No More Learning

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. This is, of course, quite
obvious in the case of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men
and women. But it is equally true of what are called educated people.
For an educated person's ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art
has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has
never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure
it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.
A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and
under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only
temperament that can appreciate a work of art. And true as this is in
the case of the appreciation of sculpture and painting, it is still more
true of the appreciation of such arts as the drama. For a picture and a
statue are not at war with Time. They take no count of its succession.
In one moment their unity may be apprehended.