The Critic and the Drama — Reading Companion

Vanity as the Engine of Criticism

Nathan’s opening salvo declares criticism an art founded on vanity, a claim he supports by observing that heavy modesty in critics is merely a self-conscious attempt to diminish an ineradicable vainglory. He distinguishes between great critics, who accept this egotism, and absurd ones, who try to conceal it. This framework recurs throughout the book, as Nathan examines how critics’ personal motives shape their judgments. He does not exempt himself; his own prose is deliberately assertive, as when he calls criticism a “dream book” for art’s mysteries. The reader should note how Nathan’s own voice embodies the vanity he describes—his confident, often dismissive tone is part of his argument’s performance.

Acting as a Reflected Art

In the chapter on acting, Nathan questions whether acting qualifies as a creative art. He points out that many celebrated actors—Lemaître, Salvini, Bernhardt—also worked in other arts like writing, painting, or sculpture, suggesting that the artist becomes the actor rather than the actor becoming the artist. He argues that acting must appeal to the many to survive, which makes it popular by necessity, unlike authentic arts that can thrive without crowd approval. The great actor, Nathan contends, is simply the one best fitted to translate the dramatist’s imagination, not to create anew. He cites Duse and D’Annunzio as a spiritual and physical unity, implying that the finest acting is duplication, not invention.

The Critic as Aesthetic Jurist

The first chapter, “Aesthetic Jurisprudence,” establishes Nathan’s view of criticism as a judicial function. He treats the critic as a judge of beauty, applying standards derived from the nature of art itself. His language is legalistic: he speaks of “evidence,” “advocates,” and “prosecution.” For instance, he calls the case against acting as an art “the soundest and most eloquent.” Nathan’s method is to pose paradoxes—such as comparing actors to politicians like Roosevelt or evangelists like Billy Sunday—to test definitions. These “shock-troops” clear the way for more sober argument. His structure is cumulative, building from definitions to examples to conclusions, always with an eye to logical rigor.

Diction and the Performance of Authority

Nathan’s word choices reinforce his authoritative stance. He uses terms like “indec linable,” “histrionism,” and “miscegenation” (the latter to describe acting as a blend of art and trade). His sentences are often balanced and epigrammatic: “All art is a kind of subconscious madness expressed in terms of sanity.” He favors abstract nouns and Latinate vocabulary, lending a formal, almost legal tone. Yet he also deploys colloquial jabs, as when he calls certain actors “far down” the line. This mix of high diction and blunt dismissal creates a voice that is both scholarly and combative. Readers should attend to how Nathan’s style itself argues for criticism as a performance of intellect.

Nathan’s essays reward attention to his rhetorical strategies: his use of paradox, his legalistic framing, and his willingness to name names. The excerpts show a critic who is less interested in evaluating specific plays than in defining the terms of evaluation itself. Readers approaching the full text should watch how Nathan’s arguments develop across chapters, and how his own critical performance enacts the vanity he describes. The book is best read as a series of provocations, each designed to unsettle comfortable assumptions about theatre and criticism.

Reading Nathan’s claim that criticism is “rooted in vanity” made me pause, remembering a rainy afternoon spent with The Duchess of Malfi — Text and Context. Webster’s dark world felt like a mirror, showing how our judgments often disguise our own aches. There’s a strange comfort in that shared, imperfect honesty.