LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
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 SAN DIEGO 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO 
 
 3 1822 02669 7854 
 
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 THE CRITIC AND THE DRAMA
 
 THE BOOKS OF GEORGE JEAN NATHAN 
 
 The Theatre 
 co:medians all 
 the popular theatre 
 mr. george jean nathan presents 
 another book on the theatre 
 the theatre, the drama, the girls 
 the critic and the drama 
 
 Satire 
 
 A BOOK WITHOUT A TITLE 
 BOTTOMS UP 
 
 Plays 
 
 THE ETERNAL MYSTERY 
 
 HELioGABALUs (ill collaboration with H.L.Mencken) 
 Philosophy 
 
 THE AMERICAN CREDO: A CONTRIBUTION TOWARD 
 THE INTERPRETATION OF THE NATIONAL MIND 
 
 (in collaboration with II. L. Mencken) 
 
 Travel and Reminiscence 
 EUROPE AFTER 8:15 (tTi Collaboration tcith H. L. 
 Mencken)
 
 THE • CRITIC • AND 
 THE ' DRAMA 
 
 BY GEORGE JEAN NATHAN 
 
 New York ALFRED • A • KNOPF Mcmxxii
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. 
 
 Fuhlished January, 1922 
 
 Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamion, N. Y. 
 
 Paper ( IVanen' s) furni slu'd by Henry Lindenmeyr dt ^ons, Neiv York, N. Y. 
 
 Bound by tlte H. Wolff instate, New York, N. Y. 
 
 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 WITH HIS PERMISSION 
 
 TO EDWARD GORDON CRAIG 
 
 THE FIRST iESTHETICIAN OF THE THEATRE
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Aesthetic Jurisprudence S 
 
 II. Drama as an Art 29 
 
 III. The Place of the Theatre 63 
 
 IV. The Place of Acting 83 
 
 V. Dramatic Criticism 113 
 
 VI. Dramatic Criticism in America 133
 
 Of all the arts and half-arts — perhaps 
 even above that of acting — is the art of 
 criticism fxmnded, most greatly upon 
 vanity. All criticism is, at bottom, an 
 effort on the part of its practitioner to 
 show off himself and his art at the ex- 
 pense of the artist and the art which he 
 criticizes. The heavy modesty practised 
 by certain critics is but a recognition of, 
 and self-conscious attempt to diminish, 
 the fundamental and ineradicable vain- 
 glory of criticism. The great critics are 
 those who, recognizing the intrinsic, per- 
 manent and indeclinable egotism of the 
 critical art, make no senseless effort to 
 conceal it. The absurd critics are those 
 who attempt to conceal it and, in the 
 attempt, make their art and themselves 
 doubly absurd.
 
 I. AESTHETIC JURISPRUDENCE
 
 I. AESTHETIC JURISPRUDENCE 
 
 ART is a reaching out into the ugliness 
 of the world for vagrant beauty and 
 the imprisoning of it in a tangible 
 dream. Criticism is the dream book. All art 
 is a kind of subconscious madness expressed in 
 terms of sanity; criticism is essential to the 
 interpretation of its mysteries, for about 
 everything truly beautiful there is ever some- 
 thing mysterious and disconcerting. Beauty 
 is not always immediately recognizable as 
 beauty; what often passes for beauty is mere 
 infatuation; living beauty is like a love that 
 has outlasted the middle-years of life, and has 
 met triumphantly the test of time, and faith, 
 and cynic meditation. For beauty is a sleep- 
 walker in the endless corridors of the wakeful 
 world, uncertain, groping, and not a little 
 strange. And criticism is its tender guide- 
 Art is a partnership between the artist and 
 [3]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 the artist-critic. The former creates; the 
 latter re-creates. Without criticism, art 
 would of course still be art, and so with its 
 windows walled in and with its lights extin- 
 guished would the Louvre still be the Louvre. 
 Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of 
 art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in 
 which art might otherwise rest only vaguely 
 discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen. 
 
 Criticism, at its best, is a great, tall candle 
 on the altar of art ; at its worst, which is to say 
 in its general run, a campaign torch flaring red 
 in behalf of aesthetic ward-heelers. This cam- 
 paign torch motif in criticism, with its 
 drunken enthusiasm and raucous hollering 
 born of ignorance, together with what may be 
 called the Prince Albert motif, with its sober, 
 statue-like reserve born of ignorance that, be- 
 ing well-mannered, is not so bumptious as the 
 other, has contributed largely to the common 
 estimate of criticism as a profession but 
 slightly more exalted than Second Avenue 
 auctioneering if somewhat less than Fifth. 
 Yet criticism is itself an art. It might, 
 
 [4]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 indeed, be well defined as an art within an art, 
 jince every work of art is the result of a strug- 
 gle between the heart that is the artist himself 
 and his mind that is the critic. Once his work 
 is done, the artist's mind, tired from the bitter- 
 ness of the struggle, takes the form of a second 
 artist, puts on this second artist's strange hat, 
 coat and checkered trousers, and goes forth 
 with refreshed vigour to gossip abroad how 
 much of the first artist's work was the result 
 of its original splendid vitality and how much 
 the result of its gradually diminished vitaHty 
 and sad weariness. The wrangling that 
 occurs at times between art and criticism is, 
 at bottom, merely a fraternal discord, one in 
 which Cain and Abel belabour each other with 
 stuffed clubs. Criticism is often most sym- 
 pathetic when it is apparently most cruel: the 
 propounder of the sternest, hardest philosophy 
 that the civilized world has known never failed 
 sentimentally to kiss and embrace his sister, 
 Therese Elisabeth Alexandra Nietzsche, every 
 night at bed-time. "It is not possible," Cabell 
 has written, "to draw inspiration from a worn- 
 
 [5]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 an's beauty unless you comprehend how easy 
 it would be to mui'der her." And — "Only 
 those who have firmness may be really tender- 
 hearted," said Rochefoucauld. One may 
 sometimes even throw mud to tonic purpose. 
 Consider Karlsbad. 
 
 Art is the haven wherein the disillusioned 
 may find illusion. Truth is no part of art. 
 Nor is the mission of art simple beauty, as the 
 text books tell us. The mission of art is the 
 magnification of simple beauty to proportions 
 so heroic as to be almost overpowering. Art 
 is a gross exaggeration of natural beauty: 
 there was never a woman so beautiful as the 
 Venus di Milo, or a man so beautiful as the 
 Apollo Belvedere of the Vatican, or a sky so 
 beautiful as Monet's, or human speech so beau- 
 tiful as Shakespeare's, or the song of a night- 
 ingale so beautiful as Ludwig van Beethoven's. 
 But as art is a process of magnification, so 
 criticism is a process of reduction. Its pur- 
 pose is the reducing of the magnifications of 
 art to the basic classic and aesthetic principles, 
 and the subsequent announcement thereof in 
 
 [6]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 terms proportioned to the artist's interplay of 
 fundamental skill and overtopping imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 The most general fault of criticism lies in a 
 confusion of its own internal processes with 
 those of art : it is in the habit of regarding the 
 business of art as a reduction of life to its 
 essence of beauty, and the business of crit- 
 icism as an expansion of that essence to its 
 fullest flow. The opposite is more reasonable. 
 Art is a beautiful, swollen lie ; criticism, a cold 
 compress. The concern of art is with beauty ; 
 the concern of criticism is with truth. And 
 truth and beauty, despite the Sunday School, 
 are often strangers. This confusion of the 
 business of art and that of criticism has given 
 birth to the so-called "contagious," or inspira- 
 tional, criticism, than which nothing is more 
 mongrel and absurd. Criticism is designed to 
 state facts — charmingly, gracefully, if possible 
 — but still facts. It is not designed to exhort, 
 enlist, convert. This is the business not of 
 the critic, but of those readers of the critic 
 whom the facts succeed in convincing and gal- 
 
 [7]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 vanizing. Contagious^ criticism is merely a 
 vainglorious critic's essay at popularity: facts 
 heated up to a degree where they melt into 
 caressing nothingness. 
 
 But if this "criticism with a glow" is not to 
 be given countenance, even less is to be suf- 
 fered the criticism that, in its effort at a fastid- 
 ious and elegant reserve, leans so far backward 
 that it freezes its ears. This species of crit- 
 icism fails not only to enkindle the reader, but 
 fails also — and this is more important — to en- 
 kindle the critic himself. The ideal critic is 
 perhaps much like a Thermos bottle: full of 
 warmth, he suggests the presence of the heat 
 within him without radiating it. This inner 
 warmth is essential to a critic. But this inner 
 warmth, where it exists, is automatically 
 chilled and banished from a critic by a 
 protracted indulgence in excessive critical 
 reserve. Just as the professional frown 
 assumed by a much photographed public mag- 
 nifico often becomes stubbornly fixed upon his 
 hitherto gentle brow, so does the prolonged 
 spurious constraint of a critic in due time 
 
 [8]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 psychologically hoist hiin on his own petard. 
 A writer's work does not grow more and more 
 like him; a writer grows more and more like 
 his work. The best writing that a man pro- 
 duces is always just a httle superior to himself. 
 There never was a literary artist who did not 
 appreciate the difficulty of keejjing up to the 
 pace of his writings. A writer is dominated 
 by the standard of his own writings; he is a 
 slave in transitu, lashed, tormented, and miser- 
 able. The weak and inferior literary artist, 
 such a critic as the one alluded to, soon 
 becomes the helpless victim of his own writ- 
 ings: like a vampire of his own creation thsy 
 turn uj)on him and suck from him the warm 
 blood that was erstwhile his. A pose in time 
 becomes natural: a man with a good left eye 
 cannot affect a monocle for years without 
 eventually coming to need it. A critic cannot 
 write ice without becoming in time himself 
 at least partly frosted. 
 
 Paraphrasing Pascal, to little minds all 
 things are gi-eat. Great art is in constant 
 conflict with the awe of little minds. Art is 
 
 [9]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 something like a wonderful trapeze performer 
 swinging high above the heads of the bewil- 
 dered multitude and nervous lest it be made 
 to lose its balance and to slip by the periodic 
 sudden loud marvellings of the folks below. 
 The little mind and its little criticism are the 
 flattering foes of sound art. Such art 
 demands for its training and triumph the 
 countless preliminary body blows of muscular 
 criticism guided by a muscular mind. Art 
 and the artist cannot be developed by mere 
 back-slapping. If art, according to Beule, is 
 the intervention of the human mind in the 
 elements furnished by experience, criticism is 
 the intervention of the human mind in the 
 elements furnished by aesthetic passion. Art 
 and the artist are ever youthful lovers; crit- 
 icism is their chaperon. 
 
 II 
 
 I do not believe finally in this or that 
 "theory" of criticism. There are as many 
 sound and apt species of criticism as there 
 [10]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 are works to be criticized. To say that art 
 must be criticized only after this formula or 
 after that, is to say that art must be contrived 
 only out of this formula or out of that. As 
 every work of art is an entity, a thing in itself, 
 so is every piece of criticism an entity, a thing 
 in itself. That "Thus Spake Zarathustra" 
 must inevitably be criticized by the canons of 
 the identical "theory" with which one criticizes 
 "Tristan and Isolde" is surely difficult of 
 reasoning. 
 
 To the Goethe-Carlyle doctrine that the 
 critic's duty lies alone in discerning the artist's 
 aim, his point of view and, finally, his execu- 
 tion of the task before him, it is easy enough 
 to subscribe, but certainly this is not a "theory" 
 of criticism so much as it is a foundation for 
 a theory. To advance it as a theory, full- 
 grown, full-fledged and flapping, as it has been 
 advanced by the Italian Croce and his admir- 
 ers, is to publish the preface to a book without 
 the book itself. Accepted as a theory complete 
 in itself, it fails by virtue of its several un- 
 developed intrinsic problems, chief among 
 
 [11]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 which is its neglect to consider the undeniable 
 fact that, though each work of art is indubi- 
 tably an entity and so to be considered, there 
 is yet in creative art what may be termed an 
 aesthetic genealogy that bears heavily upon 
 comprehensive criticism and that renders the 
 artist's aim, his point of view and his execu- 
 tion of the task before him susceptible to a 
 criticism predicated in a measure upon the 
 work of the sound artist who has just preceded 
 him. 
 
 The Goethe- Car lyle hypothesis is a little too 
 liberal. It calls for qualifications. It gives 
 the artist too much ground, and the critic too 
 little. To discern the artist's aim, to discern 
 the artist's point of view, are phrases that 
 require an amount of plumbing, and not a 
 few foot-notes. It is entirely possible, for 
 example, that the immediate point of view of 
 an artist be faulty, yet the execution of his 
 immediate task exceedingly fine. If carefully 
 planned triumph in art is an entity, so also 
 may be undesigned triumph. I do not say 
 that any such latter phenomenon is usual, but 
 [12]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 it is conceivable, and hence may be employed 
 as a test of the critical hypothesis in point. 
 Unschooled, without aim or point of view in 
 the sense of this hypothesis, Schumann's com- 
 positions at the age of eleven for chorus and 
 orchestra offer the quasi-theory some resist- 
 ance. The question of the comparative merit 
 of these compositions and the artist's sub- 
 sequent work may not strictly be brought into 
 the argument, since the point at issue is merely 
 a theory and since theory is properly to be 
 tested by theory. 
 
 Intent and achievement are not necessarily 
 twins. I have always perversely thought it 
 likely that there is often a greater degi'ce of 
 accident in fine art than one is permitted to 
 believe. The aim and point of view of a 
 bad artist are often admirable; the execution 
 of a fine artist may sometimes be founded upon 
 a point of view that is, from an apparently 
 sound critical estimate, at striking odds with 
 it. One of the finest performances in all mod- 
 ern dramatic writing, upon its critical recep- 
 tion as such, came as a great surprise to the 
 [13]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 writer who almost unwittingly had achieved 
 it. Art is often unconscious of itself. Shake- 
 speare, writing popular plays to order, wrote 
 the greatest plays that di'amatic art has 
 known. Mark Twain, in a disgusted moment, 
 threw off a practical joke, and it turned out to 
 be literature. 
 
 A strict adherence to the principles enun- 
 ciated in the Goethe -Carlyle theory would 
 result in a confinement of art for all the the- 
 ory's bold aim in exactly the opposite direc- 
 tion. For all the critic may accurately say, 
 the aim and point of view of, say, Richard 
 Strauss in "Don Quixote" and "A Hero's 
 Life," may be imperfect, yet the one critical 
 fact persists that the executions are remark- 
 ably fine. All things considered, it were per- 
 haps better that the critical theory under 
 discussion, if it be accepted at all, be turned 
 end foremost: that the artist's execution of 
 the task before him be considered either apart 
 from his aim and point of view, or that it be 
 considered first, and then — with not too much 
 insistence upon them — his point of view and 
 
 [14]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 his aim. This would seem to be a more logical 
 aesthetic and critical order. Tolstoi, with a 
 sound, inteUigent and technically perfect aim 
 and point of view composed second-rate 
 drama. So, too, Maeterlinck. Synge, by his 
 own admissions adjudged critically and dra- 
 matically guilty on both counts, composed one 
 of the truly first-rate dramas of the Anglo- 
 Saxon stage. 
 
 In its very effort to avoid pigeon-holing, 
 the Goethe- Car lyle theory pigeon-holes itself. 
 In its commendable essay at catholicity, it is 
 like a garter so elastic that it fails to hold itself 
 up. That there may not be contradictions in 
 the contentions here set forth, I am not sure. 
 But I advance no fixed, definite theory of my 
 own; I advance merely contradictions of cer- 
 tain of the phases of the theories held by 
 others, and contradictions are ever in the habit 
 of begetting contradictions. Yet such con- 
 tradictions are in themselves apposite and 
 soundly critical, since any theory susceptible 
 of contradictions must itself be contradictory 
 and insecure. If I suggest any theory on my 
 [15]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 part it is a variable one: a theory that, in this 
 instance, is one thing and in that, another. 
 Criticism, as I see it — and I share the common 
 opinion — is simply a sensitive, experienced and 
 thoroughbred artist's effort to interpret, in 
 terms of aesthetic doctrine and his own pecul- 
 iar soul, the work of another artist reciprocally 
 to that artist and thus, as with a reflecting 
 mirror, to his public. But to state merely 
 what criticism is, is not to state the doctrine 
 of its application. And herein, as I see it, is 
 where the theorists fail to cover full gi'ound. 
 The anatomy of criticism is composed not of 
 one theory, but of a theory — more or less gen- 
 erally agreed upon — upon which are reared in 
 turn other theories that are not so generally 
 agreed upon. The Goethe-Carlyle theoiy is 
 thus like a three-story building on which the 
 constructor has left off work after finishing 
 only the first story. What certain aspects of 
 these other stories may be like, I have already 
 tried to suggest. 
 
 I have said that, if I have any theory of my 
 own, it is a theory susceptible in practice of 
 
 [16]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 numerous surface changes. These surface 
 changes often distui'b in a measure this or that 
 phase of what lies at the bottom. Thus, 
 speaking as a critic of the theatre, I find it 
 impossible to reconcile myself to criticizing 
 acting and drama from the vantage point of 
 the same theory, say, for example, the Goethe- 
 Carlyle theory. This theory fits criticism of 
 drama much better than it fits criticism of act- 
 ing, just as it fits criticism of painting and 
 sculpture much more snugly than criticism of 
 music. The means whereby the emotions are 
 directly affected, and soundly affected, may 
 at times be critically meretricious, yet the 
 accomplishment itself may be, paradoxically, 
 artistic. Perhaps the finest acting perform- 
 ance of our generation is Bernhardt's Camille: 
 its final effect is tremendous: yet the means 
 whereby it is contrived are obviously inartistic. 
 Again, "King Lear," searched into with crit- 
 ical chill, is artistically a poor instance of play- 
 making, yet its effect is precisely the effect 
 striven for. Surely, in cases like these, crit- 
 icism founded strictly upon an inflexible the- 
 
 [17]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 ory is futile criticism, and not only futile but 
 eminently unfair. 
 
 Here, of course, I exhibit still more con- 
 tradictions, but through contradictions we may 
 conceivably gain more secure ground. When 
 his book is once opened, the author's mouth is 
 shut. (Wilde, I believe, said that; and though 
 for some peculiar reason it is today regarded 
 as suicidal to quote the often profound Wilde 
 in any serious argument, I risk the danger.) 
 But when a di'amatist's play or a composer's 
 symphony is opened, the author has only 
 begun to open his mouth. What results, an 
 emotional art within an intellectual art, calls 
 for a critical theory within a critical theory. 
 To this composite end, I oflper a suggestion: 
 blend with the Goethe-Carlyle theory that of 
 the aforementioned Wilde, to wit, that beauty 
 is uncriticizable, since it has as many meanings 
 as man has moods, since it is the symbol of 
 symbols, and since it reveals everything 
 because it expresses nothing. The trouble 
 with criticism — again to pose a contradiction — 
 is that, in certain instances, it is often too cer- 
 
 [18]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 ebral. Feeling a great thrill of beauty, it 
 turns to its somewhat puzzled mind and is 
 apprised that the thrill which it has unques- 
 tionably enjoyed from the work of art might 
 conceivably be of pathological origin, a frem- 
 itus or vibration felt upon percussion of a 
 hydatoid tumour. 
 
 The Goethe-Carlyle theory, properly rigid 
 and unyielding so far as emotional groundlings 
 are concerned, may, I believe, at times safely 
 be chucked under the chin and offered a com- 
 munication of gipsy ardour by the critic whose 
 emotions are the residuum of trial, test and 
 experience. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Coquelin put it that the foothghts exag- 
 gerate everything: they modify the laws of 
 space and of time; they put miles in a few 
 square feet; they make minutes appear to be 
 hours. Of this exaggeration, dramatic criti- 
 cism — which is the branch of criticism of which 
 I treat in particular — has caught something. 
 [19]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 Of all the branches of criticism it is intrinsi- 
 cally the least sober and the least accurately 
 balanced. It always reminds me somehow of 
 the lash in the hands of ffiacus, in "The 
 Frogs," falling upon Bacchus and Xanthus 
 to discover which of the two is the divine, the 
 latter meantime endeavouring to conceal the 
 pain that would betray their mortality by var- 
 ious transparent dodges. Drama is a two- 
 souled art : half divine, half clownish. Shakes- 
 peare is the greatest dramatist who ever lived 
 because he alone, of all dramatists, most ac- 
 curately sensed the mongrel nature of his art. 
 Criticism of drama, it follows, is similarly a 
 two-souled art: half sober, half mad. Drama 
 is a deliberate intoxicant; dramatic criticism, 
 aromatic spirits of ammonia; the re-creation is 
 never perfect; there is always a trace of tipsi- 
 ness left. Even the best dramatic criticism is 
 always just a little dramatic. It indulges, a 
 trifle, in acting. It can never be as impersonal, 
 however much certain of its practitioners may 
 try, as criticism of painting or of sculpture or 
 of literature. This is why the best criticism of 
 
 [20]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 the theatre must inevitably be personal criti- 
 cism. The theatre itself is distinctly personal ; 
 its address is directly personal. It holds the 
 mirror not up to nature, but to the spectator's 
 individual idea of nature. If it doesn't, it 
 fails. The spectator, if he is a critic, merely 
 holds up his own mirror to the drama's mirror : 
 a reflection of the first reflection is the result. 
 Dramatic criticism is this second reflection. 
 And so the best dramatic criticism has about 
 it a flavour of the unconscious, grotesque and 
 unpremeditated. "When Lewes was at his 
 business," Shaw has said, "he seldom remem- 
 bered that he was a gentleman or a scholar." 
 (Shaw was speaking of Lewes' free use of 
 vulgarity and impudence whenever they hap- 
 pened to be the proper tools for his job.) "In 
 this he showed himself a true craftsman, in- 
 tent on making the measurements and analyses 
 of his criticism as accurate, and their ex- 
 pression as clear and vivid, as possible, instead 
 of allowing himself to be distracted by the 
 vanity of playing the elegant man of letters, 
 or writing with perfect good taste, or hinting 
 
 [21]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 in every line that he was above his work. In 
 exacting all this from himself, and taking his 
 revenge by expressing his most laboured con- 
 clusions with a levity that gave them the air 
 of being the unpremeditated whimsicalities of 
 a man who had perversely taken to writing 
 about the theatre foi^ the sake of the jest 
 latent in his own outrageous unfitness for it, 
 Lewes rolled his stone up the hill quite in the 
 modern manner of Mr. Walkley, dissembling 
 its huge weight, and apparently kicking it at 
 random hither and thither in pure wanton- 
 ness." 
 
 Mr. Spingarn, in his exceptionally interest- 
 ing, if somewhat overly indignant, treatise on 
 "Creative Criticism," provides, it seems to me, 
 a particularly clear illustration of the manner 
 in which the proponents of the more modern 
 theories of criticism imprison themselves in 
 the extravagance of their freedom. While 
 liberating art from all the old rules of criti- 
 cism, they simultaneously confine criticism 
 with the new rules — or ghosts of rules — where- 
 with they free art. If each work of art is a 
 
 [22]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 unit, a thing in itself, as is commonly agreed, 
 why should not each work of criticism be' 
 similarly a miit, a thing in itself? If art is, 
 in each and every case, a matter of individual 
 expression, why should not criticism, in each 
 and every such case, be similarly and rele- 
 vantly a matter of individual expression? In 
 freeing art of definitions, has not criticism 
 been too severely defined? I beheve that it 
 has been. I believe that there may be as many 
 kmds of criticism as there are kinds of art. 
 I believe that there may be sound analytical, 
 sound emotional, sound cerebral, sound im- 
 pressionistic, sound destructive, sound con- 
 structive, and other sound species of criticism. 
 If art knows no rules, criticism knows no 
 rules— or, at least, none save those that are 
 obvious. If Brahms' scherzo in E flat minor, 
 op. 4, is an entity, a work in and of itself' 
 why shouldn't Huneker's criticism of it be 
 regarded as an entity, a work in and of itself? 
 If there is in Huneker's work inspiration from 
 without, so, too, is there in Brahms': if Brahms 
 may be held a unit in this particular instance 
 [23]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 with no consideration of Chopin, why may not 
 Huneker with no consideration of Brahms? 
 
 If this is pushing things pretty far, it is 
 the Spingarns who have made the pushing nec- 
 essary. "Taste," says Mr. Spingarn, "must 
 reproduce the work of art within itself in 
 order to understand and judge it; and at that 
 moment aesthetic judgment becomes nothing 
 more or less than creative art itself." This 
 rings true. But granting the perfection of 
 the taste, why define and Hmit the critical 
 creative art thus born of reproduction? No 
 sooner has a law been enunciated, writes Mr. 
 Spingarn, than it has been broken by an artist 
 impatient or ignorant of its restraints, and the 
 critics have been obliged to explain away these 
 violations of their laws or gradually to change 
 the laws themselves. If art, he continues, is 
 organic expression, and every work of art is 
 to be interrogated with the question, "What 
 has it expressed, and how completely?", there 
 is no place for the question whether it has 
 conformed to some convenient classification of 
 critics or to some law derived from this classi- 
 
 [24]
 
 Aesthetic Jurisprudence 
 fication. Once again, truly put. But so, 
 too, no sooner have laws been enunciated than 
 they have been broken by critics impatient or 
 ignorant of their restraints, and the critics of 
 critics have been obhged to explain away these 
 violations of the laws, or gradually to change 
 the laws themselves. And so, too, have these 
 works of criticism provided no place for the 
 question whether they have conformed to some 
 convenient classification of the critics of criti- 
 cism or to some law derived from this classi- 
 fication. 
 
 "Criticism," said Carlyle, his theories apart, 
 "stands like an interpreter between the in- 
 spired and the uninspired, between the prophet 
 and those who hear the melody of his words, 
 and catch some glimpse of their material mean- 
 ing, but understand not their deeper import." 
 This is the best definition that I know of. 
 It defines without defining; it gives into the 
 keeping of the interpreter the hundred lan- 
 guages of art and merely urges him, with 
 whatever means may best and properly suit 
 his ends, to translate them clearly to those 
 [25]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 that do not understand; it sets him free from 
 the very shackles which Carlyle himself, re- 
 moving from art, wound ii? turn about him. 
 
 [26]
 
 II. DRAMA AS AN ART
 
 II. DRAMA AS AN ART 
 
 IF the best of criticism, in ithe familiar 
 description of Anatole France, lies in 
 the adventure of a soul among master- 
 pieces, the best of drama may perhaps be 
 described as the adventure of a masterpiece 
 among souls. Drama is fine or impoverished 
 in the degree that it evokes from such souls a 
 fitting and noble reaction. 
 
 Drama is, in essence, a democratic art in 
 constant brave conflict with aristocracy of in- 
 telligence, soul and emotion. When drama 
 triumphs, a masterpiece Hke "Hamlet" comes 
 to life. When the conflict ends in a draw, a 
 drama half-way between greatness and little- 
 ness is the result — a drama, say, such as "El 
 Gran Galeoto." When the struggle ends in 
 defeat, the result is a "Way Down East" or a 
 "Lightnin'." This, obviously, is not to say 
 [29]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 that great drama may not be popular drama, 
 nor popular drama great di-ama, for I speak of 
 drama here not as this play or that, but as a 
 specific art. And it is as a specific art that it 
 finds its test and trial, not in its own intrinsi- 
 cally democratic soul, but in the extrinsic aris- 
 tocratic soul that is taste, and connoisseurship, 
 and final judgment. Drama that has come to 
 be at once great and popular has ever first been 
 given the imprimatur, not of democratic souls, 
 but of aristocratic. Shakespeare and Molieje 
 triumphed over aristocracy of intelligence, soul 
 and emotion before that triumph was presently 
 carried on into the domain of inferior intelli- 
 gence, soul and emotion. In our own day, the 
 drama of Hauptmann, Shaw and the Ameri- 
 can O'Neill has come into its popular own only 
 after it first achieved the imprimatur of what 
 we may term the unpopular, or undemocratic, 
 theatres. Aristocracy cleared the democratic 
 path for Ibsen, as it cleared it, in so far as 
 possible, for Rostand and Hugo von Hof- 
 mannsthal. 
 
 Great drama is the rainbow born when the 
 [30]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 sun of reflection and understanding siniles 
 anew upon an intelligence and emotion which 
 that drama has respectively shot with gleams 
 of brilliant lightning and drenched with the 
 rain of brilliant tears. Great drama, like 
 great men and gi'eat women, is always just a 
 little sad. Only idiots may be completely 
 happy. Reflection, sympathy, wisdom, gal- 
 lant gentleness, experience — the chords upon 
 which great drama is played — these are wistful 
 chords. The commonplace urge that drama, 
 to be truly great, must uplift is, in the sense 
 that the word uplift is used, childish. The 
 mission of great drama is not to make num- 
 skulls glad that they are alive, but to make 
 them speculate why they are permitted to be 
 alive at all. And since this is the mission of 
 great drama — ^if its mission may, indeed, be re- 
 duced to any phrase — it combines within itself, 
 together with this mystical and awe-struck ap- 
 peal to the proletariat, a direct and agreeable 
 appeal to such persons as are, by reason of 
 their metaphysical perception and emotional 
 culture, superior to and contemptuous of the 
 [31]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 proletariat. Fine drama, in truth, is usually 
 just a trifle snobbish. It has no traffic with 
 such souls as are readily to be made to feel 
 "upHfted" by spurious philosophical nostrums 
 and emotional sugar pills. Its business is with 
 what the matchless Dry den hailed "souls of 
 the highest rank and truest understanding": 
 souls who find a greater uplift in the noble de- 
 pressions of Brahms' first trio, Bartolommeo's 
 Madonna della Misericordia, and Joseph Con- 
 rad's "Youth" than in the easy buoyancies of 
 John Philip Sousa, Howard Chandler Christy 
 and Rupert Hughes. The aim of great drama 
 is not to make men happy with themselves as 
 they are, but with themselves as they might, 
 yet alas cannot, be. As Gautier has it, "The 
 aim of art is not exact reproduction of nature, 
 but creation, by means of forms and colours, of 
 a microcosm wherein may be produced dreams, 
 sensations, and ideas inspired by the aspect of 
 the world." If drama is irrevocably a demo- 
 cratic art and uplift of the great masses of men 
 its noblest end, ^Irs. Porter's "Pollyanna" 
 must endure as a work of dramatic art a thou- 
 
 [32]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 sand times finer than Corneille's "Polyeucte." 
 Drama has been strictly defined by the rit- 
 ualists in a dozen different ways. "Drama," 
 says one, "must be based on character, and the 
 action proceed from character." "Drama," 
 stipulates another, "is not an imitation of men, 
 but of an action and of life : character is subsid- 
 iary to action." "Drama," promulgates still 
 another, "is the struggle of a will against ob- 
 stacles." And so on, so on. Rules, rules and 
 more rules. Pigeon-holes upon pigeon-holes. 
 Good drama is anything that interests an in- 
 telligently emotional group of persons assem- 
 bled together in ,an illuminated hall. Mo- 
 liere, wise among dramatists, said as much, 
 though in somewhat more, and doubtless too, 
 sweeping words. Throughout the ages of 
 drama there will be always Romanticists of 
 one sort or another, brave and splendid spirits, 
 who will have to free themselves from the defi- 
 nitions and limitations imposed upon them by 
 the neo-Bossus and Boileaus, and the small 
 portion Voltaires, La Harpes and Marmon- 
 tels. Drama is struggle, a conflict of wills? 
 [33]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 Then what of "Ghosts"? Drama is action? 
 Then what of "Nachtasyl" ? Drama is charac- 
 ter? Then what of "The Dream Play"? "A 
 'character' upon the stage," wrote the author 
 of the last named drama, "has become a crea- 
 ture ready-made — a mere mechanism that 
 drives the man — I do not beheve in these the- 
 atrical 'characters.' " 
 
 Of all the higher arts, drama is perhaps the 
 simplest and easiest. Its anatomy is com- 
 posed of all the other arts, higih and low, strip- 
 ped to their elementals. It is a synthesis of 
 those portions of these other arts that, being 
 elemental, are most easily assimilable on the 
 part of the multitude. It is a snatch of music, 
 a bit of painting, a moment of dancing, a sHce 
 of sculpture, draped upon the skeleton of 
 literature. At its highest, it ranks with litera- 
 ture, but never above it. One small notch 
 below, and it ranks only with itself, in its 
 own isolated and generically peculiar field. 
 Drama, indeed, is dancing literature : a hybrid 
 art. It is often purple and splendid; it is 
 often profoundly beautiful and profoundly 
 
 [34]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 moving. Yet, with a direct appeal to the emo- 
 tions as its first and encompassing aim, it has 
 never, even at its finest, been able to exercise 
 the measure of direct emotional appeal that is 
 exercised,, say, by Chopin's C shai'p minor 
 Nocturne, op. 27, No. 1, or by the soft romance 
 of the canvases of Palma Vecchio, or by 
 Rodin's superb "Eternal Spring," or by Zola's 
 "La Terre." It may, at its finest as at its 
 worst, of course subjugate and triumph over 
 inexperienced emotionalism, but the greatest 
 drama of Shakespeare himself has never, in the 
 truthful confession of cultivated emotional- 
 ism, influenced that emotionalism as has the 
 greatest literature, or the greatest music, or 
 the greatest \pa|ti±ing or sculpture. The 
 splendid music of "Romeo" or "Hamlet" is 
 not so eloquent and moving as that of 
 "Tristan" or "Lohengrin"; no situation in 
 the whole of Hauptmann can strike in the 
 heart so thrilling and profound a chord of pity 
 as a single line in Allegri's obvious "Miserere." 
 The greatest note of comedy in drama falls 
 short of the note of comedy in the "Coffee- 
 [35]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 Cantata" of Bach; the greatest note of ironic 
 remorse falls short of that in the scherzo in B 
 minor of Chopin ; the greatest intellectual note 
 falls short of that in the first and last move- 
 ments of the C minor symphony of Brahms. 
 What play of Sudermann's has the direct ap- 
 peal of "The Indian Lily"? What play made 
 out of Hardy's "Tess," however adroitly con- 
 trived, retains the powerful apj^eal of the orig- 
 inal piece of literature? To descend, what 
 obvious thrill melodrama, designed frankly for 
 dollars, has — with all its painstaking and de- 
 liberate intent — yet succeeded in provoking 
 half the thrill and shock of the obvious second 
 chapter of Andreas Latzko's equally obvious 
 "Men in War"? 
 
 Art is an evocation of beautiful emotions: 
 art is art in the degree that it succeeds in this 
 evocation: drama succeeds in an inferior de- 
 gree. Whatever emotion drama may succeed 
 brilliantly in evoking, another art succeeds in 
 evoking more brilliantly. 
 
 [36]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 n 
 
 Although, of course, one speaks of drama 
 here primarily in the sense of acted di'ama, it 
 is perhaps not necessary so strictly to confine 
 one's self. For when the critic confines him- 
 self in his discussion of drama to the acted 
 drama, he regularly brings upon himself from 
 other critics — chiefly bookish fellows whose 
 theatrical knowledge is meagre — the very 
 largely unwarranted embarrassment of argu- 
 ments anent "crowd psychology" and the like 
 which, while they have little or nothing to do 
 with the case, none the less make a certain 
 deep impression upon his readers. (Readers 
 of criticism become automatically critics; with 
 his first sentence, the critic challenges his critic- 
 reader's sense of argument.) This constantly 
 advanced contention of "crowd psychology," 
 of which drama is supposed to be at once mas- 
 ter and slave, has small place in a considera- 
 tion of drama, from whatever sound point of 
 view one elects to consider the latter. If 
 "crowd psychology" operates in the case of 
 [37]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 theatre drama, it operates also in the case of 
 concert-hall music. Yet no one so far as I 
 know seriously maintains that, in a criticism of 
 music, this "crowd psychology" has any place. 
 I have once before pointed out that, even 
 accepting the theory of crowd psychology and 
 its direct and indirect implications so far as 
 drama is concerned, it is as nonsensical to as- 
 sume that one thousand persons assembled to- 
 gether before a drama in a theatre are, by rea- 
 son of their constituting a crowd, any more 
 likely to be moved automatically than the same 
 crowd of one thousand persons assembled to- 
 igether before a painting in an art gallery. 
 Furthermore, the theory that collective intelli- 
 gence and emotionalism are a more facile and 
 ingenuous intelligence and emotionalism, while 
 it may hold full water in the psychological 
 laboratory, holds little in actual external dem- 
 onstration, particularly in any consideration 
 of a crowd before one of the arts. While it 
 may be true that the Le Bon and Tarde the- 
 ory applies aptly to the collective psychology 
 of a crowd at a prize-fight or a bull-fight or 
 
 [38]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 a circus, one may be permitted severe doubts 
 that it holds equally true of a crowd in a 
 theatre or in an art gallery or in a concert hall. 
 The tendency of such a latter group is not 
 aesthetically downward, but upward. And 
 not only aesthetically, but intellectually and 
 emotionally. (I speak, of course, and with 
 proper relevance, of a crowd assembled to hear 
 good drama or good music, or to see good 
 painting. The customary obscuring tactic of 
 critics in this situation is to argue out the prin- 
 ciples of intelligent reaction to good drama in 
 terms of yokel reaction to bad drama. Analy- 
 sis of the principles of sound theatre drama 
 and the reaction of a group of eight hundred 
 citizens of Marion, Ohio, to "The Two Or- 
 phans" somehow do not seem to me to be 
 especially apposite.) The fine drama or the 
 fine piece of music does not make its auditor 
 part of a crowd; it removes him, and every 
 one else in the crowd, from the crowd, and 
 makes him an individual. The crowd ceases 
 to exist as a crowd; it becomes a crowd of 
 units, of separate individuals. The dramas of 
 
 [39]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 Mr. Owen Davis make crowds; the dramas 
 of Shakespeare make individuals. 
 
 The argument to the contrary always some- 
 what grotesquely assumes that the crowd as- 
 sembled at a fine play, and promptly suscep- 
 tible to group psychology, is a new crowd, 
 one that has never attended a fine play before. 
 Such an assumption falls to pieces in two ways. 
 Firstly, it is beyond reason to believe that it 
 is true in more than one instance out of a 
 hundred; and secondly it would not be true 
 even if it were true. For, granting that a 
 crowd of one thousand persons were seeing 
 great drama for the first time in their lives, 
 what reason is there for beheving that the 
 majority of persons in the crowd who had 
 never seen gi^eat drama and didn't know 
 exactly what to make of it would be swayed 
 and influenced by the minority who had never 
 seen great drama but did know what to make 
 of it? If this were true, no great drama could 
 ever possibly fail in the commercial theatre. 
 Or, to test the hypothesis further, take it the 
 other way round. What reason is there for 
 
 [40]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 believing that the majority in this crowd would 
 be moved the one way or the other, either by 
 a minority that did understand the play, or did 
 not understand it? Or take it in another way 
 still. What reason is there for believing that 
 the minority in this crowd who did know what 
 the drama, was about would be pei'suaded 
 emotionally by the majority who did not know 
 what the drama was about? 
 
 Theories, and again theories. But the facts 
 fail to support them. Take the lowest type of 
 crowd imaginable, one in which there is not 
 one cultured man in a thousand — the crowd, 
 say, at a professional American baseball game 
 — and pack it into an American equivalent for 
 Reinhardt's Grosses Schauspielhaus. The 
 play, let us say, is "Oedipus Rex." At the 
 ball game, the crowd psychology of Le Bon 
 operated to the full. But what now? Would 
 the crowd, in the theatre and before a great 
 drama, be the same crowd? Would it not be 
 an entirely different crowd? Would not its 
 group psychology promptly and violently suf- 
 fer a sudden change ? Whether out of curios- 
 [41]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 ity, disgust, admiration, social shame or what 
 not, would it not rapidly segregate itself, 
 spiritually or physically, into various groups? 
 What is the Le Bon theatrical view of the 
 crowd psychology that somehow didn't come 
 off during the initial engagement of Barrie's 
 "Peter Pan" in Washington, D. C? Or of 
 the crowd psychology that worked the other 
 way round when Ibsen was first played in Lon- 
 don? Or of the crowd psychology that, op- 
 erating regularly, if artificially, at the New 
 York premieres, most often fails, for all its 
 high enthusiasm, to move either the minority 
 or the majority in its composition? 
 
 The question of sound drama and the pack 
 psychology of a congress of groundlings is a 
 fatuous one: it gets nowhere. Sound drama 
 and sound audiences are alone to be considered 
 at one and the same time. And, as I have 
 noted, the tendency of willing, or even semi- 
 willing, auditors and spectators is in an up- 
 ward direction, not a downward. No intelli- 
 gent spectator at a performance of "Ben Hur" 
 has ever been made to feel like throwing his 
 
 [42]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 hat into the air and cheering by the similar 
 actions of the mob spectators to the left and 
 right of him. No ignoble auditor of "The 
 Laughter of the Gods" but has been made to 
 feel, in some part, the contagion of cultivated 
 appreciation to his left and right. "I forget," 
 wrote Sarcey, in a consideration of the sub- 
 ject of which we have been treating, "what 
 tyrant it was of ancient Greece to whom mas- 
 sacres were everyday affairs, but who wept 
 copiously over the misfortunes of a heroine in 
 a tragedy. He was the audience ; and for the 
 one evening clothed himself in the sentiments 
 of the public." A typical example of sophis- 
 ticated reasoning. How does Sarcey know 
 that it was not the rest of the audience — the 
 crowd — that was influenced by this repentant 
 and copiously lachrymose individual, rather 
 than that it was this individual who was moved 
 by the crowd ? 
 
 If fallacies perchance insinuate themselves 
 
 into these opposing contentions, it is a case of 
 
 fallacy versus fallacy : my intent is not so much 
 
 to prove anything as to indicate the presence 
 
 [43]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 of holes in the proofs of the other side. These 
 holes seem to me to be numerous, and of con- 
 siderable circumference. A description of two 
 of them may suffice to suggest the rest. Take, 
 as the first of these, the familar Castelvetro 
 doctrine that, since a theatrical audience is not 
 a select congress but a motley crowd, the dram- 
 atist, ever conscious of the group psychology, 
 must inevitably avoid all themes and ideas un- 
 intelligible to such a gathering. It may be 
 true that a theatrical audience is not a select 
 congress, but why confine the argument to 
 theatrical audiences and seek thus to prove 
 something of drama that may be proved as 
 well — if one is given to such idiosyncrasies — 
 of music? What, as I have said before, of 
 opera and concert hall audiences? Consider 
 the average audience at Covent Garden, the 
 Metropolitan, Carnegie Hall. Is it any way 
 culturally superior to the average audience at 
 the St. James's Theatre, or the Theatre de 
 rOeuvre, or the Plymouth — or even the Neigh- 
 bourhood Playhouse down in Grand Street? 
 What of the audiences who attended the origi- 
 
 [44]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 nal performances of Beethoven's "Leonore" 
 ("Fidelio"), Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini," 
 the original performances of Wagner in 
 France and the performances of his "Der Flie- 
 gende Hollander" in Germany, the operas of 
 Handel in England in the years 1733-37, the 
 work of Rossini in Italy, the concerts of 
 Chopin during his tour of England and Scot- 
 land? . . . Again, as to the imperative ne- 
 cessity of the dramatist's avoidance of all 
 themes and ideas unintelligible to a mob audi- 
 ence, what of the success among such very 
 audiences of — to name but a few more recent 
 profitably produced and locally readily rec- 
 ognizable examples — Shaw's "Getting Mar- 
 ried," Augustus Thomas' "The Witching 
 Hour," Ibsen's "The Wild Duck," Dunsany's 
 "The Laughter of the Gods," Barries "Mary 
 Hose," Strindberg's "The Father," Synge's 
 "Playboy"? . . . Surely it will be quickly 
 allowed that however obvious the themes and 
 ideas of these plays may be to the few, they 
 are; hardly within the ready intelligence of 
 what the theorists picture as the imaginary 
 [45]
 
 The Clitic and the Drama 
 mob theatre audience. Fine drama is inde- 
 jpendent of all such theories: the dramatist 
 who subscribes to them should not figure in any 
 treatise upon drama as an art. 
 
 A second illustration: the equivocation to 
 the effect that drama, being a democratic art, 
 may not properly be evaluated in terms of 
 more limited, and aristocratic, taste. It seems 
 t}[> mej, at least, an idiotic assumption that 
 drama is a more democratic art than music. 
 All great art is democratic in intention, if 
 not in reward. Michelangelo, Shakespeare, 
 Wagner and Zola are democratic artists, and 
 their art democratic art. It is criticism of 
 Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Wagner and Zola 
 that is aristocratic. Criticism, not art, gener- 
 ically wears the ermine and the purple. To 
 appraise a democratic art in terms of democ- 
 racy is to attempt to effect a chemical reac- 
 tion in nitrogen with nitrogen. If drama is, 
 critically, a democratic art since it is meant 
 not to be read by the few but to be played be- 
 fore the many, music must be critically no less 
 a democratic art. Yet the theorists conven- 
 
 [46]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 iently overlook this embarrassment. Never- 
 theless, if Shakespeare's dramas were designed 
 for the heterogeneous ear, so, too, were the 
 songs of Schumann. No great artist has ever 
 in his heart deliberately fashioned his work for 
 a remote and forgotten cellar, dark and stair- 
 less. He fashions it, for all his doubts, in the 
 hope of hospitable eyes and ears, and in the 
 hope of a sun to shine upon it. It is as ridic- 
 ulous to argue that because Shakespeare's is 
 a democratic art it must be criticized in terms 
 of democratic reaction to it as it would be to ar- 
 gue that because the United States is a democ- 
 racy the most acute and comprehensive criti- 
 cism of that democracy must lie in a native 
 democrat's reaction to it. "To say that the 
 theatre is for the people," says Gordon Craig, 
 "is necessary. But to forget to add that part 
 and parcel of the people is the aristocracy, 
 whether of birth or feeling, is an omission. A 
 man of the eighteenth century, dressed in silks, 
 in a fashionable loggia in the theatre at Ver- 
 sailles, looking as if he did no work (as Vol- 
 taire in his youth may have looked), presents.
 
 Tlie Critic and the Drama 
 in essence, exactly the same picture as Walt 
 Whitman in his rough gray suit lounging in 
 the Bowery, also looking as if he did no work. 
 . . . One the aristocrat, one the democrat: the 
 two are identical." 
 
 Ill 
 
 "Convictions," said Nietzsche, "are prisons." 
 Critical "theories," with negligible exception, 
 seek to denude the arts of their splendid, gipsy 
 gauds and to force them instead to don so 
 many dupHcated black and white striped uni- 
 forms. Of all the arts, drama has suffered 
 most in this regard. Its critics, from the time 
 of Ai'istotle, have bound and fettered it, and 
 have then urged it impassionedly to soar. 
 Yet, despite its shackles, it has triumphed, and 
 each triumph has been a derision of one of its 
 most famous and distinguished critics. It 
 triimiphed, through Shakespeare, over Aristo- 
 tle; it triumphed, through Moliere, over Cas- 
 telvetro; it triumphed, through Lemercier, 
 over Diderot; it triumphed, through Lessing, 
 
 [48]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 over Voltaire; it triumphed, through Ibsen, 
 over Flaubert; it has triumphed, through 
 Hauptmami, over Sarcey and, through 
 Schnitzler and Bernard Shaw, over Mr. 
 Archer. The truth perhaps is that drama is 
 an art as flexible as the imaginations of its 
 audiences. It is no more to be bound by rules 
 and theories than such imaginations are to be 
 bound by rules and theories. Who so all- 
 wise that he may say by what rules or set of 
 rules living imaginations and imaginations yet 
 unborn are to be fanned into theatrical flame ? 
 "Imagination," Samuel Johnson's words apply 
 to auditor as to artist, "a hcentious and va- 
 grant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations and 
 impatient of lestraint, has always endeav- 
 oured to baffle the logician, to perplex the 
 confines of distinction, and burst the inclosures 
 of regularity." And fm'ther, "There is there- 
 fore scarcely any species of writing of which 
 we can tell what is its essence, and what are 
 its constituents; every new genius produces 
 some innovation which, when invented and 
 approved, subverts the rules which the prac- 
 [49]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 tice of foregoing authors had estabhshed." 
 
 Does the play interest, and whom? This 
 seems to me to be the only doctrine of dramatic 
 criticism that is capable of supporting itself 
 soundly. First, does the play interest? In 
 other words, how far has the dramatist suc- 
 ceeded in expressing himself, and the materials 
 before him, intelligently, eloquently, symmet- 
 rically, beautifully? So much for the criti- 
 cism of the dramatist as an artist. In the 
 second place, whom does the play interest? 
 Does it interest inferior persons, or does it 
 interest cultivated and artistically sensitive 
 persons? So much for the criticism of the 
 artist as a dramatist. 
 
 The major difficulty with critics of the 
 drama has always been that, having once posi' 
 tively enunciated their critical credos, they 
 have been constrained to devote their entire 
 subsequent enterprise and ingenuity to defend- 
 ing the fallacies therein. Since a considerable 
 number of these critics have been, and are, 
 extraordinarily shrewd and ingenious men, 
 these defences of error have often been con- 
 
 [50]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 trived with such persuasive dexterity and rea- 
 sonableness that they have endured beyond the 
 more sound doctrines of less deft critics, doc- 
 trines which, being sound, have suffered the 
 rebuffs that gaunt, grim logic, ever unprepos- 
 sessing and unhypnotic, suffers always. "I 
 hope that I am right; if I am not right, I am 
 still right," said Brunetiexe. "Mr. William 
 Archer is not only, like myself, a convinced, 
 inflexible determinist," Henry Arthur Jones 
 has written, "I am persuaded that he is also, 
 unlike myself, a consistent one. I am sure he 
 takes care that his practice agi'ees with his 
 opinions — even when they are wrong." Dra- 
 matic criticism is an attempt to formulate rules 
 of conduct for the lovable, wayward, charming, 
 wilful vagabond that is the drama. For the 
 drama is an art with a feather in its cap and 
 an ironic smile upon its lips, sauntering impu- 
 dently over forbidden lawns and through 
 closed lanes into the hearts of those of us 
 children of the world who have never grown 
 up. Beside literature, it is the Mother Goose 
 of the arts : a gorgeous and empurpled Mother 
 [51]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 Goose for the fireside of impressible and ro- 
 mantic youth that, looking upward, leans ever 
 hushed and expectant at the knee of life. It 
 is a fairy tale told reaUstically, a ti*ue story 
 told as romance. It is the lullaby of disillu- 
 sion, the chimes without the cathedral, the 
 fears and hopes and di'eams and passions of 
 those who cannot fully fear and hope and 
 dream and flame of themselves. 
 , "The drama must have reality," so Mr. P. 
 P. Howe in his engaging volmiie of "Dra- 
 matic Portraits," "but the fli'st essential to our 
 understanding of an art is that we should not 
 believe it to be actual life. The spectator who 
 shouts his warning and advice to the heroine 
 when the villain is approaching is, in the thea- 
 tre, the only true believer in the hand of God ; 
 and he is liable to find it in a drama lower than 
 the best." The art of the drama is one which 
 imposes upon drama the obligation of depict- 
 ing at once the inner processes of life realisti- 
 cally, and the external aspects of life delu- 
 sively. Properly and sympathetically to ap- 
 preciate drama, one must look upon it synchro- 
 
 [52]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 nously with two different eyes: the one argu- 
 ing against the other as to the truth of what it 
 sees, and triumphing over this doubtful other 
 with the full force of its sophistry. Again in- 
 evitably to quote Coleridge, "Stage presenta- 
 tions are to produce a sort of temporary half- 
 faith, which the spectator encourages in him- 
 self and supports by a voluntary contribution 
 on his own part, because he knows that it is 
 at all times in his power to see the thing as it 
 really is. Thus the true stage illusion as to a 
 forest scene consists, not in the mind's judging 
 it to be a forest, but in its remission of the 
 judgment that it is not a forest." This ob- 
 viously applies to drama as well as to dra- 
 matic investiture. One never for a moment 
 believes absolutely that Mr. John Barrymore 
 is Richard III; one merely agrees, for the 
 sake of Shakespeare, who has written the play, 
 and Mr. Hopkins, wiho has cast it, that Mr. 
 John Barrymore is Richard III, that one may 
 receive the ocular, aural and mental sensa- 
 tions for which one has paid three dollars and 
 a half. Nor does one for a moment believe 
 [53]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 that Mr. Walter Hampden, whom that very 
 evening one has seen dividing a brobdingna- 
 gian dish of goulash with Mr. Oliver llerford 
 in the Player's Club and discussing the pros- 
 pects of the White Sox, is actually speaking 
 extemporaneously the rare verbal embroider- 
 ies of Shakespeare; or that Miss Ethel Barry- 
 more who is billed in front of Browne's Chop 
 House to take a star part in the Actors' 
 Equity Association's benefit, is really the 
 queen of a distant kingdom. 
 
 llie dramatist, in the thf.atre, is not a 
 worker in actualities, but in the essence of ac- 
 tualities that filters through the self-decep- 
 tion of his spectators. There is no such thing 
 as realism in the theatre: there is only mimi- 
 cry of realism. There is no such thing as 
 romance in the theatre: there is only mimicry 
 of romance. There is no such thing as 
 an automatic dramatic susceptibility in a thea- 
 tre audience: there is only a volitional dra- 
 matic susceptibility. Thus, it 'is absurd to 
 speak of the drama holding the mirror up to 
 nature; all that the drama can do is to hold 
 
 [54]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 nature up to its own peculiar mirror which, 
 Hke that in a pleasure-park carousel, amus- 
 ingly fattens up nature, or shrinks it, yet does 
 not at any time render it unrecognizable. 
 One does not go to the theatre to see hfe and 
 nature; one goes to see the particular way in 
 which life and nature happen to look to a cul- 
 tivated, imaginative and entertaining man 
 who happens, in turn, to be a playwright. 
 Drama is the surprising pulling of a perfectly 
 obvious, every-day rabbit out of a perfectly 
 obvious, every-day silk hat. The spectator has 
 seen thousands of rabbits and thousands of 
 silk hats, but he has never seen a silk hat that 
 had a rabbit concealed in it, and he is curious 
 about it. 
 
 But if drama is essentially mimetic, so also 
 — as Professor Gilbert Mm-ray impHes — is 
 criticism essentially mimetic in that it is rep- 
 resentative of the work criticized. It is con- 
 ceivable that one may criticize Mr. Ziegfeld's 
 "Folhes" in terms of the "Philoctetes" of 
 Theodectes — I myself have been guilty of 
 «yen more exceptional feats; it is not only 
 
 [55]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 conceivable, but of common occurrence, for 
 certain of oui* academic American critics to 
 criticize the plays of Mr. Shaw in terms of 
 Scribe and Sardou, and with a perfectly 
 straight if ace; but Criticism in general is a 
 chameleon that takes on something of the 
 colour of the pattern upon which it imposes 
 itself. There is drama in Horace's "Epis- 
 tola ad Pisones," a criticism of drama. There 
 is the spirit of comedy in Hazlitt's essay "On 
 the Comic Writers of ^the Last Century." 
 Dryden's "Essay on Dramatic Poesy" is 
 poetry. There is something of the music 
 of Chopin in Huneker's critical essays on 
 Chopin, and some of Mary Garden's spectac- 
 ular liistrionism in his essay on her acting. 
 Walkley, criticizing "L'Enfant Prodigue," 
 uses the pen of Pierrot. Criticism, more than 
 drama with her mirror toward nature, holds 
 the mirror up to the nature of the work it 
 criticizes. Its end is the revivification of the 
 passion of art which has been spent in its be- 
 half, but under the terms laid down by Plato. 
 Its aim is to reconstruct a great work of art 
 
 [56]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 on a diminutive scale, that eyes which are not 
 capable of gazing on high may have it within 
 the reach of their vision. Its aim is to play 
 again all the full richness of the artist's emo- 
 tional organ tones, in so far as is possible, on 
 the cold cerebral xylophone that is criticism's 
 deficient instrmnent. In the accomplishment 
 of these aims, it is bound by no laws that art 
 is not bound by. There is but one rule : there 
 are no rules. Ai't laughs at locksmiths. 
 
 It has been a favourite diversion of critics 
 since Aristotle's day to argue that drama is 
 drama, whether one reads it from a printed 
 page or sees it enacted in a theati'e. Great 
 drama, they announce, is great drama whether 
 it ever be acted or not; "it speaks with the 
 same voice in solitude as in crowds"; and "all 
 the more then" — again I quote Mr. Spingarn 
 — "will the drama itself 'even apart from rep- 
 resentation and actors,' as old Aristotle puts 
 it, speak with its highest power to the imag- 
 ination fitted 'to understand and receive 
 it." Upon this point of view much of the 
 academic criticism of drama has been based. 
 [57]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 But may we not well reply that, for all 
 the fact that Shakespeare would still be the 
 greatest dramatist who ever lived had he 
 never been played in the theatre, so, too, 
 would Bach still be the greatest composer who 
 ever lived had his compositions never been 
 played at all? If drama is not meant for ac- 
 tors, may we not also argue that music is not 
 meant for instruments? Are not such exped- 
 ients less sound criticism than clever evasion 
 of sound criticism: a frolicsome and agreeable 
 straddling of the aesthetic see-saw? There is 
 the printed drama — criticize it. There is the 
 same drama acted — criticize it. Why quib- 
 ble? Sometimes, as in the case of "Gio- 
 conda" and Duse, they are one. Well and 
 good. Sometimes, as in the case of "Chan- 
 tecler" and Maude Adams, they are not one. 
 Well and good. But where, in either case, 
 the confusion that the critics lay such stress 
 upon? These critics deal not with theories, 
 but with mere words. They take two dozen 
 empty words and adroitly seek therewith to 
 fashion a fecund theory. The result is — 
 
 [58]
 
 Drama As an Art 
 words. "Words which," said Ruskin, "if 
 they are not watched, will do deadly work 
 sometimes. There are masked words droning 
 and skulking about us just now . . . (there 
 never were so many, owing to the teaching 
 of catechisms and phrases at school instead of 
 human meanings ) . . . there never were crea- 
 tures of prey so mischievous, never diplo- 
 matists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, 
 as these masked words: they are the unjust 
 stewards of men's ideas. ..." 
 
 [59]
 
 III. THE PLACE OF THE 
 THEATRE
 
 III. THE PLACE OF THE 
 THEATRE 
 
 THE theatre stands in relation to drama 
 much as the art gallery stands in rela- 
 tion to painting. Its aim is to set off 
 drama in such surroundings and in such light 
 as to bring it within the comfortable vision and 
 agreeable scrutiny of the nomad public. To 
 say that fine drama may produce an equal ef- 
 fect read as acted may be true or not as you 
 choose, but so too a fine painting may produce 
 an equal effect beheld in one's library as in 
 the Uffizi. Art thrives — art leads to art — on 
 sympathy and a measure of general under- 
 standing. Otherwise, of what use criticism? 
 To divorce the theatre from a consideration 
 of drama as an art, to contend, as it has been 
 contended from Aristotle's day to Corneille's, 
 and from Dryden's and Lamb's to our own, 
 [63]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 that "the more lasting and noble design" of 
 drama rests in a reading rather than a seeing, 
 may be, strictly, a logical esthetic manoeuvre, 
 but equally a logical esthetic manoeuvre 
 would be a divorcement of canvas from paint- 
 ing as an art. The theatre is the canvas of 
 drama. The printed drama is like a bubbling 
 and sunlit spring, encountered only by wan- 
 derers into the hills and awaiting the bottling 
 process of the theatre to carry its tonic waters 
 far and wide among an expectant and emo- 
 tionally ill people. 
 
 The criticism that nominates itself to hold 
 drama and the theatre as things apart is a 
 criticism which, for all its probable integrity 
 and reason, suffers from an excessive aristoc- 
 racy, like a duchess in a play by Mr. Sydney 
 Grundy. Its aesthetic nose is elevated to such 
 a degree that it may no longer serve as a prac- 
 tical organ of earthly smell, but merely as a 
 quasi-wax feature to round out the symmetry 
 of the face. It is criticism in a stiff corset, 
 erect, immobile, lordly — like the Prussian lieu- 
 tenant of yesterday, a striking figure, yet just 
 
 [64]
 
 The Place of the Theatre 
 a little absurd. It is sound, but like many 
 things that are sound in aesthetics, it has its 
 weak points, even its confounding points. For 
 they say that propaganda can have no place in 
 art, and along comes a Hauptmann and writes 
 a "Weavers." Or they say that art is form, 
 and along comes a Ridhard Strauss and com- 
 poses two songs for baritone and orchestra 
 that set the critics to a mad chasing of their 
 own tails. Or, opposing criticism as an art, 
 they say that "criticism is art in form, but its 
 content is judgment, which takes it out of the 
 intuitional world into the conceptual world" — 
 and along comes an H. G. Wells with his 
 "The New MachiavelH" which, like criticism, 
 is art in form and its content judgment. To 
 hold that the drama as an art may achieve its 
 highest end read by the individual and not 
 acted in the theatre, is to hold that music as 
 an art may achieve its highest end played by 
 but one instrument and not by an orchestra. 
 The theatre is the drama's orchestra : upon the 
 wood of its boards and the wind of its puppets 
 is the melody of drama in all its full richness 
 [65]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 sounded. What if drama is art and the 
 theatre not art? What if "Hamlet" is art 
 and electric Hghts and cheese-cloth are not 
 art? Schubert's piano trio, op. 99, is art, and 
 a pianoforte is a mere wooden box containing 
 a number of little hammers that hit an equal 
 number of steel and copper wires. What if 
 I can read a full imagination into "Romeo and 
 Juliet" and thus people it and make it live for 
 me, without going to the theati'e? So, too, 
 can I read a full melody into the manuscript of 
 a song by Hugo Wolf and thus make it sing 
 for me, without going to a concert hall. But 
 why? Is there only one way to appreciate 
 and enjoy art — and since when? Wagner on 
 a single violin is Wagner; Wagner on all the 
 orchestra is super- Wagner. To read a great 
 drama is to play "Parsifal" on a cornet and 
 an oboe. 
 
 The object of the theatre is not, as is habit- 
 ually maintained, a shrewd excitation of the 
 imagination of a crowd, but rather a shrewd 
 relaxation of that imagination. It is a faulty 
 axiom that holds the greatest actor in the 
 
 [66]
 
 The Place of the Theatre 
 theatre to be an audience's imagination, and 
 the adroit cultivation of the latter to be ever 
 productive of large financial return. As I 
 have on more than one occasion pointed out 
 from available and acutely relevant statistics, 
 the more a dramatist relies upon the imagi- 
 nation, of an audience, the less the box-office 
 reward that is his. An audience fills a theatre 
 auditorium not so eager to perform with its 
 imagination as to have its imagination per- 
 formed upon. This is not the paradox it may 
 superficially seem to be. The difference is 
 the difference between a prompt commercial 
 failure like Molnar's "Der Gardeofficier" 
 ("Where Ignorance Is Bliss") which asks an 
 audience to perform with its imagination and 
 a great commercial success like Barrie's 
 "Peter Pan" whidh performs upon the audi- 
 ence's imagination by supplying to it every 
 detail of imagination, ready-made and persua- 
 sively labelled. The theatre is not a place to 
 which one goes in search of the unexplored 
 corners of one's imagination; it is a place to 
 which one goes in repeated search of the fa- 
 
 [67]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 miliar corners of one's imagination. The mo- 
 ment the dramatist works in the direction of 
 unfamihar corners, he is lost. This, contra- 
 dictorily enough, is granted by the very critics 
 who hold to the imagination fallacy which I 
 have just described. They unanimously agree 
 that a dramatist's most successful cultivation 
 of an audience lies in what they term, and 
 nicely, the mood of recognition, and in the 
 same breath paradoxically contend that sudden 
 imaginative shock is a desideratum no less. 
 
 In this pleasant remission of the active im- 
 agination lies one of the secrets of the charm 
 of the theatre. Nor is the theatre alone in 
 this. On even the higher plane of the authen- 
 tic arts a measure of the same phenomenon 
 assists in what may perhaps not too far-fetch- 
 edly be termed the negative stimulation of the 
 spectator's fancy. For all the pretty and 
 winning words to the contrary, no person ca- 
 pable of sound introspection will admit that a 
 beautiful painting like Giorgione's "The Con- 
 cert" or a beautiful piece of sculpture like 
 Pisano's Perugian fountain actually and liter- 
 
 [68]
 
 The Place of the Theatre 
 ally stirs his imagination, and sets it a-sail 
 across hitherto undiarted aesthetic seas. What 
 such a painting or piece of sculpture does is to 
 reach out and, with its overpowering beauty, 
 encompass and aesthetically fence in the ante- 
 cedent wandering and uncertain imagination 
 of its spectator. As in the instance of drama, 
 it does not so much awaken a dormant imagi- 
 nation as soothe an imagination already awake. 
 Of all the arts, music alone remains a teleg- 
 rapher of unborn dreams. 
 
 The theatre brings to the art of drama con- 
 crete movement, concrete colour, and concrete 
 final effectiveness : this, in all save a few minor 
 particulars. The art of drama suffers, true 
 enough, when the theatre, even at its finest, 
 is challenged by it to produce the values intrin- 
 sic in its ghost of a dead king, or in its battle 
 on Bosworth Field, or in its ship torn by the 
 tempest, or in its fairy wood on midsummer 
 night, or in its approaching tread of doom of 
 the gods of the mountain. But for each such 
 defeat it prospers doubly in the gifts that the 
 theatre brings to it. Such gifts as the leader 
 
 [69]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 Craig has brought to the furtherance of the 
 beauty of "Electra" and "Hamlet," as Rein- 
 hardt and his aides have brought to "Ariadne" 
 and "JuHus Caesar," as Golovine and Appia 
 and Bakst and Linnebach and half a dozen 
 others have brought to the classics that have 
 called to them, are not small ones. They have 
 crystallized the glory of drama, have taken so 
 many loose jewels and given them substantial 
 and appropriate settings which have fittingly 
 posed their radiance. To say that the reading 
 imagination of the average cultured man is 
 superior in power of suggestion and depiction 
 to the imagination of the theatre is idiotically 
 to say that the reading imagination of every 
 average cultured man is superior in these pow- 
 ers to the combined theatrical imaginations of 
 Gordon Craig, Max Reinhardt and Eleanora 
 Duse operating jointly upon the same play. 
 Even a commonplace imagination can success- 
 fully conjure up a landscape more beautiful 
 than any painted by Poussin or Gainsborough, 
 or jewels more opalescent than any painted by 
 Rembrandt, or a woman's dress more luminous 
 
 [70]
 
 The Place of the Theatre 
 than any painted by Fortuny, or nymphs 
 more beguiling than any of Rubens', yet who 
 so foolish to say — as they are wont foolishly to 
 say of reading imagination and the drama — 
 that such an imagination is therefore superior 
 to that of the artists? This,, in essence, is 
 none the less the serious contention of those 
 who decline to reconcile themselves to the 
 theatrically produced drama. This conten- 
 tion, reduced to its skeleton, is that, since the 
 vice-president of the Corn Exchange Bank 
 can picture the chamber in the outbuilding ad- 
 joining Gloster's castle more greatly to his 
 satisfaction than Adolphe Appia can picture 
 it for him on the stage, the mental perfor- 
 mance of the former is therefore a finer artis- 
 tic achievement than the stage performance of 
 the latter. 
 
 II 
 
 The word imagination leads critics to queer 
 antics. It is, perhaps, the most manhandled 
 word in our critical vocabulary. It is used 
 
 [71]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 almost invariably in its literal meaning: no 
 shades and shadows are vouchsafed to it. 
 Imagination, in good truth, is not the basis of 
 art, but an overtone. Many an inferior artist 
 has a greater imagination than many a super- 
 ior artist. Maeterlinck's imagination is much 
 richer than Hauptmann's, Erik Satie's is 
 much richer than Cesar Franck's, and I am 
 not at all certain that Romain Holland's is not 
 twice as opulent as Thomas Hardy's. Imagi- 
 nation is the slave of the true artist, the master 
 of the weak. The true artist beats imagina- 
 tion with the cat-o'-nine-tails of his individual 
 technic until it cries out in pain, and this pain 
 is the work of art which is born. The inferior 
 craftsman comfortably confounds imagina- 
 tion with the finished work, and so pets and 
 coddles it; and imagination's resultant minc- 
 ings and giggles he then vaingloriously sets 
 forth as resolute art. 
 
 The theatre offers to supplement, embroider 
 and enrich the imagination of the reader of 
 drama with the imaginations of the actor, the 
 scene designer, the musician, the costumer and 
 
 [72]
 
 The Place of the Theatre 
 the producing director. Each of these, before 
 he sets himself to his concrete task, has — like 
 the lay reader — sought the fruits of his own 
 reading imagination. The fruits of these five 
 !reading imaginations are then assembled, 
 carefully assorted, and the most worthy of 
 them deftly burbanked. The final staging of 
 the drama is merely a staging of these best 
 fruits of the various reading imaginations. 
 To say, against this, that it is most often im- 
 possible to render a reading imagination into 
 satisfactory concrete forms is doubtless to say 
 what is, strictly, true. But art itself is at its 
 highest merely an approach toward limitless 
 imagination and beauty. ^Esthetics is a pil- 
 grim on the road to a Mecca that is ever just 
 over the sky-line. Of how many great works 
 of art can one say, with complete and final 
 conviction, that art in this particular direc- 
 tion can conceivably go no farther? Is it not 
 conceivable that some super-]Michelangelo 
 will some day fashion an even more perfect 
 "Slave," and some super-Shakespeare an even 
 more beautiful poetic drama? 
 
 [73]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 The detractors of the theatre are often ex- 
 pert in persuasive half-truths and masters of 
 dialectic sleight-of-hand. Their perform- 
 ances are often so adroit that the spectator is 
 quick to believe that the trunk is really empty, 
 yet the false bottom is there for all its cunning 
 concealment. Take, for example, George 
 Moore, in the preface to his last play, "The 
 Coming of Gabrielle." "The illusion created 
 by externals, scenes, costumes, lighting and 
 short sentences is in itself illusory," he pro- 
 fesses to believe, though why he numbers the 
 dramatist *s short sentences among the exter- 
 nals of the stage is not quite clear. "The best 
 performances of plays and operas are wit- 
 nessed at rehearslals. Jean de Reszke :was 
 never so like Tristan at night as he was in the 
 afternoon when he sang the part in a short 
 jacket, a bowler hat and an umbrella in his 
 hand. The chain armour and the plumes that 
 he wore at night were but a distraction, setting 
 our thoughts on periods, on the short swords 
 in use in the ninth century in Ireland or in 
 Cornwall, on the comfort or the discomfort of 
 
 [74]
 
 The Place of the Theatre 
 the ships in which the lovers were voyaging, 
 on the absui'd night-dress which is the conven- 
 tion that Isolde should appear in, a garment 
 sihe never wore and which we know to be make- 
 believe. But the hat and feathers that Isolde 
 appears in when she rehearses the part are 
 forgotten the moment she sings; and if I had 
 to choose to see Forbes-Robertson play Ham- 
 let or rehearse Hamlet, I should not hesitate 
 for a moment. The moment he speaks he 
 ceases to be a modern man, but in black hose 
 the illusion ceases, for we forget the Prince 
 of\ (Denmiark and remember the piummer." 
 Years ago, in a volimie of critical essays given 
 the title "Another Book on the Theatre," I 
 took a boyish delight in setting off precisely 
 the same noisy firework just to hear the folks 
 in the piazza rocking-chairs let out a yell. 
 These half-truths serve criticism as sauce 
 serves asparagus: they give tang to what is 
 otherwise often tasteless food. This is partic- 
 ularly true with criticism at its most geomet- 
 rical and profound, since such criticism, save 
 in rare instances, is not especially lively read- 
 [75]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 ing. But, nevertheless, the sauce is not the 
 asparagus. And wthen Mr. Moore (doubt- 
 less with his tongue in his cheek ) observes that 
 he can much more readily imagine the lusty 
 Frau Tillie Pfirsich-Melba as Isolde in a pink 
 and green ostrich feather hat confected in 
 some Friedrichstrasse ateher than in the cus- 
 tomary stage trappings, he allows, by implica- 
 tion, that he might even more readily imagine 
 the elephantine lady as the seductive Carmen 
 if she had no clothes on at all. 
 
 This is the trouble with paradoxes. It is 
 not that they prove too little, as is believed 
 of them, but that they prove altogether too 
 much. If the illusion created by stage exter- 
 nals is in itself illusory, as Mr. Moore says, the 
 complete deletion of all such stage externals 
 should be the best means for providing abso- 
 lute illusion. Yet the complete absence of il- 
 lusion where this is the case is all too familiar 
 to any of us who have looked on such specta- 
 cles as "The Bath of Phryne" and the like in 
 the theatres of Paris. A prodigality of stage 
 externals does not contribute to disillusion, 
 
 [76]
 
 The Place of the Theatre 
 but to illusion. These externals have become, 
 through protracted usage, so familiar that 
 they are, so to speak, scarcely seen: they are 
 taken by the eye for granted. By way of 
 proof, one need only consider two types of 
 Shakespearian production, one lijke that pf 
 Mr. Robert Mantell and one like that lately 
 employed for "Macbeth" by Mr. Arthur 
 Hopkins. Where the overladen stereotyped 
 first production paradoxically fades out of the 
 picture for the spectator and leaves the path 
 of illusion clear for him, the superlatively 
 simple second production, almost wholly 
 bereft of familiar externals, arrests and fixes 
 his attention and makes illusion impossible. 
 It is true, bf course, that all this may be 
 changed in time, when the deletion of exter- 
 nals by the new stagecraft shall have become 
 a convention of the theatre as the heavy lay- 
 ing-on of externals is a convention at present. 
 But, as things are today, these externals are, 
 negatively, the most positive contributors to 
 illusion. 
 
 It is the misfortune of the theatre that 
 [77]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 critics have almost always approached it, and 
 entered it, with a defiant and challenging air. 
 I have, during the eighteen years of my active 
 critical service, met with and come to know at 
 least fifty professional critics in America, in 
 England and on the Continent, and among all 
 this number there have been but four who have 
 approached the theatre enthusiastically prej- 
 udiced in its favour — two of them asses. 
 But between the one large group that has been 
 critically hostile and the other smaller group 
 that has been uncritically effervescent, I have 
 encountered no sign of calm and reasoned 
 compromise, no sign of frank and intelligent 
 willingness to regard eadh and every theatre 
 as a unit, and so to be appraised, instead of 
 lumping together good and bad theatres alike 
 and labelling the heterogeneous mass "the 
 theatre." There is no such thing as "the 
 theatre." There is this theatre, that theatre, 
 and still that other theatre. Each is a unit. 
 To talk of "the theatre" is to talk of the Greek 
 theatre, the Elizabethan theatre and the mod- 
 ern theatre in one breath, or to speak simul- 
 
 [78]
 
 The Place of the Theatre 
 taneously of the Grosses Schauspielhaus of 
 Max Reinhardt and the Eltinge Theatre of 
 Mr. A. H. Woods. "The theatre," of course, 
 has certain more or less minor constant and 
 enduring conventions — at least, so it seems as 
 far as we now can tell — but so, too, has chirog- 
 raphy, yet we do not speak of "the chirogra- 
 phy." There are some theatres — I use the 
 word in its proper restricted sense — that 
 glorify drama and enhance its beauty; there 
 are others that vitiate drama. But so also are 
 there some men who write fine drama, and 
 others who debase drama to mere fodder for 
 witlings. . . . The Shakespeare of the theatre 
 of Gordon Craig is vivid and brilliant beauty. 
 Call it art or not art as you will — what does a 
 label matter? The Moliere of the theatre of 
 Alexander Golovine is suggestive and exqui- 
 site enchantment. Call it art or not art as 
 you will — what does a label matter? The 
 Wagner of the opera house of Ludwig Sievert 
 is triumphant and rapturous splendour. Call 
 it anything you like — and again, what does a 
 label matter? There are too many labels in 
 the world. 
 
 [79]
 
 IV. THE PLACE OF ACTING
 
 IV. THE PLACE OF ACTING 
 
 WHEN Mr. Nathan says that acting 
 is not an art, of course he is talking 
 arrant rot — who could doubt it, 
 after witnessing a performance by the great 
 Duse?" So, the estimable actor, Mr. Arnold 
 Daly. Whether acting is or is not an art, it 
 is not my concern at the moment to consider, 
 yet I quote the riposte of Mr. Daly as perhaps 
 typical of those who set themselves as defen- 
 ders of the yea theory. It seems to me that 
 if this is a satisfactory toucJie no less satisfac- 
 tory should be some such like rejoinder as: 
 "When Mr. Nathan says that acting is an art, 
 of course he is talking arrant rot — wiho could 
 doubt it, after witnessing a performance by 
 Mr. Corse Payton." 
 
 If an authentic art is anything which may 
 properly be founded upon an exceptionally 
 [83]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 brilliant performance, then, by virtue of the 
 Reverend Doctor Ernest M. Stires' brilliant 
 performance in it, is pulpiteering an art, and, 
 on the strength of Miss Bird Millman's bril- 
 liant performance in it, is tight-rope walking 
 an art no less. Superficially a mere dialectic 
 monkey-trick, this is yet perhaps not so absurd 
 as it may seem, for if Duse's art lies in the 
 fact that she breathes life and dynamic effect 
 into the written woxd of the artist D'An- 
 nunzio, Stires' lies in the more substantial fact 
 that he breathes life and dynamic effect into 
 the word of the somewhat greater, and more 
 evasive artist, God. And Miss Millman, too, 
 brings to her quasi-art, movement, colour, 
 rhythm, beauty and — one may even say — a 
 sense of fantastic character, since the effect 
 she contrives is less that of a dumpy little 
 woman in a short wihite skirt pirouetting on a 
 taut wire than of an unreal creature, half bird, 
 half woman, out of some forgotten fable. 
 
 The circumstance that Duse is an artist 
 who happens to be an actress does not make 
 acting an art any more than the circumstance 
 
 [84]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 that Villon was an artist who happened to be 
 a burglar or that Paderewski is an artist who 
 happens to be a politician makes burglary and 
 politics arts. Duse is an artist first, and an 
 actress second: one need only look into her 
 very great share in the creation of the dramas 
 bearing the name of D'Annunzio to reconcile 
 one's self — if not too stubborn, at least in part 
 — to this point of view. So, also, were 
 Clairon, Rachel and Jane Hading artists 
 apart from histrionism, and so too, is Sarah 
 Bernhardt: who can fail to detect the creative 
 artist in the "Memoires" of the first named, for 
 instance, or, in the case of the last named, in 
 the fertile impulses of her essays in sculpture, 
 painting and dramatic literature? It is a cur- 
 ious thing that, in all the pronouncements of 
 acting as an art, the names chosen by the advo- 
 cates as representative carriers of the aesthetic 
 banner are those of actors and actresses who 
 have most often offered evidence of artistic 
 passion in fields separate and apart from their 
 histrionic endeavours. Lemaitre, Salvini, 
 Rachel, Talma, Coquelin, Betterton, Garrick, 
 
 [85]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 Fanny Kemble, the Bancrofts, Irving, Tree, 
 and on down — far down — the line to Ditrich- 
 stein, Sothern, Marie Tempest, Guitry, 
 Gemier and the brothers Barrymore — all give 
 testimony, in writing, painting, musicianship, 
 poetry and dramatic authorship to aesthetic 
 impulses other than acting. Since acting 
 itself as an art is open to question, the merit or 
 demerit of the performances produced from 
 the aesthetic impulses in point is not an issue: 
 the fact seems to be that it has been the artist 
 who has become the actor rather than the actor 
 who has become the artist. 
 
 The actor, as I have on another occasion 
 hazarded, is the dhild of the miscegenation of 
 an art and a trade: of the drama and the 
 theatre. Since acting must appeal to the 
 many — this is obviously its only reason for be- 
 ing, for acting is primarily a filter through 
 which drama may be lucidly distilled for 
 heterogeneous theatre-goers — it must, logi- 
 cally, be popular or perish. Surely no au- 
 thentic art can rest or thrive upon such a pre- 
 mise. The great actors and actresses, unlike 
 
 [86]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 great fashioners in other arts, have invariably 
 been favourites of the crowd, and it is doubt- 
 less a too charitable hypothesis to assume that 
 this crowd has ever been gifted with critical 
 insight beyond cavil. If, therefore, the actor 
 or actress who can sway great crowds is 
 strictly to be termed an artist, why may we not 
 also, by strict definition, similarly term as ex- 
 ponents of an authentic art others who can 
 likewise sway the same crowds: a great politi- 
 cian hke Roosevelt, say, or a great lecturer 
 like Ingersoll, or a successful practical theo- 
 logian like Billy Sunday? (Let us send out 
 these paradox shock-troops to clear the way 
 for the more sober infantry.) 
 
 I have said that I have no intention to argue 
 for or against acting as an art yet, for all the 
 circumstance that the case for the prosecution 
 has long seemed the soundest and the most 
 eloquent, there are still sporadic instances of 
 imaginative histrionism that give one reason to 
 ponder. But, pondering, it has subsequently 
 come to the more penetrating critic that what 
 has on sudh occasions passed for an art has in 
 
 [87]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 reality been merely a reflected art: the art of 
 drama interpreted not with the imagination 
 of the actor but, more precisely, with the ima- 
 gi7iation of the dramatist. In other words, 
 that actor or actress is the most competent and 
 effective whose imagination is successful in 
 meeting literally, and translating, the imagi- 
 nation of the dramatist which has created the 
 role played by the particular actor or actress. 
 To name the actor's imagination in such a case 
 a creative imagination is a rather wistful pro- 
 cedure, for it does not create but merely duph- 
 cates. Surely no advocate of acting as a crea- 
 tive art would be so bold as to contend that 
 any actor, however great, has ever brought 
 creative imagination to the already full and 
 superb creative imagination of Shakespeare. 
 This would be, on an actor's part, the sheerest 
 impudence. The greatest actor is simply he 
 who is best fitted by figure, voice, training 
 and intelligence not to invade and annul the 
 power of the role which a great dramatist has 
 imagined and created. Duse and D'Annun- 
 zio were, so to speak, spiritually and physi- 
 
 [88]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 cally one: hence the unmatched perfection of 
 the former's histrionism in the latter's roles. 
 To see Duse is, save one admit one's self 
 critically to the facts, therefore to suffer theo- 
 retical art doubts and the convictions of such 
 as Mr. Daly. 
 
 It is, of course, the common habit of the 
 prejudiced critic to overlook, in the estimate 
 of acting as an art, the few admirable expo- 
 nents of acting and to take into convenient 
 consideration only the enormous majority of 
 incompetents. But to argue that acting is 
 not an art simply because a thousand Edmund 
 Breeses and Miss Adele Bloods give no evi- 
 dence that it is an art is to argue that sculp- 
 ture is not an art simply because a thousand 
 fashioners of Kewpies and plaster of Paris 
 busts of Charlie Chaplin and Mr. Harding 
 give no evidence in a like direction. Yet the 
 circumstance that there are admittedly excel- 
 lent actors as well as bad actors establishes act- 
 ing as an art no more than the circumstance 
 that there are admittedly excellent cuckoo- 
 whistlers as well as bad cuckoo-whistlers es- 
 
 [89]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 tablishes the playing of the cuckoo-whistle as 
 an art. If I seem to reduce the comparison 
 to what appears to be an absurdity, it is be- 
 cause by such absurdities, or elementals, is the 
 status of acting in the field of the arts most 
 sharply to be perceived. For if Bernhardt's 
 ever-haunting cry of the heart in "Izeyl" is a 
 peg, however slight, upon which may be hung 
 a strand of the theory that maintains acting as 
 an art, so too, by the strict canon of dialectics, 
 is Mr. Ruben Katz's ever-haunting cry of the 
 cuckoo in the coda of the slow movement of 
 Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. 
 
 If acting is an art, the proofs thus far 
 offered are not only unconvincing but fund- 
 amentally, on the score of logic, not a little 
 droll. Let us view a few illustrations. If 
 criticism is an art (thus a familiar contention) , 
 why is not acting also an art, since both are 
 concerned with re-creating works of art? But 
 the artist's work offered up to the critic is a 
 challenge, whereas the dramatist's work 
 offered up to the actor is a consonance. Crit- 
 icism is war, whether in behalf of aesthetic 
 
 [90]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 friend or against aesthetic foe ; acting is agree- 
 ment, peace. The critic re-creates, in terms 
 of his own personahty, the work of another 
 and often emphatically different and antago- 
 nistic personality. The actor re-creates, in 
 terms of a dramatist's concordantly imagined 
 personality, his own personality: the result 
 is less re-creation than non-re-creation. In 
 other words, the less the actor creates or re- 
 creates and the more he remains simply an 
 adaptable tool in the hands of the dramatist, 
 the better actor he is. The actor's state is 
 thus what may be termed one of active impas- 
 sivity. Originality and independence, save 
 within the narrowest of limits, are denied him. 
 He is a literal translator of a work of art, not 
 an independently imaginative and speculative 
 interpreter, as the critic is. The dramatist's 
 work of art does not say to him, as to the critic, 
 "Here I am! What do you, out of all your 
 experience, taste and training, think of me?" 
 It says to him, instead and peremptorily, 
 "Here I am! Think of me exactly as I am, 
 and adapt all of your experience, taste and 
 
 [91]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 training to the interpretation of me exactly as 
 I am!" 
 
 Brushing aside the theory that the true 
 artist is the actor who can transform his voice, 
 his manner, his character; who will disappear 
 behind his part instead of imposing himself 
 on it and adding himself to it — a simple feat, 
 since by such a definition the Messrs. Fregoli 
 and Henri De Vries, amazing vaudeville pro- 
 tean actors, are true histrionic artists — Mr. 
 Walkley, in his essay on "The English Actor 
 of Today," bravely takes up the defence from 
 what he regards as a more difficult approach. 
 "In the art of acting as in any other art," he 
 says, "the first requisite is life. The actor's 
 part is a series of speeches and stage directions, 
 mere cold print, an inert mass that has to be 
 raised somehow from the dead. If the actor 
 disappears behind it, there is nothing left but 
 a Golgotha." Here is indeed gay news! 
 Hamlet, lago, Romeo, Shylock — mere "cold 
 print," inert Shakespearian masses that, in 
 order to live, have to be raised somehow from 
 the dead by members of the Lambs' Club ! It 
 
 [92]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 is only fair to add that Mr. Walkley quickly 
 takes to cover after launching this torpedo, 
 and devotes the balance of his interesting com- 
 ments to a prudent and circumspect pas seul 
 on the very middle of the controversial teeter- 
 tawter. For no sooner has he described the 
 majestic drama of Shakespeare as "mere cold 
 print, an inert mass that has to be raised some- 
 how from the dead," than he seems suddenly, 
 and not without a touch of horror, to realize 
 that he has ridiculously made of Shakespeare a 
 mere blank canvas and pot of paint for the use 
 of this or that actor whom he has named, by 
 implication and with magnificent liberalness, 
 a Raphael, or a mere slab of cold marble for 
 the sculpturing skill of some socked and bus- 
 kined Mercie. 
 
 II 
 
 Modern evaluation of acting as an unques- 
 tionable art takes its key from Remond de 
 Sainte-Albine, the girhshly ebullient French- 
 man whose pragmatic critical credo was, "If 
 it makes me feel, it is art." While it may be 
 reasonable that a purely emotional art may 
 
 [93]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 aptly be criticized according to the degree of 
 emotional reaction which it induces, it is the 
 quality of emotion resident in the critic that 
 offers that reasonableness a considerable con- 
 fusion. A perfectly attuned and sound emo- 
 tional equipment — an emotional equipment of 
 absolute pitch, so to speak — is a rare thing, 
 even among critics of brilliant intelligence, 
 taste, imagination and experience. Goethe, 
 Carlyle, Hazlitt, Dryden, Lessing, to mention 
 only five, were physio-psychological units of 
 dubious emotional structure, if we may trust 
 the intimate chronicles. Thus, where much of 
 their critical dramatic writing may be accepted 
 without qualm, a distinct measure of distrust 
 would attach itself to any critical estimate of 
 acting which they might have written or act- 
 ually did write. 
 
 There are, obviously, more or less definite 
 standards whereby we may estimate critical 
 writings of such men as these so far as those 
 criticisms deal with what we may roughly de- 
 scribe as the cerebral or semi-cerebral arts, but 
 there are no standards, even remotely deter- 
 minable or exact, whereby we may appraise 
 
 [94]
 
 ' The Place of Acting 
 
 such of their criticisms as deal with the directly 
 and wholly emotional art of acting. It is per- 
 haps not too far a cry to assume that had Mr. 
 William Archer's father been murdered 
 shortly before Mr. Archer witnessed Mr. 
 Forbes-Robertson's Hamlet, Mr. Archer 
 would have been moved to believe Mr. Forbes- 
 Robertson on even greater actor-artist than he 
 believed him under the existing circumstances, 
 or that had Mr. Otto Borchsenius, the Danish 
 journalist-critic, regrettably found himself a 
 victim of syphilis when he reviewed August 
 Lindberg's "Oswald," he would have looked 
 on the estimable Lindberg as a doubly impres- 
 sive exponent of histrionism. Nothing is more 
 aesthetically and artistically dubious and in- 
 secure than the appraisal of acting, for it is 
 based upon the quicksands of varying human 
 emotionalism, and of aural and visual preju- 
 dice. Were I, for example, one hundred times 
 more proficient a critic of drama and life than 
 I am, my criticism of acting would none the 
 less remain often arbitrary and erratic, for I 
 would remain constitutionally anaesthetic to a 
 Juliet, however otherwise talented, who had 
 [95]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 piano legs, or to a Marc Antony who, for all 
 his histrionic power, presented to the vision a 
 pair of knock-knees. This, I well appreciate, 
 is the kind of critical writing that is promptly 
 set down as flippant, yet it is the truth so far as 
 I am concerned and I daresay that it is, in one 
 direction or another, the truth so far as the 
 majority of critics are concerned. 
 
 The most that may be said of the soundness 
 of this or that laudatory criticism of an actor's 
 performance is that the performance in point 
 has met exactly — or very nearly — the particu- 
 lar critic's personal notion of how he, as a 
 human being, would have cried, laughed and 
 otherwise comported himself were he an actor 
 and were he in the actor's role. The opposite, 
 or denunciatory, phase of such criticism holds 
 a similar truth. If this is not true, by w^hat 
 standards can the critic estimate the actor's 
 performance ? By the standards of the actors 
 who have preceded this actor in the playing 
 of the role, you say? What if the role is a 
 new one, a peculiar and novel one, that has 
 not been played before? Again, you say that 
 
 [96]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 the role may be in an alien drama and that 
 the actor may be an alien, both role and 
 performance being foreign to the emotional 
 equipment of the critic. But basic emo- 
 tions, the foundation of drama, are universal. 
 Still again, what of such dramas as "(Edipus 
 Rex," what of such roles — this with a trium- 
 phant chuckle on yom' part? I return the 
 chuckle, and bid you read the criticisms that 
 have been written of the actors who have 
 played in these roles! Invariably the actors 
 have been treated in precisely the same terms 
 and by the same standards as if they were 
 playing, not in the drama of the fifth century 
 before Christ, but in "Fedora," "The Face in 
 the Moonlight" or "The Count of Monte 
 Cristo." 
 
 One cannot imagine sound criticism apply- 
 ing to any authentic art the standard of actor 
 criticism that I have noted. Criticism, true 
 enough, is always more or less personal, but, 
 in its operation upon the authentic arts, its 
 personality is ever like a new bottle into which 
 the vintage wine of art has been poured. 
 
 [97]
 
 Tlie Critic and the Drama 
 Criticism of the authentic arts is the result of 
 the impact of a particular art upon a particu- 
 lar critical personality. Criticism of the dubi- 
 ous art of acting is the result of the impact of 
 a particular critical personahty upon this or 
 that instance of acting. But if this is even re- 
 motely true, you inquire ironically, what of 
 such an excellent instance of acting as Mimi 
 Aguglia's "Salome"; how in God's name may 
 the critic appraise that performance in the 
 manner set down, i. e., in terms of himself 
 were he a stage performer? Well, for all the 
 surface humours of the question, that is act- 
 ually more or less the way in which he does 
 appraise it. The actor or actress, unhke the 
 artist in more authentic fields, may never in- 
 terpret emotion in a manner unfamilar to the 
 critic: the interpretation must be a reflection, 
 more or less stereotyped, of the critic's reper- 
 toire of emotions. Thus, where art is original 
 expression, acting is merely the audible ex- 
 pression of a silent expression. In another 
 phrase, expression in acting is predicated 
 upon, and limited by, the expression of the 
 
 [98]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 critic. It is, therefore, a mere duplication of 
 expression. And what holds true in the case 
 of the critic so far as acting is concerned ob- 
 viously holds doubly true in the case of the un- 
 critical public. 
 
 Re-reading the celebrated critiques of act- 
 ing, I come to the conclusion that the word 
 "art" has almost uniformly been applied to 
 acting by critics who, thinking that they had 
 pei^haps belaboured the subject a trifle too 
 severely, were disposed graciously to throw it 
 a sop. As good an illustration as any may be 
 had from Lewes, certainly a friend of acting 
 if ever there was one. Thus Lewes: 
 
 "The truth is, we exaggerate the talent of an 
 actor because we judge only from the effect he 
 produces, without inquiring too curiously into the 
 means. But, while the painter has nothing but his 
 canvas and the author has nothing but white paper 
 and printers' ink with which to produce his effects, 
 the actor has all other arts as handmaids ; the 
 poet labours for him, creates his part, gives him 
 his eloquence, his music, his imagery, his tenderness, 
 his pathos, his sublimity ; the scene-painter aids 
 him; the costumes, the lights, the music, all the 
 [99]
 
 Tlie Critic and the Drama 
 fascination of the stage — all subserve the actor's 
 effects ; these raise him upon a pedestal ; remove 
 them, and what is he? He who can make a stage 
 mob bend and sway with his eloquence, what could 
 he do with a real mob, no poet by to prompt 
 him? He who can charm us with the stateliest 
 imagery of a noble mind, when robed in the sables 
 of Hamlet, or in the toga of Coriolanus, what can 
 he do in coat and trousers on the world's stage? 
 Rub off the paint, and the eyes are no longer 
 brilliant ! Reduce the actor to his intrinsic value, 
 and then weigh him with the rivals whom he sur- 
 passes in reputation and fortune. ... If my 
 estimate of the intrinsic value of acting is lower 
 than seems generally current, it is from no desire 
 to disparage an art I have always loved; but, 
 etc., etc." 
 
 You will find the same dido in most of the 
 essays on acting: a protracted series of cuffs 
 and slaps terminating in a gentle non-sequi- 
 tur kiss. 
 
 Acting at its finest is, however, often a con- 
 fusing hypnosis; it is not to be wondered at 
 that, fresh from its spell, the critic has mis- 
 taken it for a more exalted something than it 
 intrinsically is. The flame and fire of a Duse, 
 [100]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 the haunt and magic of a Bernhardt, the pow- 
 erful stage sense of creation of a Moissi — 
 these are not a Httle befuddling. And, under 
 their serpent-like charm, it is not incompre- 
 hensible that the critic should confound effect 
 and cause. Yet acting, even of the highest 
 order, is intrinsically akin to the legerdemain 
 of a Hermann or a Kellar with a Shakespeare 
 or a JMoliere as an assistant to hand over, as 
 the moment bids, the necessary pack of cards 
 or bowl of goldfish. It is trickery raised to its 
 most exalted level: a combination of experi- 
 ence, intelligence and great charm, not reviv- 
 ifying something cold and dead, but releas- 
 ing something quick and alive from the prison 
 of the printed page. 
 
 The actor who contends in favour of his 
 creative art that he must experience within 
 him the feeling of the dramatist, that he must 
 actually persuade himself to feel his role with 
 all its tm'ning smiles and tears, speaks non- 
 sense. So, too, must the auditor, yet who 
 would term the auditor a creative artist? The 
 actor who contends in favour of his creative 
 [101]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 art the exact opposite, that he is, to wit, a 
 creative artist since he must theatrically create 
 the dramatist's moods, illusions and emotions 
 without feeling them himself, also speaks non- 
 sense. For so, too, in such a case as "Elec- 
 tra," or "Ghosts," or "No More Blondes," 
 must the auditor, yet who, again, would term 
 the latter a creative artist? The actor who 
 contends in favour of his creative art that two 
 accomplished actors often "create" the same 
 role in an entirely different manner, speaks 
 nonsense yet again. For what is not creation 
 in the first place does not become creation 
 merely because it is multiplied by two. The 
 actor who further contends in behalf of his 
 creative art that if effective acting were the 
 mere trickery that some maintain it to be, any 
 person ordinarily gifted should be able, after 
 a little experiment, to give an effective stage 
 performance, speaks truer than he knows. 
 Some of the most remarkable performances 
 on the stage of the Abbey Theatre of Dublin 
 have been given by just such persons. And 
 [102]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 there are numerous other instances. If act- 
 ing is an art — and I do not say that it may 
 not be — it at least, as an art, ill bears cross- 
 examination of even the most superficial na- 
 ture. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Acting is perhaps less an art than the decep- 
 tive echo of an art. It is drama's exalted 
 halloo come back to drama from the walls of 
 the surrounding amphitheatre. Criticism of 
 acting too often mistakes the echo for the 
 original voice. Although the analogy wears 
 motley, criticism of this kind operates in much 
 the same manner as if it were to contend that 
 an approximately exact and beautiful Ben Ali 
 Haggin tableau vivant reproduction of, say, 
 Velasquez's "The Spinners," was creative art 
 in the sense that the original is creative art. 
 Acting is to the art of the drama much what 
 these so-called living pictures are to the art 
 of painting. If acting is to be termed an art, 
 [103]
 
 TJie Critic and the Drama 
 it is, like the living picture, a freak art, an art 
 with belladonna in its eyes and ever, even at 
 its highest, a bit grotesque. 
 
 In his defence of acting as an art equal to 
 that of poetry and literature, Henry Irving 
 has observed, "It has been said that acting is 
 unworthy because it represents feigned emo- 
 tions, but this censure would apply with equal 
 force to poet, or novelis.t." But would it? 
 The poet and the novelist may feign emotions, 
 but it is their own active imaginations which 
 feign them. The actor pierely feigns pas- 
 sively the emotions which the imagination of 
 the poet has actively feigned ; if there is feign- 
 ing, the actor merely parrots it. If there is 
 feigned emotion in, say, the second stanza of 
 Swinburne's "Rococo," and I mount an illu- 
 minated platform and recite the stanza very 
 eloquently and impressively, am I precisely 
 feigning the emotion of it or am I merely 
 feigning the emotion that the great imagina- 
 tion of Swinburne has feigned? Feigned or 
 unfeigned, the emotions of the poet come 
 ready-made to the heart and lips of the actor. 
 [104]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 
 Continues Irving further: "It is the actor 
 who gives body to the ideas of the highest 
 dramatic hterature — fire, force, and sensibil- 
 ity, without which they would remain for 
 most people mere airy abstractions." What 
 one engages here is the peculiar logic that act- 
 ing is an art since it popularizes dramatic 
 Hterature and makes it intelligible to a ma- 
 jority of dunderheads! 
 
 One more quotation from this actor's de- 
 fence, and we may pass on. "The actor's 
 work is absolutely concrete," he challenges. 
 "He is brought in every phase of his work into 
 direct comparison with existing things. . . . 
 Not only must his dress be suitable to the part 
 which he assumes, but his bearing must not be 
 in any way antagonistic to the spirit of the 
 time in which the play is fixed. The free 
 bearing of the sixteenth century is distinct 
 from the artificial one of the seventeenth, the 
 mannered one of the eighteenth, and the care- 
 less one of the nineteenth. . . . The voice 
 must be modulated to the vogue of the time. 
 The habitual action of a rapier-bearing age 
 [105]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 is different from that of a mail-clad one — nay, 
 the armour of a period ruled in real life the 
 poise and bearing of the body; and all this 
 must be reproduced on the stage. . . . It can- 
 not therefore he seriously put forward in the 
 face of such manifold requirements that no 
 Art is required for the representation of suit- 
 able action!" The italics are those of one who 
 experiences some difficulty in persuading him- 
 self that if Art is required for such things as 
 these — dress^ carriage, Xnodulation of voice 
 and carrying a sword — Art, strictly speaking, 
 is no less required in the matter of going to a 
 Quat'-z-Arts costume ball. 
 
 Acting is pel^haps best to be criticized not 
 as art but as colourful and impressive arti- 
 fice. Miss Margaret Anglin's Joan of Arc is 
 a more or less admirable example of acting not 
 because it is art but because it is a shrewd, 
 vivid and beguiling synthesis of various in- 
 trinsically spurious dodges: black tights to 
 make stout Anglo-Saxon hmbs appear Gal- 
 licly slender, a telescoping of words contain- 
 ing the sound of s to conceal a personal defect 
 [106]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 in the structure of the upper lip, a manoeu- 
 vring of the central action up stage to empha- 
 size, through a familiar trick of the theatre, the 
 sympathetic frailty of the character which the 
 actress herself physically lacks, two intakes of 
 breath before a shout of defiance that the ef- 
 fect of the ring of the directly antecedent 
 shout on the part of one of the inquisitors may 
 be diminished. . . . An effective acting per- 
 formance is like a great explosion; and as 
 T N T is made from nitric acid, which is in 
 turn made from such nitrates as potassium 
 nitrate or saltpeter, which are in turn derived 
 from the salts of decomposed guano, so is a 
 great explosion of histrionism similarly made 
 and derived from numerous — and not infre- 
 quently ludicrous and even vulgar — basic 
 elements. 
 
 The ill-balanced species of criticism which 
 appraises an histrionic performance as art on 
 the sole ground of the hypnotic effect it pro- 
 duces, with no inquiry into the means where- 
 by that effect is produced, might analogously, 
 were it to pursue this logic, appraise similarly 
 [107]
 
 The Clitic and the Drama 
 as art the j)erformance of an adept literal hyp- 
 notist. And with logic perhaps much more 
 sound. For if acting as an art is to be ap- 
 praised in the degree of the effect it imparts 
 to, and induces in, the auditor-spectator, 
 surely — if there is any sense at all in such a 
 method of estimate — may certain other such 
 performances as I have suggested be similarly 
 appraised. Criticism rests upon a foundation 
 of logic ; whatever it may deal with — aesthetics, 
 emotions, what not — it cannot remove itself 
 entirely from that foundation. Thus, if Mr. 
 John Barrymore is an artist because, by iden- 
 tifying the heart and mind of his auditor-spec- 
 tator with some such character as Fedya and 
 by suggesting directly that character's tragic 
 degringolade, he can make the auditor-spec- 
 tator pity and cry, so too an artist — by the 
 rigid canon of aesthetic criticism — was Fried- 
 rich Anton Mesmer, who is said to have been 
 able to do the same thing. 
 
 What I attempt here is no facile paradox, 
 but a reductio ad ahsurdum designed to show 
 up the fallacy of the prevailing method of 
 [108]
 
 The Place of Acting 
 actor criticism. In criticism of the established 
 arts, there is no such antic deportment. The 
 critic never confuses the stimulations of jazz 
 music with those of sound music, nor the stim- 
 ulations of open melodrama with those of 
 more profound drama. From each of these 
 he receives stimulations of a kind : some super- 
 ficial, some deep. But he inquires, in each in- 
 stance, into the means whereby the various 
 stimulations were vouchsafed to him. While 
 he recognizes the fact that the sudden and un- 
 expected shooting off of a revolver in "Secret 
 Service" produces in him a sensation of shock 
 as great as the sudden and unexpected shoot- 
 ing off of a revolver in "Hedda Gabler," he 
 does not therefore promptly, and with no 
 further reasoning, conclude that the two sen- 
 sations are of an aesthetic piece. Nor does he 
 assume that, since the nervous effect of the 
 fall to death in "The Green Goddess" and of 
 the fall to death in "the Master Builder" af- 
 fect him immediately in much the same way, 
 both sensations are accordingly produced by 
 sound artistic means. Nor, yet again, does he 
 [109]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 confuse the quality — nor the springs of that 
 quality — of the mood of wistful pathos with 
 which "Poor Butterfly" and "Porgi, Amor" 
 inspire him. But this confusion persists as 
 part and parcel of the bulk of the criticism of 
 acting. For one Hazlitt, or Lamb, or Lewes, 
 or Anatole France who retains, or has retained, 
 his clear discernment before the acted drama, 
 there are, and have Been, a number tenfold 
 who have confounded the wonders of the pho- 
 nograph with the wonders of Josef Haydn. 
 
 [110]
 
 V. DRAMATIC CRITICISM
 
 V. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 
 
 ARTHUR BINGHAM WALKLEY 
 begins one of the best books ever writ- 
 ten on the subject thus : "It is not to be 
 gainsaid that the word criticism has gradually 
 acquired a certain connotation of contempt. 
 . . . Every one who expresses opinions, how- 
 ever imbecile, in print calls himself a 'critic' 
 The greater the ignoramus, the greater the 
 likelihood of his posing as a 'critic' " An ex- 
 cellent book, as I have said, with a wealth of 
 sharp talk in it, but Mr. Walkley seems to me 
 to err somewhat in his preliminary assumption. 
 Criticism has acquired a connotation of con- 
 tempt less because it is practised by a major- 
 ity of ignoramuses than because it is accepted 
 at full face value by an infinitely greater ma- 
 jority of ignoramuses. It is not the mob that 
 curls a lip — ^the mob accepts the lesser igno- 
 [113]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 ramus at his own estimate of himself; it is the 
 lonely and negligible minority man who, paus- 
 ing musefully in the field that is the world, 
 contemplates the jackasses eating the daisies. 
 
 No man is so contemptuous of criticism as 
 the well-stocked critic, just as there is no man 
 so contemptuous of clothes as the man with the 
 well-stocked wardrobe. It is as impossible to 
 imagine a critic like Shaw not chuckling deri- 
 sively at criticism as it is to imagine a regular 
 subscriber to the Weekly Review not swal- 
 lowing it whole. The experienced critic, be- 
 ing on the inside, is in a position to look into 
 the heads of the less experienced, and to see 
 the wheels go round. He is privy to all their 
 monkeyshines, since he is privy to his own. 
 Having graduated from quackery, he now 
 smilingly regards others still at the trade of 
 seriously advancing sure cures for aesthetic 
 baldness, cancer, acne and trifacial neuralgia. 
 And while the yokels rub in the lotions and 
 swallow the pills, he permits himself a small, 
 but eminently sardonic, hiccup. 
 
 It is commonly believed that the first virtue 
 [114]
 
 Dramatic Criticism 
 of a critic is honesty. As a matter of fact, 
 in foui- cases out of five, honesty is the last 
 virtue of a critic. As criticism is practised in 
 America, honesty presents itself as the lead- 
 ing fault. There is altogether too much hon- 
 esty. The greater the blockhead, the more 
 honest he is. And as a consequence the criti- 
 cism of these blockheads, founded upon their 
 honest convictions, is worthless. There is 
 some hope for an imbecile if he is dishonest, 
 but none if he is resolute in sticking to his 
 idiocies. If the average American critic were 
 to cease writing what he honestly believes and 
 dishonestly set down what he doesn't believe, 
 the bulk of the native criticism would gain 
 some common sense and take on much of the 
 Bound value that it presently lacks. Hon- 
 esty is a toy for first-rate men: when lesser 
 men seek to play with it and lick off the paint, 
 they come down with colic. 
 
 It is further maintained that enthusiasm is 
 a supplementary desideratum in a critic, that 
 unless he is possessed of enthusiasm he can- 
 not impart a warm love for fine things to his 
 [115]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 reader. Surely this, too, is nonsense. En- 
 thusiasm is a virtue not in the critic, but in 
 the critic's reader. And such desired enthu- 
 siasm can be directly generated by enthusiasm 
 no more than a glyceryl nitrate explosion can 
 be generated by sulfuric acid. Enthusiasm 
 may be made so contagious as to elect a man 
 president of the United States or to raise an 
 army large enough to win a world war, but 
 it has never yet been made sufficiently conta- 
 gious to persuade one American out of a hun- 
 dred thousand that Michelangelo's David of 
 the Signoria is a better piece of work than the 
 Barnard statue of Lincoln. Enthusiasm is 
 an attribute of the uncritical, the defectively 
 educated: stump speakers, clergymen, young 
 girls, opera-goers. Socialists, Italians, such 
 like. And not only an attribute, but a 
 weapon. But the cultivated and experienced 
 man has as little use for enthusiasm as for in- 
 dignation. He appreciates that while it may 
 convert a pack of ignoble doodles, it can't con- 
 vert any one worth converting. The latter 
 must be persuaded, not inflamed. He real- 
 [116]
 
 Dramatic Criticism 
 izes that where a double brass band playing 
 "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" may leave 
 a civilized Englishman cold to the virtues of 
 the United States, proof that the United 
 States has the best bathroom plumbing in the 
 world may warm him up a bit. The sound 
 critic is not a cheer leader, but a referee. Art 
 is hot, criticism cold. Aristotle's criticism of 
 Euripides is as placid and reserved as Mr. 
 William Ai'cher's criticism of the latest 
 drama at the St. James's Theatre; Brune- 
 tiere is as calm over his likes as Mr. H. T. 
 Parker of the Boston Transcript. There is 
 no more enthusiasm in Lessing than there is 
 indignation in Walkley. Hazlitt, at a hun- 
 dred degrees emotional Fahrenheit, remains 
 critically cool as a cucumber. To find enthu- 
 siasm, you will have to read the New York 
 Times. 
 
 Enthusiasm, in short, is the endowment of 
 immaturity. The greater the critic, the 
 greatier his disinclination to communicate 
 aesthetic heat. Such communication savours 
 of propaganda and, however worthy that 
 [117]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 propaganda, he will have naught to do with its 
 trafficking. If the ability to possess and com- 
 municate enthusiasm is the mark of the true 
 critic, then the theatrical page of the N'ew 
 York Jour7ial is the greatest critical litera- 
 ture in America. 
 
 A third contention has it that aloofness and 
 detachment are no less valuable to the dra- 
 matic critic than honesty and enthusiasm. 
 Unless I am seriously mistaken, also bosh.^ 
 Dramatic criticism is fundamentally the crit- 
 ic's art of appraising himself in terms of vari- 
 ous forms of drama. Or, as I some time ago 
 put it, the only sound dramatic critic is the 
 one who reports less the impression that this 
 or that play makes upon him than the impres- 
 sion he makes upon this or that play. Of all 
 the forms of criticism, dramatic criticism is 
 essentially, and perhaps correctly, the most 
 personal. Tell me what a dramatic critic eats 
 and drinks, how far north of Ninetieth Street 
 he lives, what he considers a pleasant evening 
 when he is not in the theatre, and what kind 
 of lingerie his wife wears, and I'll tell you 
 [118]
 
 Dramatic Criticism 
 with very few misses what kind of critic he is. 
 I'll tell you whether he is fit to appreciate 
 Schnitzler, or whether he is fit only for Aug- 
 ustus Thomas. I'll tell you in advance what 
 he will think about, and how he will react to, 
 Hauptmann, Sacha Guitry or George V. 
 Hobart. I'll tell you whether he is the sort 
 that makes a great to-do when his eagle eye 
 spots Sir Nigel Waterhouse, M. P., in Act II 
 fingering a copy of the Philadelphia Public 
 Ledger instlead of the London Times, and 
 whether he is the sort that writes "JNlr. John 
 Cort has staged the play in his customary 
 lavish manner" when the rise of the curtain 
 discloses to him a room elaborately decorated 
 in the latest Macy mode. To talk about the 
 value of detachment in a dramatic critic is to 
 talk about the value of detachment in a 
 Swiss mountain guide. The criticism is the 
 man; the man the criticism. 
 
 Of all forms of criticism, dramatic criti- 
 cism is the most purely biological. Were the 
 genii to put the mind of Max Beerbohm into 
 the head of Mr. J. Ranken Towse, and vice 
 [119]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 versa, their criticisms would still remain ex- 
 actly as they are. But, on the contrary, were 
 the head of Mr. J. Ranken Towse to be placed 
 on the body of JNIax Beerbohm, and vice versa, 
 their criticisms would take on points of view 
 diametrically opposed to their present. Max 
 would begin admiring the Rev. Dr. Charles 
 Rann Kennedy and Towse would promptly 
 proceed to put on his glasses to get a better 
 view of the girl on the end. Every book of 
 dramatic criticism — every single piece of 
 dramatic criticism — is a searching, illuminat- 
 ing autobiography. The dramatic critic per- 
 forms a clinic upon himself every time he takes 
 his pen in his hand. He may try, as Walkley 
 puts it, to substitute for the capital I's "nouns 
 of multitude signifying many," or some of 
 those well-worn stereotypes — "It is thought," 
 "one may be pardoned for hinting," "will any 
 one deny?" etc., etc. — by which criticism keeps 
 up the pretence that it is not a man but a cor- 
 poration, but he fools no one. 
 
 To ask the dramatic critic to keep himself 
 out of his criticism, to detach himself, is thus 
 [120]
 
 Dramatic Criticism 
 a trifle like asking an actor to keep himself out 
 of his role. Dramatic critics and actors are 
 much alike. The only essential difference is 
 that the actor does his acting on a platform. 
 But, platform or no platform, the actor and 
 the dramatic critic best serve their roles when 
 they filter them through their own personali- 
 ties. A dramatic critic who is told to keep 
 his personality out of his criticism is in the 
 position of an actor w^ho, being physically and 
 temperamentally like Mr. John Barrymore, is 
 peremptorily directed by a producer to stick 
 a sofa pillow under his belt, put on six extra 
 heel-lifts, acquire a w^hiskey voice and play 
 Falstaff like the late Sir Herbert Tree. The 
 best di-amatic critics from the time of Quintus 
 Horatius Flaccus (vide the "Epistola") have 
 sunk their vivid personalities into their work 
 right up to the knees. N'ot only have they de- 
 scribed the adventures of their souls among 
 masterpieces, but the adventures of their kid- 
 neys, spleens and cceca as well. Each has held 
 the mirror of drama up to his own nature, 
 with all its idiosyncrasies. And in it have 
 [121]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 been sharply reflected not the cut and dried 
 features of the professor, but the vital fea- 
 tures of a red-alive man. The other crit- 
 ics have merely held up the mirror to these 
 red-alive men, and have reflected not them- 
 selves but the latter. Then, in their vain- 
 glory, they have looked again into the hand- 
 glass and have mistaken the reflection of the 
 parrot for an eagle. 
 
 A third rubber-stamp: the critic must have 
 sympathy. As properly contend that a sur- 
 geon must have sympathy. The word is mis- 
 used. What the critic must have is not sym- 
 pathy, which in its common usage bespeaks a 
 measure of sentimental concern, but interest. 
 If a dramatic critic, for example, has sym- 
 pathy for an actress he can no more criticize 
 her with poise than a surgeon can operate on 
 his! own wife. The critic may on occasion 
 have sympathy as the judge in a court of law 
 may on occasion have it, but if he is a fair 
 critic, or a fair judge, he can't do anything 
 about it, however much he would like to. Be- 
 tween the fair defendant in the lace baby collar 
 [122]
 
 Dramatic Criticism 
 and a soft heart, Article X, Section 123, Page 
 416, absurdly interposes itself. (In example, 
 being a human being with a human being's 
 weaknesses before a critic, I would often rather 
 praise a lovely one when she is bad than an 
 unlovely one when she is good — and, alas, I 
 fear that I sometimes do — but in the general 
 run I try to remember my business and behave 
 myself. It isn't always easy. But I do my 
 best, and angels and Lewes could do no 
 more.) The word sympathy is further mis- 
 handled, as in the similar case of the word 
 enthusiasm. What a critic should have is not, 
 as is common, sympathy and enthusiasm 
 before the fact, but after it. The critic who 
 enters a theatre bubblingly certain that he is 
 going to have a good time is no critic. The 
 critic is he who leaves a theatre cheerfully 
 certain that he has had a good time. ^ em- 
 pathy and enthusiasm, unless they are ea^ post 
 facto J are precisely like prevenient prejudice 
 and hostility. Sympathy has no more prelim- 
 inary place in the equipment of a critic than 
 in the equipment of an ambulance driver or a 
 [123]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 manufacturer of bird cages. It is the caboose 
 of criticism, not the engine. 
 
 The trouble with dramatic criticism in 
 America, speaking generally, is that where it 
 is not frankly reportorial it too often seeks to 
 exhibit a personality when there exists no per- 
 sonality to exhibit. Himself perhaps con- 
 scious of this lack, the critic indulges in heroic 
 makeshifts to inject into his writings a note of 
 individuality, and the only individuality that 
 comes out of his perspirations is of a piece 
 with that of the bearded lady or the dog- 
 faced boy. Individuality of this freak species 
 is the bane of the native criticism. The col- 
 lege professor who, having nothing to say, tries 
 to give his criticism an august air by figura- 
 tively attaching to it a pair of whiskers and 
 horn glasses, the suburban college professor 
 who sedulously practises an aloofness from the 
 madding crowd that his soul longs to be part 
 of, the college professor who postures as a 
 man of the world, the newspaper reporter who 
 postures as a college professor, the journalist 
 who performs in terms of Art between the 
 [124]
 
 Dramatic Criticism 
 Saks and Gimbel advertisements — these and 
 others Hke them are the sad comedians in the 
 tragical crew. In their heavy attempts to 
 hve up to their fancy dress costumes, in their 
 laborious efforts to conceal their humdrum 
 personalities in the uncomfortable gauds of 
 Petruchio and Gobbo, they betray themselves 
 even to the bus boys. The same performer 
 cannot occupy the roles of Polonius and Ham- 
 let, even in a tank town troupe. 
 
 No less damaging to American dramatic 
 criticism is the dominant notion that criticism, 
 to be valuable, must be constructive. That is, 
 that it must, as the phrase has it, "build up" 
 rather than "tear down." As a result of this 
 conviction we have an endless repertoire of 
 architectonic advice from critics wholly with- 
 out the structural faculty, advice which, were 
 it followed, would produce a drama twice as 
 poor as that which they criticize. Obsessed 
 with the idea that they must be constructive, 
 the critics know no lengths to which they will 
 not go in their sweat to dredge up cures of 
 one sort or another. They constructively 
 [125]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 point out that Shaw's plays would be better 
 plays if Shaw understood the punctual tech- 
 nique of Pinero, thus destroying a "Caesar and 
 Cleopatra" to construct a "Second Mrs. Tan- 
 queray." They constructively point out the 
 trashy aspect of some Samuel Shipman's 
 "Friendly Enemies," suggest more serious en- 
 terprises to him, and get the poor soul to write 
 a "The Unwritten Chapter" which is ten 
 times as bad. They are not content to be 
 critics; they must also be playwrights. They 
 stand in mortal fear of the old recrimination, 
 "He wiho can, does; he who can't, criticizes," 
 not pausing to realize that the names of Mr. 
 Octavus Roy Cohen and Matthew Arnold may 
 be taken as somewhat confounding respective 
 examples. They note with some irritation that 
 the critic for the Wentzville, Mo., Beacon is a 
 destructive critic, but are conveniently igno- 
 rant of the fact — which may conceivably prove 
 something more — that so was George Farqu- 
 har. If destructive criticism, in their mean- 
 ing, is criticism which pulls down without 
 building up in return, ,three-fourths of the 
 [126]
 
 Dramatic Criticisni 
 best dramatic criticism written since the time 
 of Boileau, fully filling the definition, is 
 worthless. One can't cure a yellow fever pa- 
 tient by pointing out to him that he should 
 have caught the measles. One can't improve 
 the sanitary condition of a neighbourhood 
 merely by giving the outhouse a different coat 
 of paint. The foe of destructive criticism is 
 the pro-German of American art. 
 
 Our native criticism suffers further from 
 Ithe commercial Puritanism of its mediums. 
 What is often mistaken for the Puritanism of 
 the critic is actually the commercial Puri- 
 tanism forced upon him by the owner and pub- 
 lisher of the journal in which his writings ap- 
 pear, and upon which he has to depend for a 
 livelihood. Although this owner and pub- 
 lisher is often not personally the Puritan, he 
 is yet shrewdly aware that the readers of his 
 journal are, and out of this awareness he be- 
 comes what may be termed a circulation blue- 
 nose. Since circulation and advertising rev- 
 enue are twins, he must see to it that the sen- 
 sibilities of the former are not offended. And 
 [127]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 his circumspection, conveyed to the critic by 
 the copy reader or perhaps only sensed, brings 
 about the Puritan play-acting by the critic. 
 This accounts to no little degree for the hos- 
 tile and uncritical reviews of even the most 
 finished risque farces, and of the best efforts 
 of American and European playwrights to 
 depict truthfully and fairly the more unpleas- 
 ant phases of sex. "I agree with you that 
 this last naughty farce of Avery Hopwood's 
 is awfully funny stuff," a IVew York news- 
 paper reviewer once said to me; "I laughed 
 at it until my ribs ached; but I don't dare 
 write as much. One can't praise such things 
 in a paper with the kind of circulation that 
 ours has." It is criticism bred from this com- 
 mercial Puritanism that has held back farce 
 writing in America, and I venture to say 
 much serious dramatic writing as well. The 
 best farce of a Guitry or a Dieudonne, 
 produced in America today without childish 
 excisions, would receive unfavourable notices 
 from nine newspapers out of ten. The best 
 sex drama of a Porto-Riche or a Wedekind 
 [128]
 
 Dramatic Criticism 
 would suffer — indeed, already has suffered — 
 a similar fate. I predicted to Eugene 
 O'Neill, the moment I laid down the manu- 
 script of his pathological play "Diff'rent," the 
 exact manner in which, two months later, the 
 axes fell upon him. 
 
 For one critic hke Mr. J. Ranken Towse 
 who is a Puritan by tradition and training, 
 there are a dozen who are Puritans by proxy. 
 One can no more imagine a dramatic critic on 
 a newspaper owned by Mr. Cyrus H. K. Cur- 
 tis praising Schnitzler's "Reigen" or Rip's and 
 Gignoux's "Scandale de Deauville" than one 
 can imagine the same critic denouncing "Ben 
 Hur." What thus holds true in journalistic 
 criticism holds true in precisely the same way 
 in the criticism written by the majority of 
 college professors. I doubt that there is a 
 college professor in America today who, how- 
 ever much he admired a gay, reprobate farce 
 like "Le Rubicon" or "L'lllusioniste," would 
 dare state his admiration in print. Puritan 
 or no Puritan, it is professionally necessary 
 for him to comport himself as one. His uni- 
 [129]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 versity demands it, silently, sternly, idioti- 
 cally. He is the helpless victim of its aes- 
 thetic Ku Klux. Behind any drama dealing 
 unconventionally with sex, there hovers a 
 spectre that vaguely resembles Professor 
 Scott Nearing. He sees it ... he reflects 
 ... he works up a safe indignation. 
 
 Dramatic criticism travels, in America, 
 carefully laid tracks. Signal lights, sema- 
 phores and one-legged old men with red flags 
 are stationed along the way to protect it at 
 the crossings, to make it safe, and to guard it 
 from danger. It e],laborately steams, pulls, 
 puffs, chugs, toots, whistles, grinds and rum- 
 bles for three hundred miles — and brings up at 
 something like Hinkletown, Pa. It is eager, 
 but futile. It is honest, but so is Dr. Frank 
 Crane. It is fearless, but so is the actor who 
 plays the hero strapped to the papier-mache 
 buzz-saw. It is constructive, but so is an em- 
 balmer. It is detached, but so is a man in the 
 Fiji Islands. It is sympathetic, but so is a 
 quack prostatitician. 
 
 [1301
 
 VI. DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN 
 AMERICA
 
 VI. DRAIMATIC CRITICISM IN 
 AMERICA 
 
 DRAMATIC criticism, at its best, is 
 the adventure of an intelligence 
 among emotions. The chief end 
 of drama is the enkindling of emotions; the 
 chief end of dramatic criticism is to inish into 
 the burning building and rescue the metaphy- 
 sical weaklings who are wont to be overcome 
 by the first faint whiffs of smoke. 
 
 Dramatic criticism, in its common run, 
 fails by virtue of its confusion of unschooled 
 emotion with experienced emotion. A dra- 
 matic critic who has never been kissed may 
 properly appreciate the readily assimilable 
 glories of "Romeo and Juliet," but it is doubt- 
 ful that he will be able properly to appreciate 
 the somewhat more evasive splendoui's of 
 "Liebelei." The capability of a judge does 
 [133]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 not, of course, depend upon his having him- 
 self once been in jail, nor does the capability 
 of a critic depend upon his having personally 
 once experienced the emotions of the drama- 
 tis personae, but that critic is nevertheless the 
 most competent whose emotions the dramatis 
 personae do not so much anticipatorily stir up 
 as recollectively soothe. 
 
 All critidism is more or less a statement in 
 terms of the present of what one has viewed 
 of the past through a delicate, modern reduc- 
 ing-glass. Intelligence is made up, in large 
 part, of dead emotions; ignorance, of emo- 
 tions that have lived on, deaf and dumb and 
 crippled, but ever smiling. The general ad- 
 mission that a dramatic critic must be experi- 
 enced in drama, literature, acting and theories 
 of production but not necessarily in emotions 
 is; somewhat difficidt ^of digestion* Such a 
 critic may conceivably comprehend much of 
 Sheridan, Moliere, Bernhardt and Yevrey- 
 noff, but a hundred searching and admirable 
 things like the beginning of "Anatol," the 
 middle of "Lonely Lives" and the end of 
 [134]
 
 Dramatic Criticism in America 
 "The Case of Rebellious Susan" must inevita- 
 bly be without his ken, and baffle his efforts at 
 sound penetration. I do not here postm-e 
 myself as one magnificently privy to all the 
 mysteries, but rather as one who, failing per- 
 haps to be on very intimate terms with them, 
 detects and laments the deficiencies that con- 
 found him. Experience, goeth the saw, is a 
 wise master. But it is, for the critic, an even 
 wiser slave. A critic on the INIarseilles Petits 
 Pois may critically admire "La Derniere Nuit 
 de Don Juan," but it takes an Anatole France 
 critically to understand it. 
 
 The superficial quality of American emo- 
 tions, sociological and aesthetic, enjoyed by the 
 great majority of American critics, operates 
 extensively against profundity in American 
 criticism — in that of literature and music no 
 less than that of drama. American emotions, 
 speaking in the mass, where they are not the 
 fixed and obvious emotions ingenerate in most 
 countries — such as love of home, family and 
 country, and so on — are one-syllable emotions, 
 primary-colour emotions. The polysyllabic 
 [135]
 
 Tlie Critic and the Drama 
 and pastel emotions are looked on as dubious, 
 even degenerate. No man, for example, who, 
 though absolutely faithful to his wife, con- 
 fessed openly that he had winked an eye at a 
 ballet girl could conceivably be elected to 
 membership in the Union League Club. The 
 man who, after a cocktail, indiscreetly gave 
 away the news that he had felt a tear of joy 
 in his eye when he heard the minuet of Mo- 
 zart's G minor symphony or a tear of sadness 
 when he looked upon Corot's "La Solitude," 
 Iwould, be promptly set down by the mother 
 members of the golf club as a dipsomaniac 
 who was doubtless taking narcotics on the 
 side. If a member of the Y. M. C. A. were 
 toi glance out of the window and suddenly 
 ejaculate, "My, what a beautiful girl!" the 
 superintendent would immediately grab him 
 by the seat of the pantaloons and throw him 
 down the back stairs. And if a member of 
 the American Legion were to sniffle so mudh 
 as once when the orchestra in the Luna Park 
 dance hall played "Wiener Blut," a spy 
 would seize him by the ear and hurry him be- 
 [136]
 
 Dramatic Criticism in America 
 fore the heads of the organization as a suspi- 
 cious fellow, in all probability of German 
 blood. 
 
 The American is either ashamed of honest 
 emotion or, if he is not ashamed, is soon 
 shamed into shame by his neighbours. He is 
 profoundly affected by any allusion to Mother, 
 the Baby, or the Flag — the invincible trinity 
 of American dramatic hokum — and his reac- 
 tions thereto meet with the full favour of 
 church and state; but he is unmoved, he is 
 silently forbidden to be moved, by a love that 
 doesn't happen to fall into the proper pigeon- 
 hole, by a work of great beauty that doesn't 
 happen to preach a backwoods Methodist ser- 
 mon, by sheer loveliness, or majesty, or un- 
 adorned truth. And this corsetted emotion, 
 mincing, wasp-waisted and furtive, colours 
 all native criticism. It makes the dramatic 
 critic ashamed of simple beauty, and forbids 
 him honestly to admire the mere loveliness of 
 such exhibitions as Ziegfeld's. It makes him 
 ashamed of passion, and forbids him honestly 
 to admire such excellent dramas as Georges de 
 [137]
 
 Tlie Critic and the Drama 
 Porto-Riche's "Amoureuse." It makes him 
 ashamed of laughter, and forbids him to 
 chuckle at the little naughtinesses of Sacha 
 Guitry and his own Avery Hopwood. It 
 makes him ashamed of truth, and forbids him 
 to regard with approbation such a play as 
 "The Only Law." The American drama 
 must therefore not create new emotions for 
 him, but must hold the battered old mirror up 
 to his own. It must warm him not with new, 
 splendid and worldly emotions, but must sat- 
 isfy him afresh as to the integrity and higher 
 merit of his own restricted parcel of emotions. 
 It must abandon all new, free concepts of 
 love and life, of romance and adventure and 
 glory, and must reassure him — with appro- 
 priate quiver-music — that the road to heaven 
 is up Main Street and the road to hell down 
 the Avenue de FOpera. 
 
 Though there is a regrettable trace of snob- 
 bery in the statement, it yet remains that — 
 with half a dozen or so quickly recognizable 
 exceptions — the practitioners of dramatic crit- 
 icism in America are in the main a humbly- 
 [138]
 
 Dramatic Criticism in America 
 born, underpaid and dowdy-lived lot. This 
 was as true of them yesterday as it is today. 
 And as Harlem, delicatessen-store dinners^ 
 napkin-rings and the Subway are not, per- 
 haps, best conducive to a polished and suavely 
 cosmopolitan outlook on life and romance and 
 enthralling beauty, we have had a dramatic 
 criticism pervaded by a vainglorious homeli- 
 ness, by a side-street aesthetic, and by not a 
 little of the difficultly suppressed rancour that 
 human nature ever feels in the presence of ad- 
 mired yet unachievable situations. Up to 
 fifteen years ago, drama in America was com- 
 pelled critically to meet with, and adhere 
 strictly to, the standards of life, culture and 
 romance as they obtained over on Mr. Wil- 
 liam Winter's Staten Island. Since Winter's 
 death, it has been urged critically to abandon 
 the standards of Staten Island and comply 
 instead with the eminently more sophisticated 
 standards derived from a four years' study of 
 Cicero, Stumpf and the Norwegian system of 
 communal elections at Harvard or Catawba 
 College, combined with a two weeks' stay in 
 [139]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 Paris. For twenty years, Ibsen and Pinero 
 suffered the American critical scourge be- 
 cause they had not been born and brought up 
 in a town with a bust of Cotton Mather or 
 WilHam Cullen Bryant in its pubhc square, 
 and did not think quite the same way about 
 things as Horace Greeley. For twenty years 
 more, Porto-Riche and Frenchmen like him 
 will doubtless suffer similarly because, in a 
 given situation, they do not act precisely as 
 Mr. Frank A. Munsey or Dr. Stuart Pratt 
 Sherman would; for twenty years more, 
 Hauptmann and other Germans will doubt- 
 less be viewed with a certain measure of con- 
 descension because they have not enjoyed the 
 same advantages as Professor Brander Mat- 
 thews in buying Liberty Bonds, at par. 
 
 American dramatic criticism is, and always 
 has been, essentially provincial. It began by 
 mistaking any cheap melodrama like "The 
 Charity Ball" or "The Wife" which was cam- 
 ouflaged with a few pots of palms and half a 
 dozen dress suits for a study of American so- 
 ciety. It progressed by appraising as the 
 [140]
 
 Dramatic Criticism in America 
 dean of American dramatists and as the lead- 
 ing American dramatic thinker a playwright 
 who wrote such stuff as "All over this great 
 land thousands of trains run every day, start- 
 ing and arriving in punctual agreement be- 
 'cause this is a woman's world! The great 
 steamships, dependable almost as the sun — a 
 million factories in civilization — the countless 
 looms and lathes of industry — the legions of 
 labour that weave the riches of the world — all 
 — all move by the mainspring of man's faith 
 in woman!" It has come to flower today in 
 denouncing what the best European critics 
 have proclaimed to be the finest example of 
 American fantastic comedy on the profound 
 ground that "it is alien to American mor- 
 ality," and in hailing as one of the most acute 
 studies of a certain typical phase of American 
 life a comedy filched substantially from the 
 French. 
 
 The plush-covered provincialism of the na- 
 tive dramatic criticism, operating in this wise 
 against conscientious drama and sound ap- 
 preciation of conscientious drama, constantly 
 [141]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 betrays itself for all the chintz hocus-pocus 
 with which it seeks drolly to conceal that pro- 
 vincialism. For all its easy incorporation of 
 French phrases laboriously culled from the 
 back of Webster, its casually injected allu- 
 sions to the Uberbrett'l, Stanislav Pshibui- 
 shevsky, the excellent cwmof de Chevreuil 
 sauce poivrade to be had in the little restaurant 
 near the comfort station in the Place Pigalle, 
 and the bewitching eyes of the prima ballerina 
 in the 1917 Y. M. C. A. show at Epernay, it 
 lets its mask fall whenever it is confronted in 
 the realistic flesh by one or another of the very 
 things against which it has postured its cos- 
 mopolitanism. Thus does the mask fall, and 
 reveal the old pair of suburban eyes, before 
 the "indelicacy" of French dramatic master- 
 pieces, before the "polished wit" of British 
 polished witlessness, before the "stodginess" 
 of the German master depictions of stodgy 
 German peasantry, before the "gloom" of 
 Russian dramatic photography, before the 
 "sordidness" of "Countess Julie" and the 
 "wholesomeness" of "The Old Homestead." 
 [142]
 
 Dramatic Criticism, in America 
 Cosmopolitanism is a heritage, not an acqui- 
 sition. It may be born to a man in a wooden 
 shack in Hardin County, in Kentucky, or in 
 a Kttle cottage in Hampshire in England, or 
 in a garret of Paris, but, unless it is so born 
 to him, a thousand Cunard liners and Orient 
 Expresses cannot bring it to him. All criti- 
 cism is geography of the mind and geometry 
 of the heart. American criticism suffers in 
 that what assthetic wanderlust its mind experi- 
 ences is confined to excursion trips, and in 
 that what x its heart seeks to discover is an 
 unknown quantity only to emotional sub- 
 freshmen. 
 
 Criticism is personal, or it is nothing. Talk 
 to me of impersonal criticism, and I'll talk to 
 you of impersonal sitz-bathing. Impersonal 
 criticism is the dodge of the critic without per- 
 sonality. Some men marry their brother's 
 widowj; some earn a livelihood imitating 
 George M. Cohan; some write impersonal 
 criticism. Show me how I can soundly criti- 
 cize Mrs. Fiske as Hannele without comment- 
 ing on the mature aspect of the lady's stentop- 
 [143]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 gia, and I shall begin to believe that there may 
 be something in the impersonal theory. Show 
 me how I can soundly criticize the drama of 
 Wedekind without analyzing Wedekind, the 
 man, and I shall believe in the theory to the 
 full. It is maintained by the apostles of the 
 theory that the dramatic critic is in the posi- 
 tion of a judge in the court of law: that his 
 concern, like that of the latter, is merely with 
 the evidence presented to him, not with the 
 personalities of those who submit the evidence. 
 Nothing could be more idiotic. The judge 
 who does not take into consideration, for ex- 
 ample, that — whatever the nature of the evi- 
 dence — the average Italian, or negro, or Ar- 
 menian before him is in all probability lying 
 like the devil is no more equipped to be a 
 sound judge than the dramatic critic who, for 
 all the stage evidence, fails to take into con- 
 sideration that Strindberg personally was a 
 lunatic, that Pinero, while treating of British 
 impulses and dharacter, is himself of ineradi- 
 cable Portuguese mind and blood, that the in- 
 spiration of D'Annunzio came not from a 
 [144]
 
 Dramatic Criticism in America 
 woman out of life but from a woman out of 
 the greenroom, and that Shaw is a legal virgin. 
 Just as dramatic criticism, as it is practised 
 in America, is Mason- jar criticism — criticism, 
 that is, obsessed by a fixed determination to 
 put each thing it encounters into an air-tight 
 bottle and to label it — so is this dramatic crit- 
 icism itself in turn subjected to the bottling 
 and labelling process. A piece of criticism, 
 however penetrating, that is not couched in the 
 language of the commencement address of the 
 president of Millsaps College, and that fails 
 to include a mention of the Elizabethan theati*e 
 and a quotation from Victor Hugo's "Her- 
 nani," is labelled "journalistic." A criticism 
 that elects to make its points with humour 
 rather than without humour is labelled "flip- 
 pant." A criticism that shows a wide knowl- 
 edge of everything but the subject in hand 
 is labelled "scholarly." One that, however 
 empty, prefixes every name with a Mr. and 
 somewhere in it discloses the fact that the 
 critic is sixty-five years old is labelled "digni- 
 fied." One that is full of hard common sense 
 [145]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 from beginning to end but is guilty of wit is 
 derogatorily labelled "an imitation of Bernard 
 Shaw." One that says an utterly worthless 
 play is an utterly worthless play, and then 
 shuts up, is labelled "desti'uctive" ; while one 
 that points out that the same play would be a 
 much better play if Hauptmann or De Curel 
 had written it is labelled "constructive and in- 
 forming." And so it goes. With the result 
 that dramatic criticism in America is a dead 
 art language. Like Mr. William Jennings 
 Bryan, it has been criticized to death. 
 
 The American mania for being on the pop- 
 ular side has wrapped its tentacles around 
 the American criticism of the theatre. The 
 American critic, either because his job de- 
 pends upon it or because he appreciates that 
 kudos in this country, as in no other, is a gift 
 of the mob, sedulously plays safe. A sheep, 
 he seeks the comfortable support of other 
 sheep. It means freedom from alaiTims, a 
 guaranteed pay envelope at the end of the 
 week, dignity in the eyes of the community, 
 an eventual election to the National Insti- 
 [146]
 
 Dramatic Criticism in America 
 tute of Arts and Letters and, when he reaches 
 three score years and ten and his trousers have 
 become thin in the seat, a benefit in the Cen- 
 tury Theatre with a bill made up of all 
 the eminent soft-shoe dancers and fat trage- 
 diennes upon whom he has lavished praise. 
 This, in America, is the respected critic. If 
 we had among us today a Shaw, or a Walkley, 
 or a Boissard, or a Bahr, or a Julius Bab, 
 he would be regarded as not quite nice. 
 Certainly the Drama League would not invite 
 him to appear before it. Certainly he would 
 never be invited to sit between Prof. Richard 
 Burton and Prof. William Lyon Phelps at the 
 gala banquet to Mr. D. W. Griffith. Cer- 
 tainly, if his writings got into the paid prints 
 at all, there would be a discreet editor's note 
 at the top to the effect that "the publication of 
 an article does not necessarily imply that it 
 represents the ideas of this publication or of 
 its editors." 
 
 Criticism in America must follow the bell- 
 cow. The bell-cow is personal cowardice, ar- 
 tistic cowardice, neighbourhood cowardice, or 
 [147]
 
 TJie Critic and the Drama 
 the even dheaper cowardice of the daily and — 
 to a much lesser degree — periodical press. 
 Up to within a few years ago it was out of 
 the question for a dramatic critic to write 
 honestly of the productions of David Belasco 
 and still keep his job. One of the leading 
 N'ew York evening newspapers peremptorily 
 discharged its reviewer for daring to do so; 
 another New York newspaper sternly in- 
 structed its reviewer not to make the same 
 mistake twice under the penalty of being cash- 
 iered; a leading periodical packed off its re- 
 viewer for the offence. One of the most tal- 
 ented critics in New York was several years 
 ago summarily discharged by the newspaper 
 that employed him because he wrote an honest 
 criticism of a very bad play by an obscure 
 playwright named Jules Eckert Goodman. 
 Another conscientious critic, daring mob opin- 
 ion at about the same time — he wrote, as I 
 treca'll, something to the effect that the late 
 Charles Frohman's productions were often 
 very shoddy things — was charily transferred 
 [148]
 
 Dramatic Criticism in America 
 the next day to another post on the news- 
 paper's staff. I myself, ploughing my famil- 
 iar modest critical course, have, indeed, been 
 made not personally unaware of the native 
 editorial horror of critical opinions which are 
 not shared by the Night School curricula, the 
 imnates of the Actors' Home, the Independ- 
 ent Order of B'nai B'rith, the United Com- 
 mercial Travellers of America, and the Moose. 
 Some years ago, a criticism of Hall Caine and 
 of his play "Margaret Schiller," which ven- 
 tured the opinion that the M. Caine was per- 
 haps not one of the greatest of modern gen- 
 iuses, so frightened the editors of the Phila- 
 delphia North American and the Cleveland 
 Leader that I doubt they have yet recovered 
 from the fear of the consequences of printing 
 the review. 
 
 The ruling ethic of the American press so 
 far as the theatre is concerned is one of unc- 
 tuous lassez faire. "If you can't praise, 
 don't dispraise," is the editorial injunction to 
 the reviewer. The theatre in America is a 
 [149]
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 great business — greater even than the depart- 
 ment store — and a great business should be 
 treated with proper respect. What if the 
 reviewer does not admire "The Key to 
 Heaven"? It played to more than twelve 
 thousand dollars last week; it must be good. 
 The theatre must be helped, and the way to 
 help it is uninterruptedly to speak well of it. 
 Fine drama? Art? A newspaper has no 
 concern with fine drama and art; the public is 
 not interested in such things. A newspaper's 
 concern is primarily with news. But is not 
 dramatic swindling, the selling of spurious 
 wares at high prices, news? Is not an at- 
 tempt to corrupt the future of the theatre as 
 an honourable institution and an honourable 
 business also news, news not so very much less 
 interesting, perhaps, than the three column ac- 
 count of an ex-Follies girl's adulteries? The 
 reviewer, for his impertinence, is assigned 
 henceforth to cover the Jefferson Market 
 police court. 
 
 The key-note of the American journalistic 
 [150]
 
 Dramatic Criticism in America 
 attitude toward the theatre is a stagnant 
 optimism. Dramatic art and the red-haired 
 copy boy are the two stock jokes of the 
 American newspaper office. Here and there 
 one encounters a reviewer who, through 
 either the forcefuhiess or the amiability of his 
 personality, is successful for a short time in 
 evading the editorial shackles — there are a few 
 su^h still extant as I write. But soon or late 
 the rattle of the chains is heard and the re- 
 viewer that was is no more. He is an Ameri- 
 can, and must suffer the penalty that an 
 American who aspires to cultured viewpoint 
 and defiant love of beauty must ever suffer. 
 For — so George Santayana, late professor of 
 philosophy in Harvard University, in "Char- 
 acter and Opinion in the United States" — 
 "the luckless American who is drawn to poetic 
 subtlety, pious retreats, or gay passions, 
 nevertheless has the categorical excellence of 
 work, growth, enterprise, reform, and pros- 
 perity dinned into his ears: every door is open 
 in this direction and shut in the other; so that 
 
 151
 
 The Critic and the Drama 
 he either folds up his heart and withers in a 
 corner — in remote places you sometimes find 
 such a solitary gaunt idealist — or else he flies 
 to Oxford or Florence or Montmartre to save 
 his soul — or perhaps not to save it." 
 
 THE END 
 
 152
 
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