ONLY THEIR PLAY!
Abnormal natures, morbid motives! Yes!
These things, upon the stage, perhaps impress.
Monstrosities, not true men's hearts, nor women's.
Trolls, with a touch of the delirium tremens,
Neurotic neurospasts, puppets whose wires
Are pulled by morbid dreams and mad desires;
Not men and women 'midst our world's temptations,
But fevered phantasy's bizarre creations.
Despite Solness and Mrs. Tanqueray,
"People don't do these things"—except in play!
As in a Glass Darkly.—Grubby and grovelling "Realists" boast that they only "hold the mirror up to Nature." Perhaps! But when their particular "mirror" happens to be—as it commonly is—dirty and distorting, Nature, like the victim of a bad looking-glass at a country inn, is taken at a disadvantage. There are mirrors which make a man look a monster, but then the monstrosity is not in the man but the mirror.