no branch of literary art is worth a word of praise that wantonly
divorces itself from literature. The foolish dramatist who was once
loquacious concerning what he was pleased to call "the literary
drama" condemned his own craft in a single phrase. No doubt,
prosperity being essential, the audience of our theaters must share
the blame with their favorites. Too idle to listen to exquisite
prose or splendid verse, they prefer the quick antics of comedians,
and in their ear, as in Mr. Pinero's, "theatrical," has a far more
splendid sound than "dramatic." To sum the matter up, that poets
have failed upon the stage is no compliment to the professional
playwrights, who believe themselves the vessels of an esoteric
inspiration. It merely means that literature and the drama travel
by different roads, and they will continue to travel by those roads
so long as the actor is master of the dramatist, so

long as the merits of a drama are judged by the standard of
material prosperity. After all, to get your puppets on and off the
stage is not the sole end of drama, and modesty might suggest that
it is better to fail with Tennyson than to succeed with the gifted
author who is at this moment engaged in whitewashing Julia.

Inexpensive in wit as this paragraph is, it serves the purpose of
showing us that there are still those who believe the drama of our own
time to be a thing of naught. Brief as this quotation is, it is long
enough to reveal that the writer of it had the arrogance of ignorance,
and that he was expressing what he conceived to be opinions, without
taking the trouble to learn anything about the history of the theater or
about the principles of the dramatic art.

The full measure of his ignorance it would be a waste of time to point