National Literature II: Custom

Just because the theater should “orient itself according to the taste of the spectators”¹ did not mean that advocates of theatrical reform wanted to hand things over to public opinion. Instead, it lent some precision to the widely circulating notion ofimprovement, encouraging the playwright and the critic to each behave much like a doctor whose relief comes not by way of “all violent means, but instead supports nature in order that it should help itself progressively.”² The mention of doctoring brings us back, once again, to the thread that has guided us through the previous chapters, namely, the relationship