ould not, in the sense in
which the word "good" was then meant, be said of most modern dramatists.
In truth, the good that Shakespeare did to humanity was of a remote, and,
shall we say, eternal nature; something of the good that men get from
having the sky and the sea to look at. And this partly because he was,
in his greater plays at all events, free from the habit of drawing a
distorted moral. Now, the playwright who supplies to the public the
facts of life distorted by the moral which it expects, does so that he
may do the public what he considers an immediate good, by fortifying its
prejudices; and the dramatist who supplies to the public facts distorted
by his own advanced morality, does so because he considers that he will
at once benefit the public by substituting for its worn-out ethics, his
own. In both cases the advantage the dramatist hopes to confer on the
public is immediate and practical.

But matters change, and morals change; men remain--and to set men, and
the facts about them, down faithfully, so that they draw for us the moral
of their natural actions, may also possibly be of benefit to the
community. It is, at all events, harder than to set men and facts down,
as they ought, or ought not to be. This, however, is not to say that a
dramatist should, or indeed can, keep himself and his temperamental
philosophy out of his work. As a man lives and thinks, so will he write.
But it is certain, that to the making of good drama, as to the practice
of every other art, there must be brought an almost passionate love of
discipline, a white-heat of self-respect, a desire to make the truest,
fairest, best thing in one's power; and that to these must be added an
eye that does not flinch. Such qualities alone will bring to a drama the
selfless character which soaks it with inevitability.

The word "pessimist" is frequently applied to the few dramatists who have
been content to work in this way. It has been applied, among others, to
Euripides, to Shakespeare, to Ibsen; it will be applied to many in the
future. Nothing, however, is more dubious than the way in which these
two words "pessimist" and "optimist" are used; for the optimist appears
to be he who cannot bear the world as it is, and is forced by his nature
to picture it as it ought to be, and the pessimist one who cannot only
bear the world as it is, but loves it well enough to draw it faithfully.
The true lover of the human race is surely he who can