OTTER. May I remind you that the dinner-bell will ring presently?

FANNY. What does it matter? We're both ready. I havnt told you yet what
I want you to do for me.

TROTTER. Nor have you particularly predisposed me to do it, except out
of pure magnanimity. What is it?

FANNY. I dont mind this play shocking my father morally. It's good for
him to be shocked morally. It's all that the young can do for the old,
to shock them and keep them up to date. But I know that this play will
shock him artistically; and that terrifies me. No moral consideration
could make a breach between us: he would forgive me for anything of that
kind sooner or later; but he never gives way on a point of art. I darent
let him know that I love Beethoven and Wagner; and as to Strauss, if he
heard three bars of Elektra, it'd part us for ever. Now what I want you
to do is this. If hes very angry--if he hates the play, because it's a
modern play--will you tell him that it's not my fault; that its style
and construction, and so forth, are considered the very highest art
nowadays; that the author wrote it in the proper way for repertory
theatres of the most superior kind--you know the kind of plays I mean?

TROTTER. [emphatically] I think I know the sort of entertainments you
mean. But please do not beg a vital question by calling them plays. I
dont pretend to be an authority; but I have at least established the
fact that these productions, whatever else they may be, are certainly
not plays.

FANNY. The authors dont say they are.

TROTTER. [warmly] I am aware that one author, who is, I blush to say, a
personal friend of mine, resorts freely to the dastardly subterfuge of
calling them conversations, discussions, and so forth, with the express
object of evading criticism. But I'm not to be disarmed by such tricks.
I say they are not plays. Dialogues, if you will. Exhibitions of
character, perhaps: especially the character of the author. Fictions,
possibly, though a little decent reticence as to introducing actual
persons, and thus violating the sanctity of private life, might not be
amiss. But plays, no. I say NO. Not plays. If you will not concede this
point I cant continue our conversation. I take this seriously. It's a
matter of principle. I must ask you, Miss O'Dowda, before we go a step
further, Do you or do you not claim that these works are plays?

FANNY. I assure you I dont.

TROTTER. Not in any sense of the word?

FANNY. Not in any sense