I have come to believe … that the stage may do more than teach, that much of our current moral instruction will not endure the test of being cast into a lifelike mold, and when presented in dramatic form will reveal itself as platitudinous and effete. That which may have sounded like righteous teaching when it was remote and wordy will be challenged afresh when it is obliged to simulate life itself.
Jane Addams
Jane Addams (1860–1935), U.S. social reformer and author. Twenty Years at Hull-House, ch. 16 (1910).