The drama critic, on the other hand, has no such advantage. He cannot be selective; he mus

t cover everything that is offered for public scrutiny in the principal playhouses of the city where he works. The column space that seemed, yesterday, so pitifully inadequate to contain his comments on Long Day's Journey Into Night is roughly the same as that which yawns today for his verdict on the latest scrap of milk-fed Kitsch that has chanced to find for itself a numbskull hacker with a hundred thousand dollars to lose. This state of affairs may help to explain why the New York theater reviewers are so often, and so unjustly, stigmatized as baleful and destructive fiends. They spend most of their professional lives attempting to pronounce intelligent judgments on plays that have no aspiration to intelligence. It is hardly surprising that they lash out occasionally; in fact, what amazes me about them is that they do not lash out more violently and more frequently. As Shaw said of his fellow-critics in the nineties, they are "a culpably indulgent body of men." Imagine the verbal excoriations that would be inflicted if Lionel Trilling, or someone of comparable eminence, were called on to review five books a month of which three were novelettes composed of criminal confessions. The butchers of Broadway would seem lambs by comparison.

In writing this passage, the author's chief concern seems to be to ______.

A．comment on the poor quality of our plays

B．show why book reviewing is easier than play reviewing

C．point up the opinions of Shaw

D．defend the work of the play critic