The adoption of this method would relieve the dramatic critic from one
of his existing disadvantages; he would be released from criticising the
pieces which are beneath criticism. The literary critic, and even the
ordinary book-reviewer, never spends his time in considering dime
novels--whereas the dramatic critic is now called upon to waste many
evenings in beholding a play which is only the theatrical equivalent of
a dime novel. The immediate result of this futile and fatiguing
expenditure of energy is likely to be discouraging and even enervating.
If the dramatic critic could be totally relieved from all contact with
the show business when the show business has only a casual connection
with the drama, it would tend to keep him fit for his essential task.
Under the present conditions it is no wonder that the theatrical
reviewer wearies of his task and loses the gusto and the zest without
which all work tends to degenerate into the perfunctory and the
mechanical.
We need not fear that the first-night reporting would be ill done if
competent reporters were instructed that they were not to consider
themselves as critics, and that it was their sole duty to report, as
they would report anything else, conscientiously and accurately. The
difficulty would not be in finding reporters able to discharge this
duty, it would be in the discovery of dramatic critics possessing the
fourfold qualifications of insight, equipment, disinterestedness, and
sympathy, which every critic must be endowed with whatever the art he
undertakes to analyze. And the difficulty would be increased by the fact
that the dramatic critic needs an understanding of three different arts,
the art of acting, the art of literature, and the art of the drama--of
play-making as distinct from literature.
It would be idle to hope that even if this method were adopted we should
soon be able to develop in the United States and in Great Britain a
group of dramatic critics of the capacity and the quality of Lessing and
Sarcey, of George Henry Lewes and William Archer. Yet it is solely by
the adoption of this method that we can hope to provide the opportunity
for the appearance of the true dramatic critic, who can fit himself for
his finer work only by being set free from the necessity of doing work
quite unworthy of him, altho necessary to the newspaper itself. And the
development of a group of dramatic critics of a higher type than can be
found to-day--except possibly in a scant half-dozen dailies and weeklies
and monthlies--is a condition precedent to the development of our drama.
Of course, these dramatic critics, whatever their endowment, could give
little help directly to the dramatic authors, since it is a mistake to
suppose that the critic is capable of counselling the author, or that he
is charged with any such duty. Where the critic can help is by
disseminating knowledge about the dramatic art, and by raising the
standard of appreciation in the public at large--that public which even
the mightiest dramatist has to please or else to fail of his purpose.
(1915.)