  As respects the other feeling which used to stand more than it does now in the way of the theatre—­the fear of moral contamination—­it is due to the theatre of our day, on the one hand, and to the prejudices of our grandfathers on the other, to confess that the theatre of fifty years ago or less did need reforming in the audience part of the house.  All who have read the old controversy as to the morality of going to the theatre are familiar with the objection to which I refer.  But the theatre of fifty years ago or less was reformed.  If there are any, therefore, as I fear there are a few, who still talk on this point in the old vein, let them rub their eyes a bit, and do us the justice to consider not what used to be, but what is.  But may there be moral contamination from what is performed on the stage?  Well, there may be.  But so there is from books.  So there may be at lawn tennis clubs.  So there may be at dances.  So there may be in connection with everything in civilized life and society.  But do we therefore bury ourselves?  The anchorites secluded themselves in hermitages.  The Puritans isolated themselves in consistent abstinence from everything that anybody else did.  And there are people now who think that they can keep their children, and that those children will keep themselves in after life, in cotton wool, so as to avoid all temptation of body and mind, and be saved nine-tenths of the responsibility of self-control.  All this is mere phantasy.  You must be in the world, though you need not be of it; and the best way to make the world a better community to be in, and not so bad a place to be of, is not to shun, but to bring public opinion to bear upon its pursuits and its relaxations.  Depend upon two things—­that the theatre, as a whole, is never below the average moral sense of the time; and that the inevitable demand for an admixture, at least, of wholesome sentiment in every sort of dramatic production brings the ruling tone of the theatre, whatever drawback may exist, up to the highest level at which the general morality of the time can truly