Since everybody knows already who Sir Arthur Wing Pinero is and what may be expected of him, the only question for the critic, in considering a new play from his practiced pen, is whether or not the author has succeeded in advancing or maintaining the standard of his earlier and remembered efforts.  If, as in The Wife Without a Smile, he falls far below that standard, the critic may condemn the play, and let the matter go at that.  Although the new piece may be discredited, the author’s reputation will suffer no abiding injury from the deep damnation of its taking off; for the public will continue to remember the third act of The Gay Lord Quex, and will remain assured that Sir Arthur Pinero is worth while.  But when a play by a new author comes up for consideration, the public needs to be told not only whether the work itself has been well or badly done, but also whether or not the unknown author seems to be inherently a person of importance, from whom more worthy works may be expected in the future.  The critic must not only make clear the playwright’s present actual accomplishment, but must also estimate his promise.  An author’s first or second play is important mainly—­to use Whitman’s phrase—­as “an encloser of things to be.”  The question is not so much what the author has already done as what he is likely to do if he is given further hearings.  It is in this sense that the work of an unknown playwright requires and deserves more serious consideration than the work of an acknowledged master.  Accomplishment is comparatively easy to appraise, but to appreciate promise requires forward-looking and far-seeing eyes.

In the real sense, it matters very little whether an author’s early plays succeed or fail.  The one point that does matter is whether, in either case, the merits and defects are of such a nature as to indicate that the man behind the work is inherently a man worth while.  In either failure or success, the sole significant thing is the quality of the endeavor.  A young author may fail for the shallow reason that he is insincere; but he may fail even more decisively for the sublime reason that as yet his reach exceeds his grasp.  He may succeed because through earnest effort he has done almost well something eminently worth the doing; or he may succeed merely because he has essayed an unimportant and an easy task.  Often more hope for an author’s future may be founded upon an initial failure than upon an initial success.  It is better for a young man to fail in a large and noble effort than to succeed in an effort insignificant and mean.  For in labor, as in life, Stevenson’s maxim is very often pertinent:—­to travel hopefully is frequently a better thing than to arrive.