not so, dramatists and all other artists would be
mere panders of intellectual debauchery, to be locked up as the Puritans
locked up the stage players. No one can understand Bernard Shaw who does
not give full value to this early revolt of his on behalf of ethics
against the ruling school of _l'art pour l'art_. It is interesting
because it is connected with other ambitions in the man, especially
with that which has made him somewhat vainer of being a Parish
Councillor than of being one of the most popular dramatists in Europe.
But its chief interest is again to be referred to our stratification of
the psychology; it is the lover of true things rebelling for once
against merely new things; it is the Puritan suddenly refusing to be the
mere Progressive.

But this attitude obviously laid on the ethical lover of Ibsen a not
inconsiderable obligation. If the new drama had an ethical purpose, what
was it? and if Ibsen was a moral teacher, what the deuce was he
teaching? Answers to this question, answers of manifold brilliancy and
promise, were scattered through all the dramatic criticisms of those
years on the _Saturday Review_. But even Bernard Shaw grew tired after a
time of discussing Ibsen only in connection with the current pantomime
or the latest musical comedy. It was felt that so much sincerity and
fertility of explanation justified a concentrated attack; and in 1891
appeared the brilliant book called _The Quintessence of Ibsenism_, which
some have declared to be merely the quintessence of Shaw. However this
may be, it was in fact and profession the quintessence of Shaw's theory
of the morality or propaganda of Ibsen.

The book itself is much longer than the book that I am writing; and as
is only right in so spirited an apologist, every paragraph is
provocative. I could write an essay on every sentence which I accept and
three essays on every sentence which I deny. Bernard Shaw himself is a
master of compression; he can put a conception more compactly than any
other man alive. It is therefore rather difficult to compress his
compression; one feels as if one were trying to extract a beef essence
from Bovril. But the shortest form in which I can state the idea of _The
Quintessence of Ibsenism_ is that it is the idea of distrusting ideals,
which are universal, in comparison with facts, which are miscellaneous.
The man whom he attacks throughout he calls "The Idealist"; that is the
man who permits himself to be mainly m