The job of a critic is to present his opinions entertainingly and clearly, within the limits set down by the paper he works for. That qualification, which surprises many people who aspire to criticism as a career, is important, because different papers want different things from their critics.

Some want them simply to describe the plot, name the leading actors and report on the attitudes of the first night audience. Some want the critics to be mirrors reflecting the attitudes of the majority of the readers who buy their papers. Some want critics who are tipsters, who can intuit or figure out whether a show will be a "hit" or a "flop." Some want their critics to take a positive approach to home-grown shows, to beat the drums loudly for Canadian exceptionalism. Some don't want their critics to offend. Some want them to be controversial, provocative, storm centres.

It should be obvious--though it often is not to job applicants--that different papers have different kinds of readers. The critic who writes for a morning paper directed toward a business and society audience will have a different approach to the critic on an afternoon paper serving suburban homeowners, young couples living in apartments, and working people. Similarly, the critic with 300 words at his disposal is in a dissimilar situation to the critic who has 1,300 words to express himself.

I am not saying that papers put their prohibitions and restrictions in a brochure which every critic must carry with him, and read before the performance begins or before he begins to write his notice. My point is that each paper looks for and finds the kind of critic whose thinking and standards correspond most naturally to its corporate own, and who is least likely to try its tolerance.

One may argue that a newspaper's aim should be to find the best people available and give them space for their views. But newspapers do not exist in a void, and few publishers are enlightened enough to understand the value of hiring critics for quality alone.

In a truly responsible newspaper, of course, a critic is allowed except for questions of libel and good taste, i.e., the right to speak for himself, even if this brings him into conflict with editorial policy. Such freedom must be used responsibly by the critic, whose primary aim should be to give an informed, discriminating, honest, and readable assessment of the show at hand.

I stress that a critic must be "entertaining," must be "readable," because many people who are critics and many people who read criticism genuinely seem to feel that good criticism and dull writing are synonymous.

What principles does one apply in criticism? To an extent, of course, they vary with the individual and with his duty as he understands it.

From my point of view, each review must take into account and answer the following three questions: What does the play say? How well is it said? Is it worth saying?

These questions apply only to the written play. But when we are dealing with the theatre arts, the text is only one element in the entire fabric. Another set of questions to deal with concern the presentation, the fleshing out and clothing on stage--by means of acting, setting, costuming, lighting, sound effects and music--of the printed words. Have the director and his players grasped the dramatic theme? To what extent have they communicated it? If the text is inferior, does it matter? (Often it does. An inspired interpretation will bring life and beauty to a comatose, unprepossessing script.)

Depending on the answers to these questions, several more lines of inquiry unfold: Why did the production, the show, fail? Was it a matter of wilful misrepresentation by the director? Did the director understand and his cast let him down? What aspects of the production were loyal to the dramatic intention?

Alternatively, if the show succeeds, what were the primary and secondary causes? What was the individual contribution of the actors? In what manner did the director find a working, emotional line? There are only a few of the questions to be answered.

I don't mean for a moment that the critic should spell out his premises and conclusions, or engage in his catechism, in the review itself. Nor am I suggesting that the reader should be consciously aware that, in offering his verdict, the critic is basing himself on a considered appraisal of the foregoing matters. But I do submit that the application of these principles should be the operative process guiding the critic in preparation of his notice.

For what a critic thinks of a show is not nearly as useful or pertinent as the reasons that led him to that opinion. Giving the reasons why is the essence of the critical function.

Many critics begin their working chores while the show is in progress. They scribble notes on the program or in a book about the acting, the staging, and the dialogue or perhaps they commit to print bright or interesting remarks which have occurred to them.

I very rarely take notes at a show. For one thing, all my fountain pens usually turn out to be dry (I don't like ballpoints and I keep forgetting to refill the pens.) For another, I don't want my train of attention derailed. Of course, if the show is painfully uninteresting, I let my mind wander and occasionally, very occasionally, if the text is outstandingly atrocious, I will write down a few choice specimens of speech.

For me, the real work of criticism begins when I sit down at the typewriter to sort out and write the reasons for my reaction to the show, favorable or unfavorable. The hardest part of the notice is the first sentence, the importance of which is incalculable since it sets the tone of everything that follows. It usually takes me two-and-a-half hours to three hours to write the review, if I'm lucky, and generally I spend 50 per cent of that time finding the appropriate opening line.

Do I go to see every show in the same frame of mind? Let me put it this way. When I go into a theatre, I like to think I have no friends and no enemies. But of course I have prejudices and favorites. I go more expectantly to see a play done by Workshop Productions or the Red Barn theatre than one offered by the Village Playhouse or the University Alumnae Dramatic Club, although these groups also interest me.

I am more interested in comedies of manners than farces, more interested in musical comedy than in opera, more interested in European classics than in Shakespeare, more interested in plays by contemporaries than past masterpieces. I prefer off-Broadway to Broadway, and I go in fear and trembling to verse plays that are universal allegories. I think the Dominion Drama Festival is a dismal joke, and the only time I will go to an amateur production is when a play is being done that I haven't seen, and feel, for my own education, I ought to see. But I go fearing the worst for the production.

From my point of view, the first aim of a critic should be lucidity of expression, clarity of opinion. I have no sympathy with the notice which equivocates and temporizes, which requires you to decode the language to understand it. A critic who is unable to say outright what he thinks is dodging his duty. At the end of a review, the reader should know what a critic thinks of a given show and why.

But is there a prescribed method of report? Does the critic begin by delivering his verdict of the show and then work backwards, explaining how he came to his conclusion? Or does he outline his plot and describe the production and then move on to an evaluation?

Actually, it depends on his temperament, the amount of space at his disposal and the values in the show which he selects to explain his view. Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune, who does not lack for space but has less than an hour to do his review, invariably begins with a word portrait of some of the performers in action. Usually you are about half way through before you get some inkling as to whether he likes or dislikes the show. Robert Moller of the London Daily Mail, with just a dozen or so paragraphs to speak his mind, comes out swinging with a definite verdict.

In my own case, very often I spend the first part of the review discussing the text or the production, or some aspect of the production which seems to me noteworthy, and I leave the matter of an overall opinion till late in the review or to the very end.

Generally though, my preference is for the opening paragraph which is in effect a resume of my entire judgment (with a closing line that underlines the point of the opening statement). The advantage of this approach is that it enables the reader to find out conveniently and instantly what he most wants to know, and gets the review off to an interesting start.

Should a critic have a technical knowledge of playwriting and the elements of production? Should he, in the review, deal with these questions technically?

Here again, individual temperament enters into it. Before he joined the New York Herald Tribune, Walter Kerr taught theatre and wrote plays and musicals with his wife, Jean Kerr. Eric Bentley has staged plays, written skits for revues, and helped in the production of those plays by Bertolt Brecht which he translated. Harold Clurman is a successful critic who is a still more successful director. Critics who became playwrights or performed both functions jointly are Bernard Shaw, William Archer, Charles Morgan, and Robert Sherwood, to name a few. Herbert Whittaker has directed plays, and wrote at least one.

On the other hand, in the quarter of a century that he reviewed shows for The New York Times, Brooks Atkinson never got closer to the stage than the footlights. George Jean Nathan vigorously rejected any contact with the backstage aspects of theatre; he took the position, in any case, that his concern was the written play and that the presentation deserved only passing attention near the end.

For my part, I believe that the critic should study his theatre art intensively and that the way to get this knowledge is partly by reading, and partly by seeing shows through trained eyes and ears. I am less convinced that one should discuss the mechanical aspects of production in a review, unless they directly affect the stage scene, and even then I believe that one should steer away from specialized language.

The disadvantage of practical work in production and writing is that it is likely to alter the critic's point of view and put him on the side of the playmakers. Although the critic is in no sense a typical audience member, and in fact very often he must be as much opposed to the audience as to the performing company, still he comes to the theatre in the function of spectator and auditor, he attends the show in the role of specialized play-goer and must not be deflected from that position.

As for socializing with people in the theatre, I believe the less critics do of it the better. It creates too many problems in personal relations.

In the ideal theatre world, I suppose, there would be a great measure of compatibility between critics and playmakers. In the actual theatre world, compatibility is possible only if the critic regulates his standards downward.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of directors, writers, and actors who will not permit an unfavorable review to affect a friendship. I think the reason most critics fraternize with people in the theatre is that they are star-struck.

If you are a critic who speaks his mind plainly, who is able to support his opinions with cogent and relevant reasons, who is not satisfied with less than the best, you are going to be told that you are exerting a baneful influence, that you are destructive, lacking in compassion, unmindful of other people's hard work and good intentions, an egocentric interested in calling attention to himself and in self-advertisement.

Pay no attention. These outraged cries merely mean that you have touched a guilty nerve.

If you are a critic on a campus paper, and your reviews have to do largely with university productions, pay no attention either to the suggestion that because the actors are amateurs you should employ a double standard of review. Of course one does not expect the same polished results from amateurs and part-time actors as from professionals, but one should expect an intelligent and discerning interpretation of the dramatic theme.

Over a period of time, if your readers have come to trust your judgment and to rely on them, you will find that, like it or not, you exert a certain box-office influence. This is unavoidable, and though affecting the business of the theatre is none of the critic's concern, it should not concern him when it happens.

In any case, you would be less than human if you didn't want more people to see the shows that you like and fewer people to see the shows that in your opinion aren't worth doing or are atrociously done. Mind you, you ought never to reach the state of a New York critic who shall be nameless and who, until recently, used to call the box-office of various New York theatres to discover what happened to ticket sales when he decided to champion a show or make war on one.

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