No More Learning

English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede
and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and
compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or
revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the
world, and the most indecent newspapers. It is no exaggeration to talk
of compulsion. There are possibly some journalists who take a real
pleasure in publishing horrible things, or who, being poor, look to
scandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income. But there
are other journalists, I feel certain, men of education and cultivation,
who really dislike publishing these things, who know that it is wrong to
do so, and only do it because the unhealthy conditions under which their
occupation is carried on oblige them to supply the public with what the
public wants, and to compete with other journalists in making that
supply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible.
It is a very degrading position for any body of educated men to be
placed in, and I have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely.

However, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject,
and return to the question of popular control in the matter of Art, by
which I mean Public Opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is
to use, the mode in which he is to use it, and the materials with which
he is to work. I have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best
in England are the arts in which the public have not been interested.
They are, however, interested in the drama, and as a certain advance has
been made in the drama within the last ten or fifteen years, it is
important to point out that this advance is entirely due to a few
individual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their
standard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and
supply. With his marvellous and vivid personality, with a style that has
really a true colour-element in it, with his extraordinary power, not
over mere mimicry but over imaginative and intellectual creation, Mr
Irving, had his sole object been to give the public what they wanted,
could have produced the commonest plays in the commonest manner, and
made as much success and money as a man could possibly desire. But his
object was not that. His object was to realise his own perfection as an
artist, under certain conditions, and in certain forms of Art. At first
he appealed to the few; now he has educated the many. He has created in
the public both taste and temperament. The public appreciate his
artistic success immensely. I often wonder, however, whether the public
understand that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not
accept their standard, but realised his own.
With their standard the
Lyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth, as some of the
popular theatres in London are at present. Whether they understand it or
not the fact however remains, that taste and temperament have, to a
certain extent, been created in the public, and that the public is
capable of developing these qualities. The problem then is, why do not
the public become more civilised? They have the capacity. What stops
them?

The thing that stops them, it must be said again, is their desire to
exercise authority over the artist and over works of art. To certain
theatres, such as the Lyceum and the Haymarket, the public seem to come
in a proper mood. In both of these theatres there have been individual
artists, who have succeeded in creating in their audiences--and every
theatre in London has its own audience--the temperament to which Art
appeals. And what is that temperament? It is the temperament of
receptivity. That is all.

If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority
over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot
receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to
dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of
art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which
the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own
silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what
Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and
appreciate the work of art in question.