aims, and interests, men and women of all classes of society--surely the
writing of that drama, the weaving of that complex fabric, is one of the
most arduous of the tasks which art has set us; surely its successful
accomplishment is one of the highest achievements of which an artist is
capable.

I cannot claim--it would be immodest to make such a claim in speaking
even of my brother dramatists--I cannot claim that the thorough
achievement of such a task is a common one in this country. It is indeed
a rare one in any country. But I can claim--I do claim for my
fellow-workers that they are not utterly unequal to the demands made
upon them, and that of late there have been signs of the growth of a
thoughtful, serious drama in England. ["Hear! Hear!"] I venture to
think, too, that these signs are not in any sense exotics; I make bold
to say that they do not consist of mere imitations of certain models; I
submit that they are not as a few critics of limited outlook and
exclusive enthusiasm would have us believe--I submit that they are not
mere echoes of foreign voices. I submit that the drama of the present
day is the natural outcome of our own immediate environment, of the life
that closely surrounds us. And, perhaps, it would be only fair to allow
that the reproaches which have been levelled for so long a period at the
British theatre--the most important of these reproaches being that it
possessed no drama at all--perhaps I say we may grant in a spirit of
charity that these reproaches ought not to be wholly laid at the door of
the native playwright. If it be true that he has been in the habit of
producing plays invariably conventional in sentiment, trite in comedy,
wrought on traditional lines, inculcating no philosophy, making no
intellectual appeal whatever, may it not be that the attitude of the
frequenters of the theatre has made it hard for him to do anything else?
If he has until lately evaded in his theatrical work any attempt at a