shall remember that
the way to help the public is to set before it images of faith and hope and
love, rather than images of doubt, despair, and infidelity.

The queer thing about the morbid-minded specialists in fabricated woe is
that they believe themselves to be telling the whole truth of human life
instead of telling only the worser half of it. They expunge from their
records of humanity the very emotions that make life worth the living, and
then announce momentously, "Behold reality at last; for this is Life." It
is as if, in the midnoon of a god-given day of golden spring, they should
hug a black umbrella down about their heads and cry aloud, "Behold, there
is no sun!" Shakespeare did that only once,--in _Measure for Measure_. In
the deepest of his tragedies, he voiced a grandeur even in obliquity, and
hymned the greatness and the glory of the life of man.

Suppose that what looks white in a landscape painting be actually bluish
gray. Perhaps it would be best to tell us so; but failing that, it would
certainly be better to tell us that it is white than to tell us that it is
black. If our dramatists must idealise at all in representing life, let
them idealise upon the positive rather than upon the negative side. It is
nobler to tell us that life is better than it actually is than to tell us
that it is worse. It is nobler to remind us of the joy of living than to
remind us of the weariness. "For to miss the joy is to miss all," as
Stevenson remarked; and if the drama is to be of benefit to the public, it
should, by its very presence, convey conviction of the truth thus nobly
phrased by Matthew Arnold:

Yet the will is free:
Strong is the Soul, and wise, and beautiful:
The seeds of godlike power are in us still:
Gods are we, Bards, Saints, Heroes, if we will.--
Dumb judges, answer, truth or mockery?

XII

PLEASANT AND UNPLEASANT PLAYS

The clever title, _Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant_, which Mr. Bernard Shaw
selected for the earliest issue of his dramatic writings, suggests a theme
of criticism that Mr. Shaw, in his lengthy prefaces, might profitably have
considered if he had not preferred to devote his entire space to a
discussion of his own abilities. In explanation of his title, the author
stated only that he labeled his first three plays Unpleasant for the reason
that "their dramatic power is used to force the spectator to face
unpleasant facts." This