Moore: I never think about methods, and when I read in the newspapers that a play is not technically a play I lay the paper aside.
Barker: And you are right. There are plays of all kinds, and all we ask is that the writer shall produce a play good of its kind.
Moore: You condemn monologues—
Barker: Not always. I wrote to you that the three or four lines of monologue with which you begin The Apostle were unnecessary, admitting, however, that they might annoy our friend Archer.
Moore: I have dedicated the play to you.
Barker: I am honoured.
Moore: And hope that one or two monologues and perhaps an aside will not blind you to other merits, should any be discoverable.
Barker: And you are pleased with The Apostle, now that you have finished it to the last revision of the last comma?
Moore: No correspondence with managers, no rehearsals, no withdrawing the play from rehearsals—an admirable play!
Barker: But from what you told me and from what I saw in your first draft the play seemed to me designed for the stage.
Moore: The stage was in my mind as fourteen lines are in the mind of him who sits down to write a sonnet.
Barker: The characters of Jesus and His Apostle are treated with much reverence; the Archbishops could hardly have treated them with more, and, the Censor being no longer adamantine, it might be worth while asking a management to send the play to the Censor's office.
Moore: There is not an irreverent word in the play, but I doubt if the Censor could pass it even if he wished to do so.
Barker: You may be right, in that a Jesus who does not die on the cross conflicts too flagrantly with current theology.
Moore: The play may be acted in America; America is full of Unitarians. It may be acted in Germany, or in Paris, even in England privately; if I have succeeded in representing St Paul in all his instincts and attributions, he will not escape the ambition of a great actor.
Barker: Who will know little ease till he has been seen in the part, which he will, mayhap, illuminate by his genius. You are content to wait?
Moore: I do not attach overmuch importance to a performance.
