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A DRAMATIC CRITIC
pacity for generalization, and scarcely one
of them appears to be capable of transcend-
ing the limits of his own personal experi-
ence. Mr. Richard Mansfield, lately, in a
talk intended for publication, with elaborately
insincere irony disparaging his own
" poor " acting, scoffed at the Conserva-
tories, which did not succeed in sending
out graduates as competent even as him-
self, who, as everybody knows, picked up
his art pretty much at haphazard. There
was truth as well as error in his strictures,
— the truth being more important than
the error. Thus far, our Schools of Acting,
though conducted in some instances by
men of ability, have failed in training can-
didates for the stage. One fatal criticism
upon the graduates of these schools was
made from the first, and continues to be
made: their fault in action and in utter-
ance is declared to be a stiffness of style,
which is generally hopeless. The explana-
tion is obvious: the students of acting: are
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