Lifted whole-cloth from Terry:
“If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it. The moment the public sniffs propaganda they stay away, and curiously enough, I am all in favour of the public coming to the theatre, paying for their seats at the box office, and enjoying themselves.”
– Noël Coward, “The Art of Acting” (The Listener, Oct. 12, 1961)
Matthew,
There's not a few essays by Seamus Heaney along these same lines – while he has some pretty powerful poems about "the Troubles" in Eire, he notes in one essay that when the IRA came a knocking to get a pro-IRA poem out of him, he told them to "fook off" (as the Irish so charmingly say it out).
It is one reason why I believe Heaney is, to quote himself writing about Caedmus, "The real thing alright…"
JOB