THE RIGHT OF CRITICISM.

Northern Advocate, 22 August 1913, Page 4

THE RIGHT OF CRITICISM.

The verdict given by a jury at the Auckland Supreme Court yesterday will at least assist —very slightly we fear —to remove from the minds of public entertainers the fatuous idea, almost general amongst these people, that every printed reference to them and their " art," if it be not adulatory, is therefore malicious. Actors and singers and instrumentalists are, as a class, perhaps the most inflated people on earth. They live in an artificial atmosphere, and the environment is made particularly unwholesome because such " criticism " as they hear and read of themselves is Invariably a mere compound of treacle and sacharine. Indeed, there is nothing quite so depressing as the average periodical devoted to the drama or music. The most pronounced third-raters are proclaimed to be inspired by genius, and the moderately good are elevated to fellowship with that rare comDany who form the world's elect. Seldom, if never, is the printed criticism of a public performance an honest one. When it is the object of this healthy attention nine times out of ten seeks in legal advise salve for a lacerated soul —and usually gets it. Sometimes, but very seldom, he pursues his critic to the Supreme Court, and looks there for monetary consolation. The public performer, like the politician, who endeavours to prove malice against a critic, generally makes a mistake. In the Auckland case the plaintiff, at one time an agreeable singer of limited eminence, did so with great emphasis, and now has the pleasure of paying the costs of the proceedings. He deserves no sympathy. So long as printed criticism is an honest expression of the writer's opinion no performer who seeks to extract money out of the pockets of the public has ground of complaint. Such a person challenges the criticism of the people he appears before, and has no shadow of right to expect tha,t this shall be uncritical. There are standards of comparison in all things, of course. No one dreams of applying the same critical standard •to some village miss who sings at the local concert as would be applied to the singing of a prima donna. Yet it is good for this young amateur to be told of her faults, as it is radically bad for them to be overlooked. With more experienced people the same rule holds, and it is because this is almost wholly disregarded by the so-called criticism of the day that much of it is sickeningly untruthful, and the fare provided by public entertainers so often shoddy. It is not many years since an actress with neither talent nor grace of any kind—whom every cultivated intelligence in the Dominion detected as a mediocrity of quite exceptional offensiveness —was starred and boomed and blared through the country in a pretentious repertoire of characterisation, to the great financial profit of her manager and the shame of the " criticism " which helped to gull the unfortunate public. No one likes criticism, but if the law permitted people, who challenge criticism to make of every critic an uncritical automaton the situation would be altogether alarming.