_A Comedy of Sighs_,
with its somewhat "impressionist" sketches of character, and
aberrations from the ordinary type of a "well-made play," proved to
be "too lightly tempered for so loud a wind" as blows upon British
bugbears--"Modern Women," and the like.
And now may I say a few words with regard to some misconceptions on
the part of the critics as to my aim in writing these two plays?
One of them, an enthusiast himself, did me the honour to hail me
as a brother enthusiast, albeit an erring one. Possibly I am. But
I have not been trying to educate the public, which is being educated
past its old standards day by day, without such philanthropic effort
on my part. I have not been trying to write "literary" plays. I
quite agree with those who think that a play must be a play first.
If it be "literature" afterwards, that is an added grace which
gives it a permanent value. If it be not, still it may be a good
play in its day and generation. I have not, for the sake of being
unconventional, deliberately set myself to violate all the received
canons of dramatic art, as practised by the "practical dramatist,"
thus making a convention of unconventionality.
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