may write a century of sonnets, or Dante paint a picture of an angel, without considering the publisher or picture-dealer.  But there is one of the arts—­the art of the drama—­which can never be disassociated from its concomitant business—­the business of the theatre.  It is impossible to imagine a man making anything which might justly be called a play merely to please himself and with no thought whatever of pleasing also an audience of others by presenting it before them with actors on a stage.  But the mere existence of a theatre, a company of actors, an audience assembled, necessitates an economic organisation and presupposes a business manager; and this business manager, who sets the play before the public and attracts the public to the play, must necessarily exert a potent influence over the playwright.  The only way in which a dramatist may free himself from this influence is by managing his own company, like Moliere, or by conducting his own theatre, like Shakespeare.  Only by assuming himself the functions of the manager can the dramatist escape from him.  In all ages, therefore, the dramatist has been forced to confront two sets of problems rather than one.  He has been obliged to study and to follow not only the technical laws of the dramatic art but also the commercial laws of the theatre business.  And whereas, in the case of the other arts, the student may consider the painter and ignore the picture-dealer, or analyse the mind of the novelist without analysing that of his publisher, the student of the drama in any age must always take account of the manager, and cannot avoid consideration of the economic organisation of the theatre in that age.  Those who are most familiar with the dramatic and poetic art of Christopher Marlowe and the histrionic art of Edward Alleyn are the least likely to underestimate the important influence which was exerted on the early Elizabethan drama by the illiterate but crafty and enterprising manager of these great artists, Philip Henslowe.  Students of the Queen Anne period may read the comedies of Congreve, but they must also read the autobiography of Colley Cibber, the actor-manager of the Theatre Royal.  And the critic who considers the drama of to-day must often turn from problems of art to problems of economics, and seek for the root of certain evils not in the technical methods of the dramatists but in the business methods of the managers.

At the present time, for instance, the dramatic art in America is suffering from a very unusual economic condition, which is unsound from the business standpoint, and which is likely, in the long run, to weary and to alienate the more thoughtful class of theatre-goers.  This condition may be indicated by the one word,—­over-production.  Some years ago, when the theatre trust was organised, its leaders perceived that the surest way to win a monopoly of the theatre business was to get control of the leading theatre-buildings throughout the country