From the commercial point of view (and in the long run as in the short all art must be judged by its monetary value) the drama depends for its support on what used to be known as the better-dressed parts of the house.  Now-a-days the majority of the paying patrons of these seats come from the ranks of the new custodians of the nation’s wealth.  These people, who have the business instinct very strongly developed, insistently and very rightly demand value for their money; and the problem is how to give them value as they understand the meaning of the word.  My friend Mr. ARTHUR COLLINS gives it to them in sand; but that is a shifting foundation on which to build up a prosperous run.

Those who, like myself, have studied closely the tastes and intelligence of this new force that is directing the destiny of the modern theatre must have come to the conclusion that the essential factor in dramatic success is “punch,” or, as our cross-Atlantic cousins would term it, “pep.”  The day of anaemic characterisation and subtle dissection of motives is past.  The audience (or the only part that really counts) has no desire to be called upon to think; it can afford to pay others to do its thinking for it.  There is much to be said for this point of view.  The War and its effects (especially the Excess Profits Duty) have imposed on us all far too many and too severe mental jerks; in the theatre we may well forget that we possess such a thing as a mind.

As a charming and gifted little actress said to me only yesterday, “We want something a bit meatier than the dry old bones of IBSEN’S ghosts.”  Well, I am out to provide that something; my present success certainly does not lack for flesh.

In producing Shoo, Charlotte! I have taken several hints from that formidable young rival of the articulate stage known as the Silent Drama.  There effects are flung at the spectator’s head like balls at a cocoanut; if they fail to register a hit it is the fault of the shier, not of the nut.  My aim throughout has been to throw hard and true, so that even the thickest nut is left in no doubt as to the actuality of the impact. Shoo, Charlotte! makes no high-sounding attempt at improving the public taste.  As the dramatic critic of The Sabbath Scoop pithily remarked, it is just “one long feast of laughter and lingerie,” and its nightly triumph is the only vindication it requires.

The fundamental mistake of the British drama of to-day lies, in my humble opinion, in its perpetual striving after the unexpected.  The public, such as I have described it, fights shy of novel situations; it isn’t sure how they ought to be taken.  But give it a play where it knows exactly what is going to happen next and you are rewarded with the delighted applause that comes of prophecy fulfilled.  The thrill or chuckle of anticipation is succeeded by the shudder or guffaw of realisation.  Father nudges Mother and says, “Look, Emma, he’s going to fall into the flour-bin.”  He does fall into the flour-bin, and Father slaps his own or Mother’s knee with a roar of triumph.  After all, the old dramatic formulae were not drawn up without a profound knowledge of human nature.