I

ARTHUR BINGHAM WALKLEY begins one of the best books ever written on the subject thus: “It is not to be gainsaid that the word criticism has gradually acquired a certain connotation of contempt.... Every one who expresses opinions, however imbecile, in print calls himself a ‘critic.’ The greater the ignoramus, the greater the likelihood of his posing as a ‘critic.’” An excellent book, as I have said, with a wealth of sharp talk in it, but Mr. Walkley seems to me to err somewhat in his preliminary assumption. Criticism has acquired a connotation of contempt less because it is practised by a majority of ignoramuses than because it is accepted at full face value by an infinitely greater majority of ignoramuses. It is not the mob that curls a lip—the mob accepts the lesser ignoramus at his own estimate of himself; it is the lonely and negligible minority man who, pausing musefully in the field that is the world, contemplates the jackasses eating the daisies.

No man is so contemptuous of criticism as the well-stocked critic, just as there is no man so contemptuous of clothes as the man with the well-stocked wardrobe. It is as impossible to imagine a critic like Shaw not chuckling derisively at criticism as it is to imagine a regular subscriber to the Weekly Review not swallowing it whole. The experienced critic, being on the inside, is in a position to look into the heads of the less experienced, and to see the wheels go round. He is privy to all their monkeyshines, since he is privy to his own. Having graduated from quackery, he now smilingly regards others still at the trade of seriously advancing sure cures for Æsthetic baldness, cancer, acne and trifacial neuralgia. And while the yokels rub in the lotions and swallow the pills, he permits himself a small, but eminently sardonic, hiccup.

It is commonly believed that the first virtue of a critic is honesty. As a matter of fact, in four cases out of five, honesty is the last virtue of a critic. As criticism is practised in America, honesty presents itself as the leading fault. There is altogether too much honesty. The greater the blockhead, the more honest he is. And as a consequence the criticism of these blockheads, founded upon their honest convictions, is worthless. There is some hope for an imbecile if he is dishonest, but none if he is resolute in sticking to his idiocies. If the average American critic were to cease writing what he honestly believes and dishonestly set down what he doesn’t believe, the bulk of the native criticism would gain some common sense and take on much of the sound value that it presently lacks. Honesty is a toy for first-rate men; when lesser men seek to play with it and lick off the paint, they come down with colic.

It is further maintained that enthusiasm is a supplementary desideratum in a critic, that unless he is possessed of enthusiasm he cannot impart a warm love for fine things to his reader. Surely this, too, is nonsense. Enthusiasm is a virtue not in the critic, but in the critic’s reader. And such desired enthusiasm can be directly generated by enthusiasm no more than a glyceryl nitrate explosion can be generated by sulfuric acid. Enthusiasm may be made so contagious as to elect a man president of the United States or to raise an army large enough to win a world war, but it has never yet been made sufficiently contagious to persuade one American out of a hundred thousand that Michelangelo’s David of the Signoria is a better piece of work than the Barnard statue of Lincoln. Enthusiasm is an attribute of the uncritical, the defectively educated: stump speakers, clergymen, young girls, opera-goers, Socialists, Italians, such like. And not only an attribute, but a weapon. But the cultivated and experienced man has as little use for enthusiasm as for indignation. He appreciates that while it may convert a pack of ignoble doodles, it can’t convert any one worth converting. The latter must be persuaded, not inflamed. He realizes that where a double brass band playing “Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean” may leave a civilized Englishman cold to the virtues of the United States, proof that the United States has the best bathroom plumbing in the world may warm him up a bit. The sound critic is not a cheer leader, but a referee. Art is hot, criticism cold. Aristotle’s criticism of Euripides is as placid and reserved as Mr. William Archer’s criticism of the latest drama at the St. James’s Theatre; BrunetiÈre is as calm over his likes as Mr. H. T. Parker of the Boston Transcript. There is no more enthusiasm in Lessing than there is indignation in Walkley. Hazlitt, at a hundred degrees emotional Fahrenheit, remains critically cool as a cucumber. To find enthusiasm, you will have to read the New York Times.

Enthusiasm, in short, is the endowment of immaturity. The greater the critic, the greater his disinclination to communicate Æsthetic heat. Such communication savours of propaganda and, however worthy that propaganda, he will have naught to do with its trafficking. If the ability to possess and communicate enthusiasm is the mark of the true critic, then the theatrical page of the New York Journal is the greatest critical literature in America.

A third contention has it that aloofness and detachment are no less valuable to the dramatic critic than honesty and enthusiasm. Unless I am seriously mistaken, also bosh. Dramatic criticism is fundamentally the critic’s art of appraising himself in terms of various forms of drama. Or, as I some time ago put it, the only sound dramatic critic is the one who reports less the impression that this or that play makes upon him than the impression he makes upon this or that play. Of all the forms of criticism, dramatic criticism is essentially, and perhaps correctly, the most personal. Tell me what a dramatic critic eats and drinks, how far north of Ninetieth Street he lives, what he considers a pleasant evening when he is not in the theatre, and what kind of lingerie his wife wears, and I’ll tell you with very few misses what kind of critic he is. I’ll tell you whether he is fit to appreciate Schnitzler, or whether he is fit only for Augustus Thomas. I’ll tell you in advance what he will think about, and how he will react to, Hauptmann, Sacha Guitry or George V. Hobart. I’ll tell you whether he is the sort that makes a great to-do when his eagle eye spots Sir Nigel Waterhouse, M.P., in Act II fingering a copy of the Philadelphia Public Ledger instead of the London Times, and whether he is the sort that writes “Mr. John Cort has staged the play in his customary lavish manner” when the rise of the curtain discloses to him a room elaborately decorated in the latest Macy mode. To talk about the value of detachment in a dramatic critic is to talk about the value of detachment in a Swiss mountain guide. The criticism is the man; the man the criticism.

Of all forms of criticism, dramatic criticism is the most purely biological. Were the genii to put the mind of Max Beerbohm into the head of Mr. J. Ranken Towse, and vice versa, their criticisms would still remain exactly as they are. But, on the contrary, were the head of Mr. J. Ranken Towse to be placed on the body of Max Beerbohm, and vice versa, their criticisms would take on points of view diametrically opposed to their present. Max would begin admiring the Rev. Dr. Charles Rann Kennedy and Towse would promptly proceed to put on his glasses to get a better view of the girl on the end. Every book of dramatic criticism—every single piece of dramatic criticism—is a searching, illuminating autobiography. The dramatic critic performs a clinic upon himself every time he takes his pen in his hand. He may try, as Walkley puts it, to substitute for the capital I’s “nouns of multitude signifying many,” or some of those well-worn stereotypes—“It is thought,” “one may be pardoned for hinting,” “will any one deny?” etc., etc.—by which criticism keeps up the pretence that it is not a man but a corporation, but he fools no one.

To ask the dramatic critic to keep himself out of his criticism, to detach himself, is thus a trifle like asking an actor to keep himself out of his rÔle. Dramatic critics and actors are much alike. The only essential difference is that the actor does his acting on a platform. But, platform or no platform, the actor and the dramatic critic best serve their rÔles when they filter them through their own personalities. A dramatic critic who is told to keep his personality out of his criticism is in the position of an actor who, being physically and temperamentally like Mr. John Barrymore, is peremptorily directed by a producer to stick a sofa pillow under his belt, put on six extra heel-lifts, acquire a whiskey voice and play Falstaff like the late Sir Herbert Tree. The best dramatic critics from the time of Quintus Horatius Flaccus (vide the “Epistola”) have sunk their vivid personalities into their work right up to the knees. Not only have they described the adventures of their souls among masterpieces, but the adventures of their kidneys, spleens and cÆca as well. Each has held the mirror of drama up to his own nature, with all its idiosyncrasies. And in it have been sharply reflected not the cut and dried features of the professor, but the vital features of a red-alive man. The other critics have merely held up the mirror to these red-alive men, and have reflected not themselves but the latter. Then, in their vainglory, they have looked again into the hand-glass and have mistaken the reflection of the parrot for an eagle.

A third rubber-stamp: the critic must have sympathy. As properly contend that a surgeon must have sympathy. The word is misused. What the critic must have is not sympathy, which in its common usage bespeaks a measure of sentimental concern, but interest. If a dramatic critic, for example, has sympathy for an actress he can no more criticize her with poise than a surgeon can operate on his own wife. The critic may on occasion have sympathy as the judge in a court of law may on occasion have it, but if he is a fair critic, or a fair judge, he can’t do anything about it, however much he would like to. Between the fair defendant in the lace baby collar and a soft heart, Article X, Section 123, Page 416, absurdly interposes itself. (In example, being a human being with a human being’s weaknesses before a critic, I would often rather praise a lovely one when she is bad than an unlovely one when she is good—and, alas, I fear that I sometimes do—but in the general run I try to remember my business and behave myself. It isn’t always easy. But I do my best, and angels and Lewes could do no more.) The word sympathy is further mishandled, as in the similar case of the word enthusiasm. What a critic should have is not, as is common, sympathy and enthusiasm before the fact, but after it. The critic who enters a theatre bubblingly certain that he is going to have a good time is no critic. The critic is he who leaves a theatre cheerfully certain that he has had a good time. Sympathy and enthusiasm, unless they are ex post facto, are precisely like prevenient prejudice and hostility. Sympathy has no more preliminary place in the equipment of a critic than in the equipment of an ambulance driver or a manufacturer of bird cages. It is the caboose of criticism, not the engine.

The trouble with dramatic criticism in America, speaking generally, is that where it is not frankly reportorial it too often seeks to exhibit a personality when there exists no personality to exhibit. Himself perhaps conscious of this lack, the critic indulges in heroic makeshifts to inject into his writings a note of individuality, and the only individuality that comes out of his perspirations is of a piece with that of the bearded lady or the dog-faced boy. Individuality of this freak species is the bane of the native criticism. The college professor who, having nothing to say, tries to give his criticism an august air by figuratively attaching to it a pair of whiskers and horn glasses, the suburban college professor who sedulously practises an aloofness from the madding crowd that his soul longs to be part of, the college professor who postures as a man of the world, the newspaper reporter who postures as a college professor, the journalist who performs in terms of Art between the Saks and Gimbel advertisements—these and others like them are the sad comedians in the tragical crew. In their heavy attempts to live up to their fancy dress costumes, in their laborious efforts to conceal their humdrum personalities in the uncomfortable gauds of Petruchio and Gobbo, they betray themselves even to the bus boys. The same performer cannot occupy the rÔles of Polonius and Hamlet, even in a tank town troupe.

No less damaging to American dramatic criticism is the dominant notion that criticism, to be valuable, must be constructive. That is, that it must, as the phrase has it, “build up” rather than “tear down.” As a result of this conviction we have an endless repertoire of architectonic advice from critics wholly without the structural faculty, advice which, were it followed, would produce a drama twice as poor as that which they criticize. Obsessed with the idea that they must be constructive, the critics know no lengths to which they will not go in their sweat to dredge up cures of one sort or another. They constructively point out that Shaw’s plays would be better plays if Shaw understood the punctual technique of Pinero, thus destroying a “CÆsar and Cleopatra” to construct a “Second Mrs. Tanqueray.” They constructively point out the trashy aspect of some Samuel Shipman’s “Friendly Enemies,” suggest more serious enterprises to him, and get the poor soul to write a “The Unwritten Chapter” which is ten times as bad. They are not content to be critics; they must also be playwrights. They stand in mortal fear of the old recrimination, “He who can, does; he who can’t, criticizes,” not pausing to realize that the names of Mr. Octavus Roy Cohen and Matthew Arnold may be taken as somewhat confounding respective examples. They note with some irritation that the critic for the Wentzville, Mo., Beacon is a destructive critic, but are conveniently ignorant of the fact—which may conceivably prove something more—that so was George Farquhar. If destructive criticism, in their meaning, is criticism which pulls down without building up in return, three-fourths of the best dramatic criticism written since the time of Boileau, fully filling the definition, is worthless. One can’t cure a yellow fever patient by pointing out to him that he should have caught the measles. One can’t improve the sanitary condition of a neighbourhood merely by giving the outhouse a different coat of paint. The foe of destructive criticism is the pro-German of American art.

Our native criticism suffers further from the commercial Puritanism of its mediums. What is often mistaken for the Puritanism of the critic is actually the commercial Puritanism forced upon him by the owner and publisher of the journal in which his writings appear, and upon which he has to depend for a livelihood. Although this owner and publisher is often not personally the Puritan, he is yet shrewdly aware that the readers of his journal are, and out of this awareness he becomes what may be termed a circulation blue-nose. Since circulation and advertising revenue are twins, he must see to it that the sensibilities of the former are not offended. And his circumspection, conveyed to the critic by the copy reader or perhaps only sensed, brings about the Puritan play-acting by the critic. This accounts to no little degree for the hostile and uncritical reviews of even the most finished risquÉ farces, and of the best efforts of American and European playwrights to depict truthfully and fairly the more unpleasant phases of sex. “I agree with you that this last naughty farce of Avery Hopwood’s is awfully funny stuff,” a New York newspaper reviewer once said to me; “I laughed at it until my ribs ached; but I don’t dare write as much. One can’t praise such things in a paper with the kind of circulation that ours has.” It is criticism bred from this commercial Puritanism that has held back farce writing in America, and I venture to say much serious dramatic writing as well. The best farce of a Guitry or a DieudonnÉ, produced in America today without childish excisions, would receive unfavourable notices from nine newspapers out of ten. The best sex drama of a Porto-Riche or a Wedekind would suffer—indeed, already has suffered—a similar fate. I predicted to Eugene O’Neill, the moment I laid down the manuscript of his pathological play “Diff’rent,” the exact manner in which, two months later, the axes fell upon him.

For one critic like Mr. J. Ranken Towse who is a Puritan by tradition and training, there are a dozen who are Puritans by proxy. One can no more imagine a dramatic critic on a newspaper owned by Mr. Cyrus H. K. Curtis praising Schnitzler’s “Reigen” or Rip’s and Gignoux’s “Scandale de Deauville” than one can imagine the same critic denouncing “Ben Hur.” What thus holds true in journalistic criticism holds true in precisely the same way in the criticism written by the majority of college professors. I doubt that there is a college professor in America today who, however much he admired a gay, reprobate farce like “Le Rubicon” or “L’Illusioniste,” would dare state his admiration in print. Puritan or no Puritan, it is professionally necessary for him to comport himself as one. His university demands it, silently, sternly, idiotically. He is the helpless victim of its Æsthetic Ku Klux. Behind any drama dealing unconventionally with sex, there hovers a spectre that vaguely resembles Professor Scott Nearing. He sees it ... he reflects ... he works up a safe indignation.

Dramatic criticism travels, in America, carefully laid tracks. Signal lights, semaphores and one-legged old men with red flags are stationed along the way to protect it at the crossings, to make it safe, and to guard it from danger. It elaborately steams, pulls, puffs, chugs, toots, whistles, grinds and rumbles for three hundred miles—and brings up at something like Hinkletown, Pa. It is eager, but futile. It is honest, but so is Dr. Frank Crane. It is fearless, but so is the actor who plays the hero strapped to the papier-mÂchÉ buzz-saw. It is constructive, but so is an embalmer. It is detached, but so is a man in the Fiji Islands. It is sympathetic, but so is a quack prostatitician.

VI. DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN AMERICA