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"The Playwrights of To-day." Daily Telegraph. Jan. 3, 1894, p. 5.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE DAILY TELEGRAPH."

Sir, — Is your dramatic critic really in earnest when he asserts (à propos of "The Country Girl") that the playwrights of to-day cannot write plays to suit such artists as Miss Ada Rehan and Mr William Farren?  Is he quite sure that (say) Mr. Pinero and Mr. Grundy have been invited to write plays to suit these artists; or that, having been invited and having agreed to do so, these gentlemen have despairingly thrown up their contracts, staggered by the intellectual difficulties of the task they have so rashly undertaken?  And does not your dramatic critic know as well as any man in England that if such preposterous rubbish as "The Country Girl" were put forth as a new play by a modern author it would be indignantly hissed off the stage before the first act had run its course? —  I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

W.S. GILBERT.

Harrow Weald, Jan. 2



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