I could
name English plays, both pre-Meredithian and post-Meredithian, which
might almost as well be written in Chinese for all that I can make
of them.
Obscurity and precocity are generally symptoms of an exaggerated dread
of the commonplace. The writer of dramatic prose has, indeed, a very
difficult task if he is to achieve style without deserting nature.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the difficulty lies in
getting criticism to give him credit for the possession of style,
without incurring the reproach of mannerism. How is one to give
concentration and distinction to ordinary talk, while making it still
seem ordinary? Either the distinction will strike the critics, and they
will call it pompous and unreal, or the ordinariness will come home to
them, and they will deny the distinction. This is the dramatist's
constant dilemma. One can only comfort him with the assurance that if he
has given his dialogue the necessary concentration, and has yet kept it
plausibly near to the language of life, he has achieved style, and may
snap his fingers at the critics.
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