The same test of truthfulness by which we distinguish good workmanship from bad is the only test by which we may conclusively distinguish immoral art from moral.  Yet many of the controversial critics never calm down sufficiently to apply this test.  Instead of arguing whether or not Ibsen tells the truth about Hedda Gabler, they quarrel with him or defend him for talking about her at all.  It is as if zooelogists who had assembled to determine the truth or falsity of some scientific theory concerning the anatomy of a reptile should waste all their time in contending whether or not the reptile was unclean.

And even when they do apply the test of truthfulness, many critics are troubled by a grave misconception that leads them into error.  They make the mistake of applying generally to life certain ethical judgments that the dramatist means only to apply particularly to the special people in his play.  The danger of this fallacy cannot be too strongly emphasised.  It is not the business of the dramatist to formulate general laws of conduct; he leaves that to the social scientist, the ethical philosopher, the religious preacher.  His business is merely to tell the truth about certain special characters involved in certain special situations.  If the characters and the situations be abnormal, the dramatist must recognise that fact in judging them; and it is not just for the critic to apply to ordinary people in the ordinary situations of life a judgment thus conditioned.  The question in La Dame Aux Camelias is not whether the class of women which Marguerite Gautier represents is generally estimable, but whether a particular woman of that class, set in certain special circumstances, was not worthy of sympathy.  The question in A Doll’s House is not whether any woman should forsake her husband and children when she happens to feel like it, but whether a particular woman, Nora, living under special conditions with a certain kind of husband, Torwald, really did deem herself justified in leaving her doll’s home, perhaps forever.  The ethics of any play should be determined, not externally, but within the limits of the play itself.  And yet our modern social dramatists are persistently misjudged.  We hear talk of the moral teaching of Ibsen,—­as if, instead of being a maker of plays, he had been a maker of golden rules.  But Mr. Shaw came nearer to the truth with his famous paradox that the only golden rule in Ibsen’s dramas is that there is no golden rule.

It must, however, be admitted that the dramatists themselves are not entirely guiltless of this current critical misconception.  Most of them happen to be realists, and in devising their situations they aim to be narrowly natural as well as broadly true.  The result is that the circumstances of their plays have an ordinary look which makes them seem simple transcripts of everyday life instead of special studies of life under peculiar conditions.  Consequently