Thus, he will have begotten a bastard,
but highly entertaining, form of art. My protest has no practical
application to him, for he is a standing exception to all rules. It is
to the younger generation that I appeal not to be misled by his
seductive example. They have little chance of rivalling him as
sociological essayists; but if they treat their art seriously, and as a
pure art, they may easily surpass him as dramatists. By adopting his
practice they will tend to produce, not fine works of art, but inferior
sociological documents. They will impair their originality and spoil
their plays in order to do comparatively badly what Mr. Shaw has done
incomparably well.
The common-sense rule as to stage directions is absolutely plain; be
they short, or be they long, they ought always to be _impersonal_. The
playwright who cracks jokes in his stage-directions, or indulges in
graces of style, is intruding himself between the spectator and the work
of art, to the inevitable detriment of the illusion.
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