still alight. Go, fetch me another one, and let him carry it!"
1909.




SOME PLATITUDES CONCERNING DRAMA

A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning. Every grouping
of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the
dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to
the light of day. Such is the moral that exhales from plays like 'Lear',
'Hamlet', and 'Macbeth'. But such is not the moral to be found in the
great bulk of contemporary Drama. The moral of the average play is now,
and probably has always been, the triumph at all costs of a supposed
immediate ethical good over a supposed immediate ethical evil.

The vice of drawing these distorted morals has permeated the Drama to its
spine; discoloured its art, humanity, and significance; infected its
creators, actors, audience, critics; too often turned it from a picture
into a caricature. A Drama which lives under the shadow of the distorted
moral forgets how to be free, fair, and fine--forgets so completely that
it often prides itself on having forgotten.

Now, in writing plays, there are, in this matter of the moral, three
courses open to the serious dramatist. The first is: To definitely set
before the public that which it wishes to have set before it, the views
and codes of life by which the public lives and in which it believes.
This way is the most common, successful, and popular. It makes the
dramatist's position sure, and not too obviously authoritative.