Some say that the critics are against the new drama. That is not in the main true. The inclination of most critics is to welcome anything with a flavour of its own; it would be odd indeed if it were not so--they get so much of the other food! They are, in general, friends to sincerity. But the trouble with the critic is rather the fixed idea. He has to print his opinion of an author's work, while other men have only to think it; and when it comes to receiving a fresh impression of the same author, his already recorded words are liable to act on him rather as the eyes of a snake act on a rabbit. Indeed, it must be very awkward, when you have definitely labelled an author this, or that, to find from his next piece of work that he is the other as well! The critic who can make blank his soul of all that he has said before may indeed exist--in Paradise! Why is the greater public against the new drama? By the greater public I in no sense mean the public who don't keep motor cars--the greater public comes from the West-end as much as ever it comes from the East-end. Its opposition to the "new drama" is neither covert, doubtful, nor conscious of itself. The greater public is like an aged friend of mine, who, if you put into his hands anything but Sherlock Holmes, or The Waverley Novels, says: "Oh! that dreadful book!" His taste is excellent, only he does feel that an operation should be performed on all dramatists and novelists by which they should be rendered incapable of producing anything but what my aged friend is used to. The greater public, in fact, is either a too well-dined organism which wishes to digest its dinner, or a too hard-worked organism longing for a pleasant dream. I sympathise with the greater public!... A friend once said to me: "Champagne has killed the drama." It was half a truth. Champagne is an excellent thing, and must not be disturbed. Plays should not have anything in them which can excite the mind. They should be of a quality to just remove the fumes by eleven o'clock and make ready the organism for those suppers which were eaten before the war. Another friend once said to me: "It is the rush and hurry and strenuousness of modern life which is scotching the drama." Again, it was half a truth. Why should not the hard-worked man have his pleasant dream, his detective story, his good laugh? The pity is that sincere drama would often provide as agreeable dreams for the hard-worked man as some of those reveries in which he now indulges, if only he would try it once or twice. That is the trouble--to get him to give it a chance.