So when the promising young dramatist has his play refused by the Managers--after what weeks, months, years of hope and fear, uncertainty and bitter disappointment--he has this great consolation: "Anyway, I can always publish it." Perhaps, after a dozen refusals, a Manager offers to put on his play, on condition that he alters the obviously right (and unhappy) ending into the obviously foolish, but happy, ending which will charm the public. Does he, the artist, succumb? How easy to tell himself that he must get his play before the public somehow, and that, even if it is not _his_ play now, yet the first two acts are as he wrote them, and that, if only to feel the thrill of the audience at that great scene between the Burglar and the Bishop (his creations!) he must deaden his conscience to the absurdity of a happy ending. But does he succumb? No. Heroically he tells himself: "Anyway, I can publish it; and I'm certain that the critics will agree with me that----" But the critics are too busy to bother about him. They are busy informing the world that the British Drama is going to the dogs, and that no promising young dramatist ever gets a fair chance. Let me say here that I am airing no personal grievance. I doubt if any dramatist has less right to feel aggrieved against the critics, the managers, the public, the world, than I; and whatever right I have I renounce, in return for the good things which I have received from them. But I do not renounce the grievance of our craft. I say that, in the case of all dramatists, it is the business of the dramatic critics to review their unacted plays when published. Some of them do; most of them do not. It is ridiculous for those who do not to pretend that they take any real interest in the British Drama. But I say "review," not "praise." Let them damn, by all means, if the plays are unworthy; and, by damning, do so much of justice to the Managers who refused them. We can now pass on safely to the plays in this volume.