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“Granted,” said the Young Fogey; “but even when they give us Shakespeare, they play the patron, and literary critics argue deferentially with them as to the treatment of the text, and beg them not to put William’s head under the pump. Did you see that monumental headline in the ‘Daily Chronicle,’ the paper that poses as the organ of sweetness and light?–

‘MR. TREE’S NEW PLAY.
‘Henry IV. At The Haymarket.’

“So Mr. Tree ‘created’ Falstaff in more than the conventional sense of that arrogant stage-verb! Act? Anybody can act! We’re all acting, always, in every phase of our social life. Every back drawing-room is a theatre royal. A child can act, and the ‘infant phenomenon’ cannot be distinguished from the leading lady or gentleman except by size. But no child ever wrote a play. Acting is the lowest of the arts. And even if it were the highest, it would be brought low again by its infinite self-repetition. Imagine playing one part for a season, a year, a decade. Actors are not even parrots–they are automatic puppets that move their limbs in fixed fashions, and make squeaking sounds at prescribed moments. There was a French Minister of Education who drew up a most rigid Time-Code, which hung in his bureau; and it was the joy of his life to take out his watch and say ‘Half-past three! Ha! every boy in France is now learning geography’; or, ‘A quarter to twelve! Ha! every French schoolgirl is now writing in a copy-book.’ I have the same sort of feeling about my actor-acquaintances. ‘Half-past nine? Ah! What is Herbert doing? He is taking poison.’ ‘A quarter to eleven! Dear me! Rose is crawling under a table.’

“And these creatures want every privilege, forsooth! Fame, gold, champagne, the best society and the worst. To be of Bohemia and Belgravia, to make the best of both worlds. If things don’t mend, to sit in a stall will soon become an index of imbecility. It will be like being seen at the Academy.

“And, talking of the Academy, did ever any more infantile idea enter the human brain than that a couple of thousand pictures worth seeing can be painted every year? Why, since the beginning of the world there haven’t been two thousand pictures painted worth seeing! Imagine two thousand manuscript novels being scattered around on two thousand desks, a shilling admission! Do we get one good novel a year? Scarcely. One good symphony or opera? Of course not. Then why expect to get a picture worth hanging? And every picture should hang by itself–it’s an artistic entity, self-complete. To crowd it among a lot of others is like conducting an orchestra every instrument of which is playing a different tune. ‘T isn’t even as if the poor painters got anything out of the show. People won’t buy pictures–prices are monstrously inflated to an artificial point: the artists would take less, only they don’t like to come down from their pedestal, and so they starve up there in dignity. Artists have played a foolish game. They have gone nap on gentility and high prices, and gentility has failed them.

“When great prices are given for pictures, it is generally with a view to selling them again: a dubious compliment to the artist. No man gets a thousand pounds’ worth of pure art joy out of any picture. He can spend his thousand pounds to much more of aesthetic advantage. But there is no inherent sacredness in prices. A picture is worth only what it will fetch. Let our artists be satisfied with a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, like any other species of craftsman. After all, they were all craftsmen–Michael Angelo, Titian, Donatello, Canova–wall-decorators, door-painters, ceiling-colourers, tomb-builders, stone-masons, working to contract and to measure. When our artists are content with the pay of manual labourers and the joy of art, taste may be stimulated in the masses, and original work be going at the price of lithographs. Why shouldn’t artists even paint public-house signs? Beer being the national religion, why shouldn’t it find adequate expression in Art?