A Preface For Philosophers.

Philosophy may be roughly defined to mean ideas of a universal scope. "The principles or explanation which underlie all things without exception, the elements common to gods and men and animals and stones, the first whence and the last whither of the whole cosmic procession." Under the Frivolity of our extravaganza is deeply hidden a philosophic germ. For the first time since Shakespeare, in so far as the authors are aware, .you have here presented the judgment that all human ills spring from obsessions and from enthusiasms misdirected. This is the reconciling factor in scenes so different as China and Crusoe Island. We here shew you four of the popular fads of our own age that you may pass judgment upon them without the uncomfortable feeling that you have condemned yourselves. Pseudo-Orientalism, the aesthetic movement, Bolshevism, and the movie "back-to-nature" craze, coupled with our New Zealand society, are the themes we play upon. These ideas we have in all seriousness chosen to present in four methods with which you are most familiar; that you may see how you reverence the craft of the stage that holds you all the year round, The first act is in the style of the musical comedy a-la-mode; in the second the march of events is strictly ordered as in our older and parent extravaganzas. These we contrast with the American "crook" play in the third act, and in the fourth shew you the model of the new extravaganza as it will be when one great enough arises to write it.

W. E. Leicester,

C. Q. Pope.