ABSTRACT
Wherever I go and however intelligent or unintelligent the people may be, and however carefully they have read what I have written upon the Theatre, the eternal question comes back over and over again-sometimes aggressively put to one, sometimes nicely put: “Do you want to sweep away all the plays out of the theatre? Do you find the idea of the poet in the theatre offensive? Please say what is the meaning of this extraordinary idea of yours, that that which has been good for hundreds of years is suddenly to be held as bad.” It is exceedingly difficult to reply to all this, and as it is exceedingly difficult let us try to do so. Of course to me the whole question is so clear that it ceases to be a
question any longer. It has become the obvious with me that when a man sets his hand to a work he should not take by the wrist another man’s hand and use it to do the work in question, and then call it his work. The whole thing is so obvious to me that, in order to be able to reply
carefully and sensibly to those to whom it is not obvious, I must remove myself from the picture before me, and see every line in the pictures which the others see. And if I try to do that I shall have to see some very dull things, and discuss some very dull points, which are obvious to most of us; but if the question has to be gone into at all perhaps this is inevitable. I have a horrible dread of proving people to be wrong, especially the man
who takes the arts easily. I have more than a large appreciation of his good sense. Besides, I do not want to prove that the man who goes to the pit to see Richard the Third is wrong for going there, no matter what his reason is. Let us take the whole front row of the London pit, consisting of twenty
people. Ask them the reason why they have come to the theatre. Five reply, “I
come to see Mr.——act.” Three reply, “It is such a great play, I like to hear it so much.” Two giggle and reply, “We don’t know why we come, but we think it is such fun.” Two are there from a sense of duty both to the actors of the play and to the audience; and the other eight will give us several elaborate and conflicting reasons for their presence.
