and Co.)




OLIVIA AT THE LYCEUM


(Dramatic Review, May 30, 1885.)

Whether or not it is an advantage for a novel to be produced in a
dramatic form is, I think, open to question. The psychological analysis
of such work as that of Mr. George Meredith, for instance, would probably
lose by being transmuted into the passionate action of the stage, nor
does M. Zola's formule scientifique gain anything at all by theatrical
presentation. With Goldsmith it is somewhat different. In The Vicar of
Wakefield he seeks simply to please his readers, and desires not to prove
a theory; he looks on life rather as a picture to be painted than as a
problem to be solved; his aim is to create men and women more than to
vivisect them; his dialogue is essentially dramatic, and his novel seems
to pass naturally into the dramatic form. And to me there is something
very pleasurable in seeing and studying the same subject under different
conditions of art. For life remains eternally unchanged; it is art
which, by presenting it to us under various forms, enables us to realise
its many-sided mysteries, and to catch the quality of its most
fiery-coloured moments. The originality, I mean, which we ask from the
artist, is originality of treatment, not of subject. It is only the
unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he
makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything.