Judging by the public press and the circulars, Mr Shaw is not inaccurate in his view that the army of amateurs does comparatively little service for drama. Its taste seems to be for showy, artificial plays, and its tendency to seek out works that do not act themselves because of their truth of characterisation but afford unlimited scope for originality on the part of performers--generally half-baked performers.
This does not apply to all amateur societies; at least we know that there are a number of associations not for the purposes of gain, such as the Elizabethan Stage Society, now, alas! dead, which showed a very stern enthusiasm for the higher forms of art. They appear to be the exception. There was a time when it was difficult to find a man in the street who had not acted in _Ici on Parle Français_ or played in _Money_ or appeared in _Our Boys_, and nowadays it seems that though there has been some progress, the austere drama is still unpopular, and that when funds are sufficient artificial costume plays are in vogue.
Mr Shaw apparently believes that vanity is the fundamental motive of amateur performances. It may be that this is not wholly true, and that the real impulse is the elementary instinct for dressing-up. Savages, we know, have a craving for strange costumes which enable them to disguise and even disfigure their persons. Children delight in dressing up. Possibly one of the great joys of the amateur lies in the fact that he has an opportunity of wearing clothes pertinent to somebody else, and, if he be a male, is curious to see how he looks and is looked upon with the whiskers of the mid-Victorian beau or the imperial of the Third Empire, and so on.
The amiable philosopher would find a pleasanter explanation, would suggest that the desire to "dress up" is based upon a modest doubt concerning the charms of one's own individuality--how agreeable to believe this! At the bottom of the matter lies this ugly contention on the part of the cynic--he alleges that the amateur wants to act not for the benefit of the charity, the name of which is invoked hypocritically, but for the gratification of his vanity, and the authors are unable to see why the clubs should gratify the conceit of their members at the expense of those who write the plays.