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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: their audiences - and every theatre in London has its own audience
- the temperament to which Art appeals. And what is that
temperament? It is the temperament of receptivity. That is all.
If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise
authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit
that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The
work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to
dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is
to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more
completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish
prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should
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