Plays and Puritans

The British Isles have been ringing for the last few years with the word 'Art' in its German sense; with 'High Art, ' 'Symbolic Art, ' 'Ecclesiastical Art, ' 'Dramatic Art, ' 'Tragic Art, ' and so forth; and every well-educated person is expected, nowadays, to know something about Art. Yet in spite of all translations of German 'AEsthetic' treatises, and 'Kunstnovellen, ' the mass of the British people cares very little about the matter, and sits contented under the imputation of 'bad taste. ' Our stage, long since dead, does not revive; our poetry is dying; our music, like our architecture, only reproduces the past; our painting is only first-rate when it handles landscapes and animals, and seems likely so to remain; but, meanwhile, nobody cares. Some of the deepest and most earnest minds vote the question, in general, a 'sham and a snare, ' and whisper to each other confidentially, that Gothic art is beginning to be a 'bore, ' and that Sir Christopher Wren was a very good fellow after all; while the middle classes look on the Art movement half amused, as with a pretty toy, half sulkily suspicious of Popery and Paganism, and think, apparently, that Art is very well when it means nothing, and is merely used to beautify drawing-rooms and shawl patterns; not to mention that, if there were no painters, Mr