m of
speech.

Amicia. What a hideous prospect!

Dorriforth. Not necessarily, for we shall have grown used to it: we
shall, as I say, have buried our dead. To-day it's cruel, because our
old ideals are only dying, they are _in extremis_, they are virtually
defunct, but they are above-ground--we trip and stumble on them. We
shall eventually lay them tidily away. This is a bad moment, because
it's a moment of transition, and we still _miss_ the old superstition,
the bravery of execution, the eloquence of the lips, the interpretation
of character. We miss these things, of course, in proportion as the
ostensible occasion for them is great; we miss them particularly, for
instance, when the curtain rises on Shakespeare. Then we are conscious
of a certain divine dissatisfaction, of a yearning for that which isn't.
But we shall have got over this discomfort on the day when we have
accepted the ostensible occasion as merely and frankly ostensible, and
the real one as having nothing to do with it.

Florentia. I don't follow you. As I'm one of the squeezed, gaping
public, I must be dense and vulgar. You do, by-the-way, immense
injustice to that body. They do care for character--care much for it.
Aren't they perpetually talking about the actor's conception of it?

Dorriforth. Dear lady, what better proof can there be of their
ineptitude, and that painted canvas and real water are the only things
they understand? The vanity of wasting time over that! Auberon. Over
what? Dorriforth. The actor's conception of a part. It's the refuge of
observers who are no observers and critics who are no critics. With what
on earth have we to do save his execution?

Florentia. I don't in the least agree with you.

Amicia. Are you very sure, my poor Dorriforth?

Auberon. Give him rope and he'll hang himself.

Dorriforth. It doesn't need any great license to ask who in the world
holds in his bosom the sacred secret of the right conception. All the
actor can do is to give us his. We must take that one for granted, we
make him a present of it. He must impose his conception upon us--

Auberon (interrupting). I thought you said we accepted it.

Dorriforth. Impose it upon our _attention_. clever Auberon. It is
because we accept his idea that he must repay us by making it vivid, by
showing us how valuable it is. We give him a watch: he must show us what
time it keeps. He winds it up, that is he executes the conception, and
his execution is what we