The same situation is found to -day by Clayton Hamilton .
The theater, he writes, suffers from the lack of patronage by per sons of intelligence and taste . The public that patronizes music ,
painting, sculpture, dancing, all other forms of art has ceased to patronize the theater,and this has led to a decadence of dramatic criticism .145 Thus in dramatic criticism , as in literary criticism , the critics hold the public rather than the press ultimately responsible for the short- comings of criticism . It is apparently G . B . Shaw who alone among critics places the responsibility frankly on the press .146 Art criticism , as found in the press , is in its turn open to many
serious criticisms. It often serves as a text for a discussion of the nature of art, for cursory histories of art , for an analysis of art at different periods, for criticism of art exhibitions as such ,
a recent critic plaintively asks, “ if it is impossible to keep out the pictures that should not be in , why not substitute ground glass for clear glass in framing ?” It often shows a pronounced tendency to become simply fault- finding and it seldom indicates
the impression made by art on the public. But since the works of art themselves remain , the defects of art criticism must give
the historian less difficulty than do those of dramatic criticism . Musical criticism
presents , for the historian , somewhat the
same fundamental problems as does the criticism of the drama and of art.
The advertiser, the business manager , the friend,
the social circle, the technical language that may conceal pov erty of thought , the lack of constructive listening, the absence of standards, - all these combine, as they do in similar forms of
criticism , to perplex the historian in his efforts to reconstruct the music of an era from the contemporaneous criticism of music .147
145 “ The Public and the Theater,” Bookman, November, 1916 , 44 : 252– 257a
146 The Author's Apology , with Introduction by John Corbin on “ The Tyranny of Police and Press ,” pp . 5 - 19. 147 Even baser aspects are suggested by H . F . Chorley who gives an ac count of the efforts of an opera manager to revive his sinking fortunes through the aid of journalists who lent themselves to his sensational adver tising schemes. - Thirty Years' Musical Recollections, I , 271 - 274 . H . G . Hewlett gives an account of money offered Chorley by a foreign composer of eminent genius who apparently believed that every musical
critic had his price, and he gives more than one illustration of attemp
