[Gutenberg 13408] • Our Stage and Its Critics / By "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

Edward Fordham Spence (1860-1932) was the British author of: A Company Scandal (1902), Our Stage and its Critics (1910), The Safe (1912), The Pike Fisher (1928) and Bar and Buskin (1930). "Whilst reading the proof-sheets of these articles I have been oppressed by the thought that they give a gloomy idea about the state of our Stage. Yet I am naturally sanguine. Indeed, no one taking a deep interest in our drama could have written for a score or so of years about it unless of a naturally sanguine temperament. There has been great progress during my time, yet we still are far from possessing a modern national drama creditable to us. Some imagine that the British have no inborn genius for writing drama, or acting it, and look upon those dramatists and players whose greatness cannot be denied as mere exceptions to a rule. "