going forth even in the dark of night, and seeing only two people who come to call upon him.  One of these, a young girl, sometimes plays for him on the piano while he paces moodily up and down the gallery.  These facts are expounded to the audience in a dialogue between Mrs. Borkman and her sister that takes place in a lower room below Borkman’s quarters; and all the while, in the pauses of the conversation, the hero is heard walking overhead, pacing incessantly up and down.  As the act advances, the audience expects at any moment that the hero will appear.  The front door is thrown open; two minor characters enter; and still Borkman is heard walking up and down.  There is more talk about him on the stage; the act is far advanced, and soon it seems that he must show himself.  From the upper room is heard the music of the Dance of Death that his young girl friend is playing for him.  Now to the dismal measures of the dance the dialogue on the stage swells to a climax.  Borkman is still heard pacing in the gallery.  And the curtain falls.  Ten minutes later the raising of the curtain discloses John Gabriel Borkman standing with his hands behind his back, looking at the girl who has been playing for him.  The moment is trebly emphatic,—­by position at the opening of an act, by surprise, and most of all by suspense.  When the hero is at last discovered, the audience looks at him.

Of course there are many minor means of emphasis in the theatre, but most of these are artificial and mechanical.  The proverbial lime-light is one of the most effective.  The intensity of the dream scene in Sir Henry Irving’s performance of The Bells was due largely to the way in which the single figure of Mathias was silhouetted by a ray of light against a shadowy and inscrutable background ominous with voices.

In this materialistic age, actors even resort to blandishments of costume to give their parts a special emphasis.  Our leading ladies are more richly clad than the minor members of their companies.  Even the great Mansfield resorted in his performance of Brutus to the indefensible expedient of changing his costume act by act and dressing always in exquisite and subtle colors, while the other Romans, Cassius included, wore the same togas of unaffected white throughout the play.  This was a fault in emphasis.

A novel and interesting device of emphasis in stage-direction was introduced by Mr. Forbes-Robertson in his production of The Passing of the Third Floor Back.  This dramatic parable by Mr. Jerome K. Jerome deals with the moral regeneration of eleven people, who are living in a Bloomsbury boarding-house, through the personal influence of a Passer-by, who is the Spirit of Love incarnate; and this effect is accomplished in a succession of dialogues, in which the Stranger talks at length with one boarder after another.  It is necessary, for reasons of reality, that in each of the dialogues the Passer-by and his interlocutor