And that is all one means by--all one asks of--sincerity. Then why make such a fuss about it? Because it is rare, and an implicit quality of any true work of art, realistic or romantic. Art is not art unless it is made out of an artist's genuine feeling and vision, not out of what he has been told he ought to feel and see. For art exists not to confirm people in their tastes and prejudices, not to show them what they have seen before, but to present them with a new vision of life. And if drama be an art (which the great public denies daily, but a few of us still believe), it must reasonably be expected to present life as each dramatist sees it, and not to express things because they pander to popular prejudice, or are sensational, or because they pay. If you want further evidence that the new dramatic movement is marked out by its struggle for sincerity, and by that alone, examine a little the various half-overt oppositions with which it meets. Why is the commercial manager against it? Because it is quite naturally his business to cater for the great public; and, as before said, the majority of the public does not, never will, want sincerity; it is too disturbing. The commercial manager will answer: "The great public does not dislike sincerity, it only dislikes dullness." Well! Dullness is not an absolute, but a very relative term--a term likely to have a different meaning for a man who knows something about life and art from that which it has for a man who knows less. And one may remark that if the great public's standard of what is really "amusing" is the true one, it is queer that the plays which tickle the great public hardly ever last a decade, while the plays which do not tickle them occasionally last for centuries. The "dullest" plays, one might say roughly, are those which last the longest. Witness Euripides! Why are so many actor-managers against the new drama? Because their hearts are quite naturally set on such insincere distortions of values as are necessary to a constant succession of "big parts" for themselves. Sincerity does not necessarily exclude heroic characters, but it does exclude those mock heroics which actor-managers have been known to prefer--not to real heroics, perhaps, but to simple and sound studies of character. Why is the Censorship against it? Because censorship is quite naturally the guardian of the ordinary prejudices of sentiment and taste, and quaintly innocent of knowledge that in any art fidelity of treatment is essential to a theme. Indeed, I am sure that this peculiar office would regard it as fantastic for a poor devil of an artist to want to be faithful or sincere. The demand would appear pedantic and extravagant.