The seats are cheap.

The plays are good. Pah!--this has a canting smell. Any play is good
to the man who likes to look at it. And at that rate Chu Chin Chow is
extra-super-good. What about your GOOD plays? Whose good? PFUI to your
goodness!

That minor premiss is a bad egg: it will hatch no bird. Good plays? You
might as well say mimsy bomtittle plays, you'd be saying as much. The
plays are--don't say good or you'll be beaten. The plays--the plays of
A People's Theatre are--oh heaven, what are they?--not popular nor
populous nor plebian nor proletarian nor folk nor parish plays. None of
that adjectival spawn.

The only clue-word is People's for all that. A People's---Chaste word,
it will bring forth no adjective. The plays of A People's Theatre are
People's plays. The plays of A People's Theatre are plays about people.

It doesn't look much, at first sight. After all--people! Yes, People!
Not THE PEOPLE, _i.e._ Plebs, nor yet the Upper Ten. People. Neither
Piccoli nor Grandi in our republic. People.

People, ah God! Not mannequins. Not lords nor proletariats nor bishops
nor husbands nor co-respondents nor virgins nor adultresses nor uncles
nor noses. Not even white rabbits nor presidents. People.

Men who are somebody, not men who are something. Men who HAPPEN to be
bishops or co-respondents, women who happen to be chaste, just as they
happen to freckle, because it's one of their innumerable odd qualities.
Even men who happen, by the way, to have long noses. But not noses on
two legs, not burly pairs of gaiters, stuffed and voluble, not
white meringues of chastity, not incarnations of co-respondence. Not
proletariats, petitioners, president's, noses, bits of fluff. Heavens,
what an assortment of bits! And aren't we sick of them!

People, I say. And after all, it's saying something. It's harder to be
a human being than to be a president or a bit of fluff. You can be a
president, or a bit of fluff, or even a nose, by clockwork. Given
a role, a PART, you can play it by clockwork. But you can't have a
clockwork human being.

We're dead sick of parts. It's no use your protesting that there is a
man behind the nose. We can't see him, and he can't see himself. Nothing
but nose. Neither can you make us believe there is a man inside the
gaiters. He's never showed his head yet.

It may be, in real life, the gaiters wear the man, as the nose wears
Cyrano. It may be Sir Auckland Geddes and Mr. J. H. Thomas are only
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