The stage is not likely to die of neglect anywhere. But at this
moment it cannot be denied that the ship of the stage is drifting
somewhat hither and thither, Every breath of air and every current of
public opinion impels it first in one direction and then in another,
At one moment we may be said to be in the doldrums of the English
society drama, or we are sluggishly rolling along in a heavy ground
swell, propelled by a passing cat's paw of revivals of old melodramas.
Again we catch a very faint northerly breeze from Ibsen, or a
southeaster from Maeterlinck and Hauptmann. Sometimes we set our
sails to woo that ever-clearing breeze of Shakespeare, only to be
forced out of our course by a sputter of rain, an Irish mist, and half
a squall from George Bernard Shaw; but the greater part of the time
the ship of the stage is careering wildly under bare poles, with a man
lashed to the helm (and let us hope that, like Ulysses, he has cotton
wool in his ears), before a hurricane of comic opera. We need a
recognised stage and a recognised school. America has become too
great, and its influence abroad too large, for us to afford to have
recourse to that ancient and easy method of criticism which decries
the American and extols the foreign. That is one of those last
remnants of colonialism and provincialism which must depart forever.