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name is chosen, the baby isn't even
begotten: nay, the would-be parents aren't married, nor yet courting.
A People's Theatre. Note the indefinite article. It isn't The People's
Theatre, but A People's Theatre. Not the theatre of Plebs, the proletariat,
but the theatre of A People. What people? Quel peuple donc?--A
People's Theatre. Translate it into French for yourself.
A People's Theatre. Since we can't produce it, let us deduce it. Major
premise: the seats are cheap. Minor premiss: the plays are good.
Conclusion: A People's Theatre. How much will you give me for my
syllogism? Not a slap in the eye, I hope.
We stick to our guns. The seats are cheap. That has a nasty proletarian
look about it. But appearances are deceptive. The proletariat isn't poor.
Everybody is poor except Capital and Labour. Between these upper and
nether millstones great numbers of decent people are squeezed.
The seats are cheap: in decency's name. Nobody wants to swank, to sit
in the front of a box like a geranium on a window-sill--"the cynosure of
many eyes." Nobody wants to profiteer. We all feel that it is as
humiliating to pay high prices as to charge them. No man consents in
his heart to pay high prices unless he feels that what he pays with his

right hand he will get back with his left, either out of the pocket of a
man who isn't looking, or out of the envy of the poor neighbour who IS
looking, but can't afford the figure. The seats are cheap. Why should A
People, fabulous and lofty giraffe, want to charge or pay high prices? If
it were THE PEOPLE now.--But it isn't. It isn't Plebs, the proletariat.
The seats are cheap.
The plays are good. Pah!--this has a canting smell. Any play is good to
the man who likes to look at it. And at that rate Chu Chin Chow is
extra-super-good. What about your GOOD plays? Whose good? PFUI
to your goodness!
That minor premiss is a bad egg: it will hatch no bird. Good plays? You
might as well say mimsy bomtittle plays, you'd be saying as much. The
plays are--don't say good or you'll be beaten. The plays--the plays of A
People's Theatre are--oh heaven, what are they?--not popular nor
populous nor plebian nor proletarian nor folk nor parish plays. None of
that adjectival spawn.
The only clue-word is People's for all that. A People's---Chaste word, it
will bring forth no adjective. The plays of A People's Theatre are
People's plays. The plays of A People's Theatre are plays about people.
It doesn't look much, at first sight. After all--people! Yes, People! Not
THE PEOPLE, i.e. Plebs, nor yet the Upper Ten. People. Neither
Piccoli nor Grandi in our republic. People.
People, ah God! Not mannequins. Not lords nor proletariats nor bishops
nor husbands nor co-respondents nor virgins nor adultresses nor uncles
nor noses. Not even white rabbits nor presidents. People.
Men who are somebody, not men who are something. Men who
HAPPEN to be bishops or co-respondents, women who happen to be
chaste, just as they happen to freckle, because it's one of their
innumerable odd qualities. Even men who happen, by the way, to have
long noses. But not noses on two legs, not burly pairs of gaiters, stuffed
and voluble, not white meringues of chastity, not incarnations of co-
respondence. Not proletariats, petitioners, president's, noses, bits of

fluff. Heavens, what an assortment of bits! And aren't we sick of them!
People, I say. And after all, it's saying something. It's harder to be a
human being than to be a president or a bit of fluff. You can be a
president, or a bit of fluff, or even a nose, by clockwork. Given a role, a
PART, you can play it by clockwork. But you can't have a clockwork
human being.
We're dead sick of parts. It's no use your protesting that there is a man
behind the nose. We can't see him, and he can't see himself. Nothing
but nose. Neither can you make us believe there is a man inside the
gaiters. He's never showed his head yet.
It may be, in real life, the gaiters wear the man, as the nose wears
Cyrano. It may be Sir Auckland Geddes and Mr. J. H. Thomas are only
clippings from the illustrated press. It may be that a miner is a
complicated machine for cutting coal and voting on a ballot-paper. It
may be that coal-owners are like the petit bleu arrangement, a system of
vacuum tubes for whooshing Bradburys about from one to the other.
It may be that everybody delights in bits, in parts, that the public insists
on noses, gaiters, white rabbits, bits of fluff, automata and gewgaws. If
they do, then let