494 Mr. Eenrij Arthur Jones [March 1-^, 



Clearly the first function of drama is to represent life and cba- 

 racter by means of a story in action ; its second and higher function 

 is to interpret life by the same means. But the first and fundamentiil 

 purpose of the drama is to represent life. 



I think, if you will carefully listen to the remarks and judgments 

 upon plays that come within your earshot during the next iew months, 

 even from cultivated men and women — I think you will come to tlie 

 conclusion that the English playgoing public have for the most part 

 lost all sense that the drama is the art of representing life, and that 

 there is a keen and high pleasure to be got out of it on that level. 



By the representation of life I do not mean that the drama should 

 copy the crude actualities of the street and the home. Yery often the 

 highest truths of life and character cannot be brought into a realistic 

 scheme. The drama must always remain, like sculpture, a highly 

 conventional art ; and its greatest achievements will always be 

 wrought under wide, and large, and astounding conventions. Shake- 

 speare's plays are not untrue to life because they do not perpetually 

 phonograph the actual conversations of actual persons. 



I have not time here to do more than explain in the briefest way 

 that I am not contending for a realistic drama. In the past the 

 greatest examples of drama have been set in frankly poetic, fantastic 

 and unrealistic schemes. But whether a play is poetic, realistic or 

 fantastic, its first purpose should be the representation of life, and 

 the implicit enforcement of the great plain simple truths of life. 

 Eealistically, or poetically, or fantastically, it should show you the 

 lives and characters of men and women ; and it should do this by 

 means of a carefully-chosen, carefully-planned, and always moving 

 story. 



Ten years ago, in the years 1893 and 1894, we seemed to be ad- 

 vancing towards a serious drama of English life ; we began to gather 

 round us a public who came to the theatre prepared to judge a modern 

 play by a higher standard than the number of jokes, tricks, antics and 

 songs it contained. To-day the English dramatist, who pays his 

 countrymen the comj^liment of writing a play in which he attempts 

 to paint their daily life for them in a serious straightforward way, 

 finds that he is not generally judged upon this ground at all ; he is 

 not generally judged and rewarded according to his ability to paint 

 life and character; he is generally judged according to his ability to 

 amuse the audience without troubling them to think. And I believe 

 that this tendency on the j^art of the English playgoers to demand 

 mere tit-bits of amusement, and to reject all study of life and cha- 

 racter in the theatre, I believe these tendencies and tastes have largely 

 increased during the past ten years, and are still increasing. Insomuch 

 we may say that the legitimate purpose of the drama, which is to 

 paint life and character in a story ; and the legitimate 2)leasure to be 

 gained from the drama, that is to say, the keen and intellectual 

 delight in watching a faithful representation of life and chai-acter and 

 passion — this legitimate purpose and this legitimate pleasure of play- 



