d it all
before. It seems Lydia had a theory that the province of art is simply
not to be dull. If you could charm people, you could make them do
anything. The kite of your aspirations might fly among the stars. But
you couldn't fly it if it didn't look well flying. The reason nobody
really learns anything by plays intended to teach them something, Lydia
said, is because the plays are generally dull. Nobody is going to listen
to "argufying" if he can help it. If you tell people what it is
beneficial for them to believe they are going home and to bed,
unchanged. But they'll yawn in your faces first. Lydia had a theory that
you might teach the most extraordinary lessons if you only made them
bewitching enough. Look at the Blue Bird. How many people who loved to
see Bread cut a slice off his stomach and to follow the charming
pageant of the glorified common things of life, thought anything save
that this was a "show" with no appeal beyond the visual one? Yet there
it was, the big symbolism beating in its heart and keeping it alive. The
Children of Light could see the symbolism quick as a wink. Still the
Children of Darkness who never saw any symbolism at all and who were the
ones to yawn and go home to bed, helped pay for tickets and keep the
thing running. We must bewitch them also. Jeff inquired humbly if she
would advise taking up Shakespeare with the Mill Enders and found she
still wouldn't venture on it at once. She'd do some fairy plays, quite
easy to write on new lines. Everything was easy if you had "go" enough,
Lydia said. Jeff ventured to inquire about scenic effects, and
discovered, to his enlightenment, that Lydia had the greatest faith in
the imagination of any kind of audience. Do a thing well enough, she
said, and the audience would forget whether it was looking at a painted
scene or not. It could provide its own illusion. Think of the players,
she reminded him, who, when they gave the Trojan Women on the road, and
sought for a little Astyanax, were forbidden by an asinine city
government to bring on a real child. Think how the actors crouched
protectingly over an imaginary Astyanax, and how plainly every eye saw
the child who was not there. Perhaps every woman's heart supplied the
vision of her dream-child, of the child she loved. Think of the other
play where the kettle is said to be hissing hot and everybody shuns it
with such care that onlookers wince too. Lydia thought she could write
the fairy plays and