Mrs.

between the sexes and the intricacies of a certain kind of masculine character. Henry Trebell is a man who, as his sister (a character, by the way, admirably played by Miss Henrietta Watson) describes him, has a certain scorn both of men and of women. It is a dangerous thing to look upon human beings of either sex from a standpoint of contempt. The man who does so is only too apt to regard his fellow creatures as puppets, to be used as his fancy dictates. Certainly Henry Trebell treated politicians with an easy negligence, and if he had confined himself to this ingenious and also reprehensible rôle, he might still have been hailed as the saviour of society. But he was not content with this. He must needs treat women as playthings also, as some bachelors have a temptation to do. And it is just here that the shadow of Nemesis is waiting for him. O'Connell is a slight, inconsiderable, vivacious, empty-headed, attractive woman, with no settled principles, idle, vacuous, easily swayed by any masterful spirit whom she encounters. Trebell, who thinks no more about her than he does about others of her sex, engages lightly and thoughtlessly in an intrigue. That is in July; and in the second act, which takes place in October, we find him confronted with the consequences. Truly the results are dreadful enough, for Mrs. O'Connell has been childless hitherto, much to the sorrow of her husband, and she will not face the prospect of the appalling scandal that is hanging over her. In the third act we find that she is already dead, dead under such suspicious circumstances that an inquest is to be held, although we of the audience know well enough that she had put herself into the hands of a worthless doctor, and that Trebell is technically guiltless of her death. But the issue is not only fatal to Mrs. O'Con

nell, but to the man with whom she had so heedlessly associated herself. In the first place, what is Lord Horsham to do? He is forming his Cabinet, and his intention was to include Trebell in its ranks. If such a scandal gets known, can his administration survive? In an extremely clever conference at Lord Horsham's House, we find the Prime Minister himself, surrounded by Lord Charles Cantelupe, Mr. Russell Blackborough, George Farrant, and others, debating the matter backwards and forwards. Justin O'Connell, the husband, decides -for reasons of his own-to hold his tongue. But there are many other considerations involved, and the final decision arrived at by Lord Horsham is to write a letter to Trebell and tell him that in the circumstances his services will be dispensed with. Political failure is thus the first of Trebell's punishments. It is not the only one. By a strange reaction from his former position of cynicism, he suddenly discovers within himself an immense contempt for the woman who could destroy his child, an immense desire to "express himself” (the phrase is not mine, but is put into the mouth of one of the characters) in the offspring which should inherit his genius and his aspirations. This is the most terrible penalty of all, and it is the direct consequence of, or reaction from, his own sceptical scorn of the customary motives which weigh with men, the usual passions which control their hearts. And so in an impressive last act we have the suicide of the hero, the final culmination of a great life greatly thrown away. His country is deprived of all the useful services that he might have rendered. That is one form of waste. And to this we have to add the destruction of human life

three lives, man, woman, and child -because of a deliberate violation of human and ethical laws.

It is unnecessary to pass any comment on a play of this kind, except so far as it indicates and illustrates certain well-defined modern tendencies. The main point to observe is the underlying assumption,-that there is no sphere of human action, no kind of subject with which art cannot claim to deal. It is rather a large assumption because art is not necessarily nature, and least of all is it a mere copy of nature. The business of the artist is to select, whether in painting or writing or fashioning figures out of marble. In each case he enjoys the free exercise of his creative powers, which include discrimination and therefore also rejection. In his play of Waste Mr. Granville Barker interprets this theory in his own fashion. Art may deal with any thing it chooses -even abortion. Dramatic art may take up any subject, even the most repellant one, so far as it can be shown to concern the interests of humanity, Even if we granted the assumption, which, of course, some people are not prepared to do, we should have to consider a necessary corollary. The artist is to be allowed the privilege of treating any subject he chooses on one very serious condition, namely, that he can lift up his subject into the sphere of art, or, in other words, that his treatment of his subject should be in the best sense of the word artistic. If art claims every province of human life as its own, it must justify this claim by the manner in which it deals with its theme. The case stands here just as it does with plagiarism—a man is permitted to borrow from preceding writers if he can justify his theft, as, for instance, Shakespeare could, by the use to which he puts it. But does Mr. Granville Barker justify his choice of subject by his treatment? Certainly there can be no more important problem than the extent to which a man of public importance is

to be condoned, or condemned, on the score of his private immorality. But Mr. Barker chooses so to paint his hero as to make him unsympatheticin fact, a very exceptional type of man, with a distinct vein of brutality. Most men who have made fools of themselves with women are still endowed with sufficient chivalry of nature to be sorry for the woman, to have some pity and tenderness towards her, however light and frivolous she may be. Henry Trebell has no such feelings towards Mrs. O'Connell. His scene with her in the second act is absolutely appalling in its coarse brutality, a horrid episode of something which, to the woman, at all events, must appear as the extreme of masculine callousness. One could imagine even a theme like this illustrated in far different fashion, and, possibly, made more powerful because the man was a better specimen of his sex and the woman a more intelligent one of hers. But in this matter Mr. Barker is only too docile a pupil of his master, Mr. Bernard Shaw. There must be no romance in the relations between the sexes, no sentimentalism, no generous emotion. Perhaps this was the more accentuated in the actual production of Waste because Mr. Barker himself played the part of the hero, which was originally designed for Mr. Norman McKinnell. In Mr. McKinnell we should have had the brutality of a really strong man. In Mr. Barker's case we had the callousness of a man to whom it never seemed natural to be either brutal or coarse. Mrs. O'Connell was very cleverly played by Miss Aimée de Burgh, but the more truly feminine she was, the greater grew our indignation at the treatment to which Mrs. O'Connell was exposed by Henry Trebell.

It is strange how the casting of a play can affect its æsthetic values and

con

the balance of its characters. An apt illustration is afforded in the case of Mr. Galsworthy's The Eldest Son. The scene is laid in a country house presided over by a sporting squire of the old school, who possesses a large family of sons and daughters and an admirably devoted wife. Unfortunately, the eldest son enters upon an intrigue with a lady's maid, who is the daughter of the gamekeeper. The usual result follows. The girl has to reveal to the young man that she is expecting to be a mother, and the whole esclandre comes out. What is to be done? The squire, who is bent on forcing a young under-keeper to make reparation to a village girl whom he has wronged, shrinks from the same problem when it is presented in the form of his heir and his wife's lady's maid. Happily for all cerned, the gamekeeper, who has some family pride, refuses to let his daughter marry her lover on the very proper ground that the match would be unsuitable, and by no means likely to lead to happiness. The whole point of the play clearly is that in the case of obvious mésalliances there is no real "honor" involved in the performance of a contract which is not to the advantage of either party. You cannot compensate a girl's loss of virtue by offering her a marriage more ruinous than the original bad act. Therefore the head-keeper is quite justified in refusing to see that two wrongs make a right. But somehow in the play itself this estimable moral came out very strangely and paradoxically. What we saw before our eyes was a very pretty and charming girl (the part of the lady's maid was played by Miss Cathleen Nesbitt), who was much too good for her young man, and seemed much more distinguished than all the gentlefolks put together. The eldest son would indeed have been a lucky fellow to get so nice a wife,

even if they had both of them to go to Canada; while by the side of this brilliant young heroine the squire's wife, sons, and daughter unmistakably paled their ineffectual fires! The ladies ought, one may suppose, to have exhibited their superior social station, if the dramatist's story was to come out right, whereas it was the servant who won hands down. That is the worst of having a sympathetic part played by a clever actress—unless, indeed, one may suspect Mr. Galsworthy of the cynical suggestion that in matters of "honor" and so forth, the socalled upper classes are inferior to their gamekeepers and lady's maids. The Eldest Son, however, is not so good a play as Hindle Wakes, with which in a certain fashion it can be compared. For in Hindle Wakes our sympathies are intended to be wholly enlisted on the side of the spirited girl, the mill-hand. Having enjoyed her week-end "lark," she sees clearly enough that marriage is a very different affair from an episodical amouramongst other reasons because, as one of the characters remarks in one of Mr. Hankin's pieces, "it lasts so long." She therefore does not have to depend on her father to make up her mind for her. She refuses point-blank to have anything further to do with the son of her employer. And seeing the young man and the sort of home-life which he enjoys, we honor her for her decision. Hindle Wakes, moreover, was admirably cast. It was enacted by men and women who knew the kind of life they were depicting, and were therefore able to convey a real thrill of actual vitality to the audience. And Miss Edyth Goodall's performance as the heroine was a very fine one.

No one, however, would select The Eldest Son as a typical play of Mr. Galsworthy. I imagine that most people who desire to get a true appreciation of the dramatist's position in the

modern world would turn rather to pieces like Strife and Justice. Here emerges one of the chief characteristics of Mr. Galsworthy, so far as I am able to observe, a tendency which can only be described as pessimistic. Life does not appear to him to be a pleasant affair, though that very largely may be due to the arrangements we make for living it. Modern society is hampered by several outworn conventions, legal enactments, and perhaps also creeds, and the point which strikes the dramatist is the exceeding hardship which is often involved for the individual. Or again. We find ourselves in a critical time with the two forces of capitalism and labor ranged against one another in continuous and deadly combat. Sometimes the victory sways in one direction, sometimes in another. But here again, just because the forces are evenly balanced, it is the individual who suffers-most of all perhaps in his domestic relations. And what are we to say of the outcome of the struggle when it remains so uncertain, when the tragedy of conflicting aims and purposes ends, from the point of view of the social observer, as a farce of wasted efforts, of hopeless endeavor, of absolute sterility? That, I take it, is the lesson (the word may be pardoned) of the play called Strife, which closes with a touch of real cynicism, which may be detected in The Silver Box, but which comes out very strongly in the later play. The Secretary of the Employers turning, just before the final curtain, to a Trades Union official, says in an excited tone, "Do you know, sir, these terms (of compromise) are the very same we drew up together, you and I, and put to both sides before the fight began? All this-all this-and-and what for?" Harness, the Trades Union official, replies in a slow, grim voice, "There's where the fun comes

in!" I can hardly imagine any remark more flippantly cynical, expressive as it is of the whole dreary inutility and hopelessness of a conflict which at the close leaves the two contending parties as they were before the fight began. That is, of course, the peculiarity of a play conceived in the modern fashion, as ending in an impasse or a note of interrogation. But it also explains why such a drama can never be popular in the best sense of the term, and must belong to the intellectual drama of a clique rather than to the nation at large.

It is worth while to enlarge on this point. Strife is undoubtedly a very fine play, admirably acted by such artists as Mr. Norman McKinnel and Mr. J. Fisher White, and entirely worthy of the reproduction which it has recently enjoyed at the Comedy Theatre. Nevertheless, the attitude of most people who have seen the piece is distinctly cold and negative. They are glad they have seen it once, they have found a real interest in the story, but they rarely want to see it again. It would seem that Strife does not belong to that category of work which enlists on its side all sorts and conditions of men. What is the story? Briefly, it is a long combat between John Anthony, Chairman of the Trenartha Tin Plate Works, and David Roberts, a representative of the workmen. Each side is presented with absolute neutrality and fairness. John Anthony is a hard, dour capitalist who has built up his industry with infinite pains. He has come to his own conclusions as to the conditions under which it can be run successfully. No more concessions must be made to the workmen; the more they get, the more they will desire. A stand must be made some time if the capitalist class is to be preserved; otherwise the proletariat will ride rough-shod over individual property.