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June, 1923

T is about a year, as far as I can remember, since any play by Shakespeare has been put on the stage for a "run" in any of the forty-odd theatres in the West End of London. It sometimes seems that the War has reduced England to barbarism: not only by the astonishing, rapid, and almost complete departure of all moral decency and tolerance during the fighting (that was perhaps less marked here than in most of the countries compromised) but by the withering of all public pretence of respect for Art. Before the War it was considered elevating, genteel, even chic, to patronize in moderation the serious theatre. The Middle Classes took their children to see Tree in Shakespeare, the Upper Classes made a vogue of the Russian Opera and Ballet. For a moment it looked as if an artistic revival incubated in snobbery might grow to flourish naturally upon an improved public taste. Then came War; the war was against Kultur; Culture herself, for all her togas, had alarming resemblances to her panoplied German cousin; look at Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, the Prince Consort himself; the Royal Family set an unfortunate but much followed example by changing its name; and everything modern was declared decadent. The young demanded amusements that drugged and did not stimulate the brain—it was a bad time for brains that worked properly—and their parents were able to be honest with themselves and prefer Revue to Shakespeare and Rimsky-Korsakov. So a new generation arose which did not believe in Victorian shams and voted art as well as faith and morals a convention and a bore. Meanwhile of course artists just pursued their way; but every form of art has become more difficult to understand and more apparently esoteric. The distance of the great mass of the semi-educated public (that is the class which goes, and sends its children, to the Universities) from all knowledge of the best art being produced is greater than it has probably ever been. Enjoyment of the arts has become specialized, and it sometimes seems that soon only writers will read books, only painters look at pictures, and only musicians listen to music.