Our Stage and Its Critics | Page 6

public "functions," or the large entertainments of a semi-private character which it is easy to penetrate, gives poor opportunity for close scrutiny. Is there amongst the dramatists--and novelists too--something akin to the system of the islanders who earned a living by taking in one another's washing? Is there a vicious circle, in which each and all accept as true what others have written? Do they merely help themselves out of the common fund of ignorance?
Possibly this is based upon a delusion. The whole aristocracy may have become so democratic that it is quite easy to study the most exclusive at first hand, if you happen to be a successful dramatist, but very few of the dramatic critics are successful dramatists.
The opportunities for the critic are limited except when a peeress happens to have written a play, and even then a candid critic does not get very far. Perhaps, too, if some inner circle exists there is no need to study it; for a knowledge of the titled folk floating in the great three-quarter world that is taking the place of Society may suffice, and to have met a countess at a musical reception, of five hundred or so, given by some millionaire amateur, or to have been on the board of a catchpenny company with a baron, or to have suffered long at a charity ball and obtained introductions from a ducal steward, or to have bought a cup of bad tea at an Albert Hall bazaar from a marchioness whose manners would shock a cook, is a sufficient acquaintance with the customs, thoughts and ideals of all the inhabitants of Debrett, and entitles one to present or to criticize the shyest member of the august House that is now beginning to wonder what is going to happen next.
His Duty and Difficulties
The title is the Duty--not the duties--of a dramatic critic--the latter would be too large a subject. Obviously his duty is to tell the truth. How easy it sounds! How difficult it is to tell even the relative truth; the absolute is out of the question. Suppose that the critic has come to the conclusion that he knows the truth about a play, with what is he to tell it? With language, of course--an appallingly bad piece of machinery, which grows worse and worse every day. When a number of critics have formed the same opinion about a piece, and all wish to say that it is good--a very bad term to employ--one will call it good, another very good; a third, exceedingly good; a fourth, great; a fifth, splendid, a sixth, superb; and so on till some reckless language-monger uses the state-occasion term--a "work of genius." How is the reader to guess that they all mean the same thing? Moreover, if they were to use identical words every reader would put a somewhat different meaning upon them.
"One of my greatest difficulties," a famous physician once said, "lies in the fact that to a great extent I have to rely upon a patient's description of the nature and quantity of pain he or she has suffered from. One will speak of pain where another employs the word agony; the third complains of intense torture; a fourth describes it as intolerable anguish; and a fifth says it hurts a little. Yet they all refer to the same thing. No wonder we are often at sea."
The difficulty increases. Many new words are coined, but old ones are rarely demonetised; they remain in circulation, defaced and worn, till the precise image and superscription are barely recognizable. We multiply negatives in order to get fine shades. If, then, the critic knows the truth he is aware that he has no means of conveying it to the reader. Wherefore some make little effort and indulge merely in fine writing. Hence, too, some excuse for the common incivility of our friends when they say to us, "Well, old man, I read your notice on the ----; tell me, is it worth going to see?"
The difficulty of expressing an opinion is hardly less than that of forming it; assume that the critic possesses all the qualifications, so far as knowledge and the natural gift for criticising are concerned--and, alas! knowledge and the gift are very often far apart--and then think of the obstacles to the proper employment of them.
The play may belong to a class which the critic does not like, although it is legitimate; he may not flout it on that account. You should not blame a bream because it is not a barbel, or a chub for not being a trout, yet the angler grumbles if he catches the humbler fish when aiming at the noble; we are all agreed that the gardener was not justified in "larning" with a spade the squalid batrachians