The thing that stops them, it must be said again, is their desire to exercise authority over the artist and over works of art.  To certain theatres, such as the Lyceum and the Haymarket, the public seem to come in a proper mood.  In both of these theatres there have been individual artists, who have succeeded in creating in their audiences—­and every theatre in London has its own audience—­ the temperament to which Art appeals.  And what is that temperament?  It is the temperament of receptivity.  That is all.

If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all.  The work of art is to dominate the spectator:  the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.  The spectator is to be receptive.  He is to be the violin on which the master is to play.  And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question.  This is, of course, quite obvious in the case of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men and women.  But it is equally true of what are called educated people.  For an educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.  A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.  And true as this is in the case of the appreciation of sculpture and painting, it is still more true of the appreciation of such arts as the drama.  For a picture and a statue are not at war with Time.  They take no count of its succession.  In one moment their unity may be apprehended.  In the case of literature it is different.  Time must be traversed before the unity of effect is realised.  And so, in the drama, there may occur in the first act of the play something whose real artistic value may not be evident to the spectator till the third or fourth act is reached.  Is the silly fellow to get angry and call out, and disturb the play, and annoy the artists?  No.  The honest man is to sit quietly, and know the delightful emotions of wonder, curiosity, and suspense.  He is not to go to the play to lose a vulgar temper.  He is to go to the play to realise an artistic temperament.  He is to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament.  He is not the arbiter of the work of art.  He is one who is admitted to contemplate the work of art, and, if the work be fine, to forget in its contemplation and the egotism that mars him—­the egotism of his ignorance, or the egotism of his information.