About the Theatre; Essays and Studies (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ETHICS OF THEATRICAL CRITICISM. Waitingfor Of all the incidents of a career of crime?I the verdict. speak, as yet, without personal experience, but on the authority of many intelligent felons?the ordeal known as waiting for the verdict is one of the most unpleasant. The dramatic interest, the nervous tension, of the trial is over, and a period of torturing inactivity ensues. The irretrievable errors of the past rise in grim array before the mind's eye?arguments unurged, admissions made in inadvertence, lies unhar- monised, alibis disproved, nervous impatience to get rid of the body, rash haste in pawning the plate, and a hundred other slips into the gins and snares that beset the path of crime. In some cases remorse intervenes to pile horror on horror's head, and the unhappy wretch writhes at the thought, not only of errors after the fact, but of the fact itself, from the first conception of its possibility right on to the finishing stroke. It is done and cannot be undone. His head isin the lion's mouth; he feels the points of its fangs upon his throat; will the mighty jaws open?or close ? If any one wishes to experience these interest- Thepiay- . ' . . j i wright in the ing sensations, yet is restrained by nervousness doch. or class-prejudice from a straightforward plunge into burglary or murder, he cannot do better than write a play and have it produced at a London theatre. In the interval between its production, say on Saturday night, and the appearance of the leading newspapers on Monday morning he will acquire the most intimate experimental knowledge of the feelings of a murderer awaiting the verdict. In the commission of the crime there may have been some pleasure; during the trial, or, in other words, the first performance, he has at least been buoyed up...