"You appear to imagine that the business of the theatre is to make the audience think; perhaps that would be all right if it appealed merely to idle people, but ninety-nine folk out of a hundred who go to a theatre in the evening have already done a day's work; even those who don't earn their living are pretty tired after dinner. So it is clear that there are not people enough to support a drama which it is difficult to understand. Moreover, you forget that when we have to read, as sometimes happens, the high-class books, we can skip the dull parts; indeed, I get to know all that I need about the important books by reading the reviews that tear the guts out of them and merely leave the padding behind; but, unfortunately, you cannot skip the dull parts of a play unless it is a very well-known work, like _Hamlet_ or _Macbeth_, when, if a man has a good seat, he can escape quite a lot of the philosophising passages. "The solid truth is that we English, like the Americans, have too much good sense to worry about drama. There are a certain number of cranks and faddists who get an unholy delight out of eccentric plays, but they are few in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where good sense reigns. We only take fairy tales seriously when we are children; we never get intoxicated by ideas; this is where we differ from the Continentals. Art is all very well in its way and in its proper place. I like a good picture, or a good song, or a rattling story as well as anybody; but art ought not to be shoved down our throats. You will observe that the Americans, really a great people, are like us in this respect, and none of their plays--at least those that come over here--belong to the intellectual drama about which you rave. When they want to be intellectual they play Shakespeare, not giving us more of the Bard than is absolutely necessary, but letting us have full measure of pretty music, scenery and dresses. Augustin Daly used to do it perfectly. "By all means have a little theatre of your own and enjoy dull plays in it, but don't denounce our cakes and ale, or think yourself any better than people with healthy tastes who can enjoy such works as _Mrs Dot_, or _The Explorer_, or _The Duke's Motto_. And what does it matter where the plays come from any more than where the nuts come from? Anyone would think you were a rabid Protectionist who reads your howls about imported plays. Art is universal, not local--I read that in some real high-toned book--and if a play is good, don't worry whether its author is French or German or American. You don't grumble if he is Norwegian. Why not? Do be consistent even if you cannot be broad-minded. And, lastly, let the Censor alone; you have flung enough mud at him; I am tired of reading energetic attacks which you know quite well are mere beating of the wind. Your unfortunate reader, "A MIDDLE-AGED PLEASURE-SEEKER"