et him carry it!"
1909.

SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning. Every grouping
of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the
dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to
the light of day. Such is the moral that exhales from plays like 'Lear',
'Hamlet', and 'Macbeth'. But such is not the moral to be found in the
great bulk of contemporary Drama. The moral of the average play is now,
and probably has always been, the triumph at all costs of a supposed
immediate ethical good over a supposed immediate ethical evil.

The vice of drawing these distorted morals has permeated the Drama to its
spine; discoloured its art, humanity, and significance; infected its
creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned it from a picture
into a caricature. A Drama which lives under the shadow of the distorted
moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine--forgets so completely that
it often prides itself on having forgotten.

Now, in writing plays, there are, in this matter of the moral, three
courses open to the serious dramatist. The first is: To definitely set
before the public that which it wishes to have set before it, the views
and codes of life by which the public lives and in which it believes.
This way is the most common, successful, and popular. It makes the
dramatist's position sure, and not too obviously authoritative.

The second course is: To definitely set before the public those views and
codes of life by which the dramatist himself lives, those theories in
which he himself believes, the more effectively if they are the opposite
of what the public wishes to have placed before it, presenting them so
that the audience may swallow them like powder in a spoonful of jam.

There is a third course: To set before the public no cut-and-dried codes,
but the phenomena of life and character, selected and combined, but not
distorted, by the dramatist's outlook, set down without fear, favour, or
prejudice, leaving the public to draw such poor moral as nature may
afford. This third method requires a certain detachment; it requires a
sympathy with, a love of, and a curiosity as to, things for their own
sake; it requires a far view, together with patient industry, for no
immediately practical result.

It was once said of Shakespeare that he had never done any good to any
one, and never would. This, unfortunately, c