far as it reveals the Life that prompted it. Give us
less of Living, more of Life, must ever be the cry of earnest criticism.
Enough of these mutitudinous, multifarious facts: tell us single, simple
truths. Give us more themes, and fewer fabrics of shreds and patches.

XIV

THE FUNCTION OF IMAGINATION

Whenever the spring comes round and everything beneath the sun looks
wonderful and new, the habitual theatre-goer, who has attended every
legitimate performance throughout the winter season in New York, is moved
to lament that there is nothing new behind the footlights. Week after week
he has seen the same old puppets pulled mechanically through the same old
situations, doing conventional deeds and repeating conventional lines,
until at last, as he watches the performance of yet another play, he feels
like saying to the author, "But, my dear sir, I have seen and heard all
this so many, many times already!" For this spring-weariness of the
frequenter of the theatre, the common run of our contemporary playwrights
must be held responsible. The main trouble seems to be that, instead of
telling us what they think life is like, they tell us what they think a
play is like. Their fault is not--to use Hamlet's phrase--that they
"imitate humanity so abominably": it is, rather, that they do not imitate
humanity at all. Most of our playwrights, especially the newcomers to the
craft, imitate each other. They make plays for the sake of making plays,
instead of for the sake of representing life. They draw their inspiration
from the little mimic world behind the footlights, rather than from the
roaring and tremendous world which takes no thought of the theatre. Their
art fails to interpret life, because they care less about life than they
care about their art. They are interested in what they are doing, instead
of being interested in why they are doing it. "Go to!", they say to
themselves, "I will write a play"; and the weary auditor is tempted to
murmur the sentence of the cynic Frenchman, "_Je n'en vois pas la
necessite_."

But now, lest we be led into misapprehension, let us understand clearly
that what we desire in the theatre is not new material, but rather a fresh
and vital treatment of such material as the playwright finds made to his
hand. After a certain philosophic critic had announced the startling thesis
that only some thirty odd distinct dramatic situations were conceivable,
Goethe and Schiller set themselves the