ext.

His Duty and Difficulties

The title is the Duty--not the duties--of a dramatic critic--the latter
would be too large a subject. Obviously his duty is to tell the truth.
How easy it sounds! How difficult it is to tell even the relative truth;
the absolute is out of the question. Suppose that the critic has come to
the conclusion that he knows the truth about a play, with what is he to
tell it? With language, of course--an appallingly bad piece of
machinery, which grows worse and worse every day. When a number of
critics have formed the same opinion about a piece, and all wish to say
that it is good--a very bad term to employ--one will call it good,
another very good; a third, exceedingly good; a fourth, great; a fifth,
splendid, a sixth, superb; and so on till some reckless language-monger
uses the state-occasion term--a "work of genius." How is the reader to
guess that they all mean the same thing? Moreover, if they were to use
identical words every reader would put a somewhat different meaning upon
them.

"One of my greatest difficulties," a famous physician once said, "lies
in the fact that to a great extent I have to rely upon a patient's
description of the nature and quantity of pain he or she has suffered
from. One will speak of pain where another employs the word agony; the
third complains of intense torture; a fourth describes it as intolerable
anguish; and a fifth says it hurts a little. Yet they all refer to the
same thing. No wonder we are often at sea."

The difficulty increases. Many new words are coined, but old ones are
rarely demonetised; they remain in circulation, defaced and worn, till
the precise image and superscription are barely recognizable. We
multiply negatives in order to get fine shades. If, then, the critic
knows the truth he is aware that he has no means of conveying it to the
reader. Wherefore some make little effort and indulge merely in fine
writing. Hence, too, some excuse for the common incivility of our
friends when they say to us, "Well, old man, I read your notice on the
----; tell me, is it worth going to see?"

The difficulty of expressing an opinion is hardly less than that of
forming it; assume that the critic possesses all the qualifications, so
far as knowledge and the natural gift for criticising are
concerned--and, alas! knowledge and the gift are very often far
apart--and then think of the obstacles to the proper employment of them.

The play may belong to a