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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: to the gross popular appetite as possible. It is a very degrading
position for any body of educated men to be placed in, and I have
no doubt that most of them feel it acutely.
However, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the
subject, and return to the question of popular control in the
matter of Art, by which I mean Public Opinion dictating to the
artist the form which he is to use, the mode in which he is to use
it, and the materials with which he is to work. I have pointed out
that the arts which have escaped best in England are the arts in
which the public have not been interested. They are, however,
interested in the drama, and as a certain advance has been made in
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