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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
edge, the guild of actors is the most charm-
ing, naif, clever, contracted, conventional,
disorderly, sensitive, insensible, obstinate,
generous, egotistic body in the world, and
— " unique." Players are as conservative
and as superstitious as sailors ; they have
but one theme, one material of thought
and conversation, — the theatre, and, of
course, themselves as exponents of the
theatre. They hold to their traditions like
North American Indians, and their con-
ventions have the perdurable toughness
of iron. Be the thing bad or good, once
it is firmly fastened upon the theatre, it
sticks indefinitely. The stage fop, now al-
most obsolete, was a survival, probably,
from the period of the Restoration, and
drawled and strutted over the boards for
hundreds of years after he had disappeared
from society. Yet actors are distinguished
by plasticity. That they succeed as well
as they do in reproducing the contempo-
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