"I like the exciting pieces and the funny farces, and all the pretty dresses and pretty undresses and the pretty girls and pretty music of the musical comedies.
"You appear to imagine that the business of the theatre is to make the audience think; perhaps that would be all right if it appealed merely to idle people, but ninety-nine folk out of a hundred who go to a theatre in the evening have already done a day's work; even those who don't earn their living are pretty tired after dinner. So it is clear that there are not people enough to support a drama which it is difficult to understand. Moreover, you forget that when we have to read, as sometimes happens, the high-class books, we can skip the dull parts; indeed, I get to know all that I need about the important books by reading the reviews that tear the guts out of them and merely leave the padding behind; but, unfortunately, you cannot skip the dull parts of a play unless it is a very well-known work, like Hamlet or Macbeth, when, if a man has a good seat, he can escape quite a lot of the philosophising passages.
"The solid truth is that we English, like the Americans, have too much good sense to worry about drama. There are a certain number of cranks and faddists who get an unholy delight out of eccentric plays, but they are few in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where good sense reigns. We only take fairy tales seriously when we are children; we never get intoxicated by ideas; this is where we differ from the Continentals. Art is all very well in its way and in its proper place. I like a good picture, or a good song, or a rattling story as well as anybody; but art ought not to be shoved down our throats. You will observe that the Americans, really a great people, are like us in this respect, and none of their plays—at least those that come over here—belong to the intellectual drama about which you rave. When they want to be intellectual they play Shakespeare, not giving us more of the Bard than is absolutely necessary, but letting us have full measure of pretty music, scenery and dresses. Augustin Daly used to do it perfectly.
"By all means have a little theatre of your own and enjoy dull plays in it, but don't denounce our cakes and ale, or think yourself any better than people with healthy tastes who can enjoy such works as Mrs Dot, or The Explorer, or The Duke's Motto. And what does it matter where the plays come from any more than where the nuts come from? Anyone would think you were a rabid Protectionist who reads your howls about imported plays. Art is universal, not local—I read that in some real high-toned book—and if a play is good, don't worry whether its author is French or German or American. You don't grumble if he is Norwegian. Why not? Do be consistent even if you cannot be broad-minded. And, lastly, let the Censor alone; you have flung enough mud at him; I am tired of reading energetic attacks which you know quite well are mere beating of the wind. Your unfortunate reader,
"A MIDDLE-AGED PLEASURE-SEEKER"
It is fair to add that the amiable correspondent is inaccurate in some of his allegations. We have never said that the plays of Shakespeare or Phillips are tiresome, or that Mr Tree's scenery is not beautiful because it is too pretty, but have hinted that it is sometimes too academically or conventionally pretty. And we have not protested against the importation of plays, but against the importation of rubbish no better than our rubbish of a similar character. We have not demanded that all drama should be intellectual, but merely that the intellectual should be given a fair hearing.
[Why he is Disliked ]
It is to be feared that the dramatic critics are not really popular; people have even spoken of them as parasites, without displaying a nice acquaintance with language. On this side of the footlights most people regard us as mere beefeaters, but taste the fare approved by us suspiciously. There is a lurking doubt in the general mind as to our honesty.
The people on the other side know that the "champagne and chicken" idea is ill-founded: perhaps they even regret this occasionally, but they love us none the better. Clement Scott used to be very bitter in print about the ingratitude of players; there was an article by him complaining that those who loved him on account of half-a-dozen laudatory notices turned round and reviled him because of an unflattering phrase in a seventh, and the topic was one upon which he had a means of knowledge quite unequalled. Services weigh less than disservices.
Under such circumstances, mindful of the fact that our remarks are read very closely by people whom they affect deeply, it is most important that our censure should appear just—to others. We ought to be extremely careful that those whom we blame cannot point out that upon their face our remarks are unfair. It is not always easy to remember this, particularly when one is young, and sometimes it is difficult to sacrifice the pleasure of a neat phrase because it may do a little injustice. When looking at such a neat, crushing sentence as "A better company would have been wasted upon such a play, a better play upon such a company," one wonders anxiously whether, in order to write it, the critic may not have been unjust to somebody.