There is a sentence in Arthur Mizener's preface to Volume I of the Carleton Drama Bulletin which may serve to point the direction of my remarks this evening. It is our ambition, he says, “to pull together the drama as a thing alive on the stage and the drama as a thing read, contemplated, and discussed“—in other words, to conjoin drama in the concrete, as presented to our eyes, ears, and emotions by producers and actors, with drama in the abstract, as brought to our minds through the concepts and reasonings of dramatic critics. The chief concern of Mr. Mizener was properly with the kinds of plays that would best promote a union of the living stage and the stage as a formulated art. My concern, on the other hand, will be with the second element in the combination: namely, with the conditions under which, in such a program, the reading and study of dramatic criticism may help to advance rather than to hinder the realization of its double aim.