"Do you think that the critics will understand your new play, which Mr. George Alexander has secured?"
"I hope not."
"I dare not ask, I suppose, if it will please the public?"
"When a play that is a work of art is produced on the stage what is being tested is not the play, but the stage; when a play that is not a work of art is produced on the stage what is being tested is not the play, but the public."
"What sort of play are we to expect?"
"It is exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy, and it has its philosophy."
"Its philosophy!"
"That we should treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality."
"You have no leanings towards realism?"
"None whatever. Realism is only a background; it cannot form an artistic motive for a play that is to be a work of art."
"Still I have heard you congratulated on your pictures of London society."
"If Robert Chiltern, the Ideal Husband, were a common clerk, the humanity of his tragedy would be none the less poignant. I have placed him in the higher ranks of life merely because that is the side of social life with which I am best acquainted. In a play dealing with actualities to write with ease one must write with knowledge."
"Then you see nothing suggestive of treatment in the tragedies of everyday existence?"
"If a journalist is run over by a four-wheeler in the Strand, an incident I regret to say I have never witnessed, it suggests nothing to me from a dramatic point of view. Perhaps I am wrong; but the artist must have his limitations."
"Well," I said, rising to go, "I have enjoyed myself immensely."
"I was sure you would," said Mr. Wilde. "But tell me how you manage your interviews."
"Oh, Pitman," I said carelessly.
"Is that your name? It's not a very nice name."
Then I left.
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