One point remains to be considered. In any theatre audience there are
certain individuals who do not belong to the crowd. They are in it, but not
of it; for they fail to merge their individual self-consciousness in the
general self-consciousness of the multitude. Such are the professional
critics, and other confirmed frequenters of the theatre. It is not for them
primarily that plays are written; and any one who has grown individualised
through the theatre-going habit cannot help looking back regretfully upon
those fresher days when he belonged, unthinking, to the crowd. A
first-night audience is anomalous, in that it is composed largely of
individuals opposed to self-surrender; and for this reason, a first-night
judgment of the merits of a play is rarely final. The dramatist has written
for a crowd, and he is judged by individuals. Most dramatic critics will
tell you that they long to lose themselves in the crowd, and regret the
aloofness from the play that comes of their profession. It is because of
this aloofness of the critic that most dramatic criticism fails.
Throughout the present discussion, I have insisted on the point that the
great dramatists have always written primarily for the many. Yet now I must
add that when once they have fulfilled this prime necessity, they may also
write secondarily for the few. And the very greatest have always done so.
In so far as he was a dramatist, Shakespeare wrote for the crowd; in so far
as he was a lyric poet, he wrote for himself; and in so far as he was a
sage and a stylist, he wrote for the individual. In making sure of his
appeal to the many, he earned the right to appeal to the few. At the
thirty-cent performance of _Othello_ that I spoke of, I was probably the
only person present who failed to submerge his individuality beneath the
common consciousness of the audience. Shakespeare made a play that could
appeal to the rabble of that middle-western town; but he wrote it in a
verse that none of them could hear:--
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow'dst yesterday.
The greatest dramatist of all, in writing for the crowd, did not neglect
the individual.