There are so many problem plays nowadays, however, that it is often difficult for the critic to make his decision between the close of the theatre at midnight and his arrival at the nearest telegraph office (if he be on a provincial paper), or at the London newspaper office, a quarter of an hour later, when that impression has to be reduced to paper and ink. Only those who have written at this nervous pressure know its terrors. To have a “devil” (the printer’s boy) standing at one’s elbow waiting for “copy” is horrible—the ink is not dry on the paper as sheet after sheet goes off to the compositor waiting its arrival. By the time the writer reaches his last sentences the first pages are all in type waiting his corrections. At 2 a.m. the notice must be out of his hands for good or ill, because the final “make-up” of the paper necessitates his “copy” filling the exact space allotted to him by the editor, and two hours later that selfsame newspaper, printed and machined, is on its way to the provinces by the “newspaper trains,” and on sale in Liverpool, Birmingham, or Sheffield, a few hours only after the latest theatrical criticism has been added to its columns.
The stage is necessarily intimately connected with the press, and a free hand is imperative if the well-reasoned essay, and not merely a reporter’s account, is to be of value.
Wise critics refuse to know personally the objects of their criticism, and so avoid many troubles, for many actors are hyper-sensitive by nature. The press is naturally a great factor, but it cannot make or mar a play any more than it can make or mar a book; it can fan the flame, but it cannot make the blaze.
At the O.P. Club Alfred Robbins recently delivered an address on “Dramatic Critics: Are they any use?” He pertinently remarked:
“A play is like a cigar—if it is bad no amount of puffing will make it draw; but if good then every one wants a box.” He held that the great danger was that the critic should lack pluck to protest against a revolting play on a well-advertised stage, and follow the lead of the applause of programme-sellers in a fashionable house; while making up for it by hunting for faults with a microscope in the case of a young author or manager. The critic should tell not so much how the play affected him as how it affected the audience. Critics were always useful when they were interesting, but not when they tried to instruct.
E. F. Spence, as a critic himself, pointed out that some critics had no words that were not red and yellow, while others wrote entirely in grey. When one man said a play was “not half bad,” and another described it as an “unparalleled masterpiece,” they meant often the same thing. And the readers of each, accustomed to their tone and style, knew what to expect from their words.
Mrs. Kendal thought “criticism would be better after three weeks, when the actor had learnt to know his points.” All agreed that the critics of to-day are scrupulously conscientious.
G. Bernard Shaw wrote: “A dramatic criticism is a work of literary art, useful only to the people who enjoy reading dramatic criticisms, and generally more or less hurtful to everybody else concerned.”
Clement Shorter’s opinion was: “I do not in the least believe in the utility of dramatic critics. The whole sincerity of the game has been spoilt. The hand of the dramatic critic is stayed because the dramatist and the important actor have a wide influence with the proprietors of newspapers.”
An anonymous manager wrote: “The few independent critics are of great use, but the critic who turns his attention to play-writing should not be allowed to criticise, for he is never fair to any author’s work except his own. It has paid managers to accept plays from critics even if they don’t produce them.”