Essays in Theatrical Criticism Author:Mowbray Morris Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE STAGE AS IT IS. Under this title Mr. Irving delivered, towards the close of last year, an address to the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. He had be... more »en invited to open the annual session of the Society —a high compliment both to the individual and his profession—and his remarks on so felicitous a subject were naturally anticipated with considerable interest, and heard, we may be sure, with no less. The circumstances of place, subject, and speaker, could not but have given an importance and piquancy to words even less animated than those in which Mr. Irving addressed an audience from whom he had already received so many and such substantial proofs of regard. It would have been hard indeed if, under such very happy and assuring conditions, he had not felt to their full all those stimulating influences with which a cordial and sympathetic audience can inspire even the least practised speaker. And that he did feel them is clearly shown by the freedom and fertility of his speech and unreservedness, even by the here and there, of what one may be pxttrMtted without offence to call self-sufficiency, in the circumstances so very natural. But, in those same circumstances, it was almost inevitable that he should sometimes forget that he was necessarily regarding from one point of view only a subject, not perhaps of that world-wide importance that he appears to attach to it, but certainly of no little interest. He, an actor, was expatiating to his audience on the great worth and influence of the theatre as an elevating factor in the sum of human civilization. He held the field alone and unopposed, and he held it, no doubt, in triumphant style. But there is, of course, another point of view from which the subject must also be regarded, if there is to be any seriousness, any fixe...« less