Feb. 7.
SOME one has objected that a phrase recently used in a theatrical notice in these columns— the art of attractive vulgarity, is something of a contradiction' in terms. A good deal depends, of course, on the meaning of vul yy. The Baptismal Service bids godparents to see that the child is structed in the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments "in the! vulgar tongue." Dictionaries define vulgarity as "of or pertaining' to the common people"; and the judgment of common folk, as Wagner triumphantly retorted on his critics, is usually sound in the Jong run in matters of art.
But even taking it at the lowest its modern significance, vulgar-when expressed on the stage, assuredly becomes an art and we would venture to say the highest of all forms of art, as. it is certainly the most difficult. There ought to be some inversion of! the familiar tag about the corrupt tion of the best things being the:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.