We had some trace of this new epilogue method in _Leah Kleschna_, as well as in _Letty_. How the critics of the morning papers would bless such a system! At the same time, it is imaginable that the authors will raise a difficulty--they are such an exacting race!
However, a brilliant suggestion has been made of a way of dealing with the difficulty. "Why not," asks a fair correspondent, whose letter has incited this article--"why not begin with the last act?" The scornful may answer with the question, "Why begin at all if you've nothing better than our ordinary drama?" but they must be kept out of court. There really is something in the idea. Public interest flags somewhat in the case of ordinary plays because the house knows too well the things that are going to happen; it might be stimulated by seeing them happen and then watching the development of the facts leading up to them. This suggestion is not protected in any way, either in England or the United States.
The title may sound a little misleading, Ruskinian, Horne-Tookian: probably the word "preposterous" would not have been used but for an accidental remembrance of De Quincey, who was so fond of using and explaining it, of pointing out that it signified the behind-before, the cart before the horse, the hysteron-proteron. By-the-by, why has De Quincey gone out of fashion? There are charming reprints of almost everybody who is somebody, and of somebodies who really are nobodies; even Alexander Smith is being talked of; yet, if you want a full feast of De Quincey you must go to ill-printed pages bound horribly. However, except so far as Shakespeare is concerned, the author of a famous essay on Wilhelm Meister has left us little on the topic of the stage. A casual question brought forward the subject: it was whether Sothern's Dundreary really represented an English type. To answer this is a matter of some difficulty.
The fact remains that if Dundreary did not represent a type, at least it created one. Dundrearys became quite numerous after Sothern's success; and the observant have remarked that not infrequently a stage character has verified itself by a species of ratification--a remark that has a flavour of Ireland, or, if a famous essay by Miss Edgeworth is to be accepted, a flavour of France--this is a reference to her essay on Irish bulls, a title itself which happens to be unconsciously a bull.