I confess that I took an objection to that play on the spot. It may be a
good play. I don't know. I never shall know, for I shall never see it. But
why should it be assumed that you and I will run off to the pay box to see
a new play "by a peer"? Suppose the anonymous playwright had been a lawyer,
or a journalist, or a pork-butcher, or a grocer. Would the producer have
thought it helpful to announce a new play by a pork-butcher, or a lawyer,
or a grocer, or a journalist? He certainly would not. He would have left
the play to stand or fall on its merits.

Why, then, does he think that the fact that it is by a peer will bring us
all crowding to his doors? You may, of course, take it as a reflection on
the peerage. You may be supposed to think it such a miraculous thing that a
peer should be able to write a play that you may be expected to go and see
it as you would go to Barnum's to see a two-headed man or a bearded woman?
We may be invited to see it merely as a marvel, much as we used to be
invited to go and see the horse that could count or the monkeys that could
ride bicycles.

If it were so I should feel it was unjust to the peerage which is certainly
not below the average in intellectual capacity. But it is not so. It is
something much more serious than that. It is not intended to be a
reflection on the peerage. It is an unconscious reflection on the British
public. The idea behind the announcement is not that we shall go to see the
play in a spirit of curiosity, as if it had been written by an
ourang-outang, but that we shall go to see it in a spirit of flunkeyism, as
if it had been written by a demi-god. We are conceived sitting in hushed
wonder that a visitor from realms far above our experience should stoop
down to amuse us.