Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.

Inge treats the stage not as an autonomous realm of “art for art’s sake,” but as a social mirror: what audiences applaud, what playwrights imagine, and what actors embody are conditioned by the moral and cultural quality of the world outside the theater. The second sentence reverses a common reformist hope that better art will elevate society; instead, Inge suggests that artistic renewal depends on prior renewal in life itself—public taste, ethical standards, and the everyday realities that drama draws upon. The remark is both a critique of theatrical culture (as symptomatic) and a broader cultural diagnosis: to change the representation, one must change what is being represented.