Excerpt from The Autocrat in the Greenroom: With a Play After Othello I accept the title of Autocrat. The French dramatists are the autocrats of the English theatres of to-day. Golden applause follows, without almost murmur, whatever views of life and nature they choose to give. The British dramatist - if he be after Shakespeare certainly - should have the same privilege. Without it, there is no fair start for the home producer; without it, how is the actor to have his part.] Mme. Modjeska has, in some discussion in America, characterised the melodramatic class of play as the emotional, depending for expression upon the action 5 and Mr. Irving will put The Dead Heart no higher. The poetic play, she says, depends on thought and diction, she herself being a poetic actress. Her province would appear to be limited indeed if she is to favour the world with work not quite familiar to it. Is the theatre forced to exhibit only tableaux-vivants? And can there be great drama without words? The time was wont that when the brains were out the man would die. N o there can be no character of intelligent life without speech, so far as the stage is concerned and therefore the emotion of a figure little else than dumb can only interest children, not grown men and women who carry their intelligence about 'with them, and ought to be made to feel the difference between the emotions of a Hamlet and a dustman in an area. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.