Most of the PUNCH artists of note have used their pencils on the
theatre; with theatricals public and private none has done more than Du
Maurier. All have made merry over the extravagances of melodrama and
"problem" plays; the vanity and the mistakes of actors, actresses and
dramatists; and the blunderings of the average playgoer.
MR. PUNCH genially satirises the aristocratic amateurs who, some few
years ago, made frantic rushes into the profession, and for a while
enjoyed more kudos as actors than they had obtained as titled members
of the upper circle, and the exaggerated social status that for the time
accrued to the professional actor as a consequence of this invasion.
The things he has written about the stage, quite apart from all
reviewing of plays, would more than fill a book of itself; and he has
slyly and laughingly satirised players, playwrights and public with an
equal impartiality.
He has got a deal of fun out of the French dramas and the affected
pleasure taken in them by audiences that did not understand the
language. He has got even more fun out of the dramatists whose "original
plays" were largely translated from the French, and to whom Paris was,
and to some extent is still, literally and figuratively "a playground."
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