There is a new safeguard of the self-respecting dramatist which no amount of improvising for or against will explain away. Plays are now not merely acted, they are published and read, and will be read more and more. This does not mean, as some say, that they are being written for the study--they were never being written more deliberately, more carefully, for the stage. It does mean that they are tending more and more to comply with fidelity to theme, fidelity to self; and therefore are more and more able to bear the scrutiny of cold daylight. And for the first time, perhaps, since the days of Shakespeare there are dramatists in this country, not a few, faithful to themselves. Now, all this is not merely fortuitous. For, however abhorrent such a notion may be to those yet wedded to Victorian ideals, we were, even before the war, undoubtedly passing through great changes in our philosophy of life. Just as a plant keeps on conforming to its environment, so our beliefs and ideals are conforming to our new social conditions and discoveries. There is in the air a revolt against prejudice, and a feeling that things must be re-tested. The spirit which, dwelling in pleasant places, would never re-test anything is now looked on askance. Even on our stage we are not enamoured of it. It is not the artist's business (be he dramatist or other) to preach. Admitted! His business is to portray; but portray truly he cannot if he has any of that glib doctrinaire spirit, devoid of the insight which comes from instinctive sympathy. He must look at _life_, not at a mirage of life compounded of authority, tradition, comfort, habit. The sincere artist, by the very nature of him, is bound to be curious and perceptive, with an instinctive craving to identify himself with the experience of others. This is his value, whether he express it in comedy, epic, satire, or tragedy. Sincerity distrusts tradition, authority, comfort, habit; cannot breathe the air of prejudice, and cannot stand the cruelties which arise from it. So it comes about that the new drama's spirit is essentially, inevitably human and--humane, essentially distasteful to many professing followers of the Great Humanitarian, who, if they were but sincere, would see that they secretly abhor His teachings and in practice continually invert them.