 Section 1 of Arthur Wing Panaro Playwright. If any apology is required in behalf of this little book, it must be an apology not so much to its readers as to him who is the subject of it. Criticism is seldom apologetic, and yet, as it seems to me, it always ought to include at least a veiled petition that the critic may be absolved from the faults of hasty judgment and distorted vision. To make anything is hard, and in proportion, meritorious. To rail at that which has been made, to note with lofty score on its imperfections, to lose sight of its finer qualities is lamentably easy and, in proportion, contemptible. If, therefore, in these pages I should seem here and there to insist with emphasis upon a personal view, to lay bare a cavilling disposition or to discourse with over much assurance, I beg pardon in advance. The opinions expressed, the impressions recorded, are but the fruities of a single mind. They have one desert in which I may claim for them without loss of modesty. They are genuine and frank and honest. Assail my judgment, if you will, but so you admit that it is an honest judgment, I shall be content. If appreciations are permitted of the work of living writers of books, much more should room be found for a study of a playwright's labors. For in the present state of our theatre in England it is exceedingly difficult to form any judgment of a dramatist's work at all. A book you may read at any time, but you can only see a play acted when it pleases a theatrical manager to stage it. It is true that Mr. Panero has printed and published the dramas on which he desires his reputation to stand or fall, but the reading of plays is a habit which the public has not yet formed. I am not without hope, therefore, that this book may be found useful by many who value highly what they have seen of Mr. Panero's dramaturgy, but who have lacked opportunity to gain a full acquaintance with the whole body of it. It may stimulate their interest. It may, per chance, create a fresh interest. If it turns attention to the published plays, which are issued in a handy and attractive shape by Mr. Heinemann, and persuades people to read and form their own judgment upon them, it will have served its purpose. There is no doubt that granted a taste for the dramatic form of storytelling, their judgment will be warmly favourable. The talents which equip Mr. Panero for the task of writing plays would set up at least half a dozen average novelists, and had he chosen to throw his work into the form of novels instead of plays, he would certainly have won an undisputed reputation as a man of letters. That this title is not universally conceded to him, as things are, is a result of the muddle-headed view which is generally accepted in respect to plays claiming to rank as literature. Uncritical critics are too ready to declare any play literary if its author has introduced into his dialogue such scraps of fine and flowery writing as any Tyro. If he followed a sound and well-known maxim, would at once cut out. This of course is merely the point of view of persons ignorant of both what is implied when proper use is made of the word literary and of the elements of dramatic composition. But there are many people of wider intelligence who are in doubt as to the essentials of a play that may justly be lifted out of the ruck of pieces in durable only as acting dramas and granted the right to this much coveted and much talked about term. The essential distinction, to my mind, can be stated in some way such as this. A skillfully contrived play may appeal strongly to the emotions and enforce interest in its developments in spite of weaknesses and even absurdities that become apparent as soon as the curtain has fallen, as soon as it is considered in any other light than that of an entertainment calculated solely to keep an audience amused and interested for the brief space of two or three hours. Judged from this standpoint by the verdict of the majority, a dreary lane melodrama or a play like The Bells may equal and merit the most brilliant efforts of Congrive and Sheridan. The wittiest comedy of Molière or Dumas-de-Fille. The most poetical and most pregnant, even of the plays of Shakespeare himself. But the reason why the works of these writers have come to be regarded as great achievements in literature as well as excellent stage plays lies in the fact that they will bear the closest scrutiny, the most severely critical consideration in the study. That their pages glow with poetry, with imagination, with wit and fancy, with a wide knowledge of human character and human life. That they are founded upon observation at first hand and written with the pen that only genius knows how to wield. A play possessing none of these qualities. A play built up carefully upon a basis of a little humanity imperfectly understood and an intolerable deal of stage trickery only too well remembered. A play in which the characters are puppets, the situation strained and unreal, the plot mechanical, the sentiment faults may yet succeed in creating illusions which it is cleverly represented by capable actors and actresses. A play on the other hand that can lay any claim to the title of literature must create its illusions by natural means, by means that are not seen to be inartistic and crude as soon as we have escaped from the glamour of the playhouse. The characters must be real people, not stage people. The developments such as would occur in the greater world that lies beyond the small world of the hack dramatist. Blemishes that are perhaps unnoticed in an acted play, or that may be condoned in view of the limitations imposed by the conditions of the stage, are unforgivable in a book printed to be read and not merely to serve the purposes of a prompt copy. It does not follow that a play written by a man of undoubted literary talent will be a literary play. Indeed the contrary has so often been proved that it were a work of super-arrogation to adduce instances. A good novelist will, if he tries his hand at a play, probably write good dialogue, but very often the persons who seem to live in the pages of his novels are stilted and artificial on the stage. Very often his situations are either bald and undramatic, or else from a desire to make them broad and forcible enough to stand the test of the theatre, they are over-colored and sensational. Very often his power of writing brilliant dialogue is used without a due sense of character. In such cases the literary man's dramas read no better nor have any better claim to the title of literature than the efforts of playwrights who have gone through no literary training and find it difficult even to write correct English. It is not merely good writing that makes a play literary in the real meaning of the term. It is such writing as knows how to fit every speech to the character of the person who utters it. If the people are illiterate they must talk in an illiterate manner. Fine writing is the dramatist's worst enemy. To sum up then, a play that is to rank as literature must convince the reader in as great measure as it convinces the spectators who see it acted, but so influence his imagination that its characters and scenes are as clear to his mind's eye as if it were being interpreted to him in the playhouse by actors capable of appreciating and carrying out the author's wishes and design. Tried by this touchstone the plays of Mr. Pinero may not be great works, but they are most of them undoubtedly good pieces of literature, quite as good as the novels and romances of the period. Indeed, considering the difficulties against which Mr. Pinero has had to contend, their literary excellence, according to the canons laid down, is distinctly high. Mr. Pinero's dialogue alone gives him an indisputable claim to be treated as a man of letters. It is true, said Fox on one occasion, that I am never in want of a word, but Pitt always has the word. Mr. Pinero has to compare small things with great, the happy knack of finding the word. Add to this the humanity of the plays, the observation that shines through them, the striving after something better than the poor conventions and artificialities of the stage as he found it, and you have the secret of Mr. Pinero's position and influence as the leading dramatist of today. End of section one. Section two of Arthur Wing Pinero playwright. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Arthur Wing Pinero playwright. A study by Hamilton Fight. Section two. Biographical. Mr. Pinero's name is Portuguese. The correct method of opening this sketch of his career would be to trace back the history of his family into the storied past, but I will leave that to some more industrious biographer, merely mentioning that the playwright's grandfather was an English subject, one of the last tellers of the Exchequer, a post-long since extinct, and that his father followed the law practicing as a solicitor in London. This father regarded with no favourable eye his son's first efforts in dramatic craftsmanship. He looked to him to carry on the legal traditions of the family, and put him into his office where the young Pinero struggled with the intricacies of the law much against his tastes. By the time he was nineteen, however, he had made up his mind that he had a vocation for the stage, and he accordingly took an engagement in 1874 with Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, the well-known theatrical managers in Edinburgh. A pound a week was his salary, and he had to work hard for it. After about a year's playing of all kinds of parts at short notice, the Edinburgh Theatre Royal was burnt down, and the actor lost even his poor pound a week. However, he soon found appointment again, this time in Liverpool, and in 1876 he came to London to play at the Globe Theatre. He had made at Liverpool the acquaintance of Wilkie Collins, who was then about to produce Miss Gwyll, and who offered him a part in that play. Later in the same year he had the good fortune to be engaged by Mr. Irving, and he remained a member of the Lyceum Theatre Company for five years. He still played small parts, and sometimes played them very badly. In Birmingham he was once told by a frank critic that his king and Hamlet was the very worst king the town had ever seen. But this was early in his five years' experience with Mr. Irving. It is generally agreed that Mr. Pinarew developed into a sound utility actor with ideas of his own and a fair command of the means to express them. He considers that he established a theatrical record by playing two of the worst parts in Shakespeare, Gildenstern and Hamlet, and Salarino in The Merchant of Venice, for the longest consecutive runs ever known. In particular Mr. Pinarew complained of the agony of standing still for thirty-five minutes during the trial scene without speaking a word. Southern had much the same kind of experience, and attributed to it his talent for reposeful acting. In America I played second heavies, and if you had stood and listened to the first heavy man, ladling out long speeches for five years, you would get as much repose as I have got. But of course Pinarew was thinking all this time more about play writing than play acting. He wrote steadily, trying his hand at all kinds of pieces. In 1877 his first chance came of seeing his work upon the London stage. A little play called Two Hundred Pounds a Year was performed at the Globe Theatre on the occasion of the benefit of a rising young actor, Mr. F. H. Macklin. Ms. Compton, who is now well known as a clever comedy actress, and as the wife of Mr. R. C. Carton, also appeared in the piece. After this came Daisy's Escape and Bygones, both produced by Mr. Irving at the Lyceum. For the first Mr. Pinarew received from his generous manager the sum of fifty pounds. He had written to Mr. Irving offering to supply a curtain raiser whenever one should be wanted for nothing. For some time no notice was taken of the offer, but one day Mr. Irving said, Pinarew, if you like to write me a little piece for next season, I will give you fifty pounds. After the first performance of Daisy's Escape, Mr. Irving, perhaps without thinking very much of what he said, prophesied that if the young author went on as he had begun, he would be sure to take a good position as a dramatic author. Daisy's Escape, which was revived not very long ago with Mr. Lawrence Irving in the principal part, not only one for Mr. Pinarew, the good opinion of his manager, but also introduced him to his future wife, Ms. Myra Holm, an actress of ability and charm. It was not long before Mr. Irving's prophecy began to be justified. After his first decided success as a playwright, Mr. Pinarew gave up acting and wisely devoted himself entirely to authorship. His experience as an actor helped him, of course, immensely in the writing of plays, and it made him a capital speaker, as he has often shown at public dinners and meetings. But he would never have been a great or even a very good actor. Therefore, no one can pretend to regret that his connection with the stage was, in this respect, severed. The other connection, which binds up his name with the history of the English theatre during the last quarter of a century, has been productive of far happier results. End of section two. Section three of Arthur Wing Pinarew playwright. This is the Libra Box recording. All Libra Box recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraBox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. Arthur Wing Pinarew playwright. A study by Hamilton Fife. Section three. Early efforts. Upon Mr. Pinarew's early work, the plays which came before the squire, there is little that can usefully be said. Nor indeed is it necessary to discuss in detail any but the pieces which Mr. Pinarew has printed in the Animal Collection edition of his work published by Mr. William Heinemann. These are the plays by which he asks to be judged. To rummage amongst the immature productions of the plays when he was feeling his way to a method that may be interesting to a bibliographer, but has no attraction for the critic. Nothing would in truth be gained by a lengthy consideration of Mr. Pinarew's early experiments. His success has been so much a matter of willpower that the study of his beginnings yields little saved admiration for the strenuous effort which out of so little has created so much. There was, in Mr. Pinarew's first attempt, scarcely anything that marked him out as a playwright of particular promise. No evidence of a superior talent, not even exceptional dexterity. He was not one of nature's favorite children. He was not born with a silver tongue in his mouth. He did not lisp in well-turned phrases, or delight his schoolboy hours by searching for le mon juste. His writing never seems to have been done easily. You can always find in it evidence of effort of patient labor of determination to secure the effect aimed at. As he gradually acquired the mastery over his material, he learned the art of concealing endeavor. When you read or listen to the dialogue which comes so pat and seems so inevitable in Dandy Dick or the Gay Lord Quicks, you lose, for the moment, the sense of effort. But when you look into it closely, you can see how laboriously it has been put together and shaped into the most effective mold. It was in the money spinner that Mr. Pinarew first showed a trace of his power. The characters are commonplace types, and they constantly talk to the audience in soliloquy and monologue. But the piece is undeniably good stagecraft. It tells how a young wife cheated at cards in order to win money to pay off a certain sum which her husband has misappropriated from his employers. Not a very sympathetic motive, perhaps, but one that compels a certain measure of sympathy as Mr. Pinarew handled it. The wife is known as the money-spender for her dexterity at cards, so it is not an isolated slip on her part. Her father is a gambling-hell proprietor, and she and her sister helped the old scoundrel to manage it. The only character in the piece who is not more or less of a nave is more or less of a fool, and that is the young Englishman who is cheated and who forgives the fraud practiced upon him as soon as he knows its circumstances. Mr. Pinarew has avowed lately his belief that the materials for drama can only be looked for today in the upper ranks of society. He evidently thought so far back as the date of the money-spender, for by making this young Englishman appear, he gave the piece that aristocratic flavor which he declares to be essential to the plays of this age. The money-spender, despite its faults, is interesting, effective, quick-witted. The squire is more than this, and yet in a sense less than this. It is a play which begins so well that its tame and hackneyed ending is an irritating disappointment. This was the author's rough note of the idea on which the drama is based. The notion of a young couple secretly married, the girl about to become a mother, finding that a former wife is still in existence, the heroine amongst those who respect and love her, the fury of a rejected lover who believes her to be a guilty woman, two men face to face at night time. Query, kill the first wife? Here is an idea, certainly, an idea which treated in a serious and original manner would no doubt make an interesting play. It is true that men are not, as a rule, in doubt whether their wives are alive or not, the device is of the stage, stagery. However, something must be granted to the dramatist. No one need grudge, Mr. Panero, his postulate. The grudge which we do bear against him is not for starting with an improbable situation, but for handling that situation in an insincere, nervous fashion. The first act is wonderfully good. The exposition of the theme is masterly. We are interested in the characters. We feel that the situation is big with all kinds of possibilities. Then comes the scene in which the young husband and wife learn that they are not legally married, that between them stands the previous wife, supposed honestly by both of them to be dead. In this scene, you will remember, the husband is concealed behind a curtain. He has come in by the window while his rival is telling the story. This is the moment that brings us to the parting of the ways. Up to now the play has been full of interest, original, sincere. This is the crux upon which all the rest turns. When the teller of the sad story has gone, will the husband come out at once from behind the curtain and act as a man would in such circumstances? Or will he remain hidden while his wife has a scene all to herself and then appear and behave like a stage puppet? It is a moment of breathless excitement. Unfortunately, the playwright was not strong enough to follow the bolder course. The solution took the wrong turn. Insincerity laid hold upon the play and the rest of it is mere artifice, conventional drama of the depressing period of the early 80s. The difference between the first act, so full of power and dexterity, and the last with its comic opera peasants and lingering denouement, is truly pathetic. The final scenes are really no more than tedious devices to keep the story afloat until upon the stroke of eleven the death of the inconvenient first wife can be whispered and the curtain fall upon a fresh prospect of wedding bells. Query kill the first wife? Alas, the same melody which carried off the first wife proved fatal to the last act. What was the reason? Did Mr. Pinaro say to himself, Video meliora provoque, deteriora secur? Or was it simply that he had not yet the force of mind to break with the commonplace? The latter, I fancy. He arrived slowly at his full mental stature. In 1881 he was only in his intellectual teens. Besides, there was no one in 1881 to show the way to better things Mr. Pinaro's habit of mind has ever been to follow rather than to leave. The piece is said to have owed much of its success to Mr. Kindle. Of this I must leave my elders to speak. I have no doubt her beautiful art filled the piece with the fragrance of womanhood and gave poignancy to the passion and tenderness which Chance had so sorely betrayed. I have only seen Miss Kate Rourke in the part of Kate Verity. She made a charming squire, certainly, but she was gracefully pathetic rather than powerful in the emotional scenes. It is difficult, by the way, to believe that the people who made a fuss about the points of resemblance between the squire and Mr. Hardy's great novel, Far From the Madding Crowd, can have either read the book or seen the play. The superficial likeness between Kate and Bathsheba is their only point of contact. The rural setting, which was to walk the scent of the hay across the footlights, was surely common property among novelists and playwrights. It was after the squire that Mr. William Archer described Mr. Pinaro, the English dramatist of today, Samson Low, 1882, as a thoughtful and conscientious writer with artistic aims, if not yet with full command of his artistic means. Mr. Archer founded Mr. Pinaro's work, sufficient promise to warrant a hope that we have in this author a playwright of genuine talent, whose more mature work will take a prominent and honorable place upon the stage in coming years. A forecast of which Mr. Archer may be very justly proud. Section 3 Section 4 of Arthur Wing Pinaro playwright. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Arthur Wing Pinaro playwright. A study by Hamilton Fife. Section 4, farce. The squire, like the Money Spinner, suggested that Mr. Pinaro's talent would develop upon the lines of the serious drama, but for this development we had to wait a good many years until the production of The Prolificate, in fact, in 1889. The interval, however, was thoroughly well occupied. It brought forth what many good judges still hold to be the most characteristic fruit of the author's pen. Between 1885 and 1887 were produced at the Court Theatre, the Three Farses, the Magistrate, the School of Mistress, and Dandy Dick, that gave Mr. Pinaro at once a leading place amongst the dramatic writers of the time. In 1889 followed the Cabinet Minister and 1893, the Amazons, constructed on much the same lines. In this delightful series of Farses and in the Savoy operettas, we have the only two original dramatic art forms which England can claim to have evolved during the 19th century. As regards all other forms, we have followed. Here, we lead. When he wrote this series of what we may call the Court Farses, Mr. Pinaro recreated the Fars of Character. The Fars of Intrigue had, in 1885, long held the stage unchallenged. Mr. Pinaro had tried his own hand at it before he hit upon his later vein of pure horror. In this kind, the author's figures are but puppets who move according as he pulls their strings. The plot has them in an iron grip. They do not build up the story on natural lines as they go along. They are merely dolls used for the convenient presentment of some one comic idea. There are no surprises. No sudden turns of merriment in the Fars of Intrigue. You see exactly how it will reach its appointed end, just as you watch a train coming smoothly along upon its appointed set of rails, switching off correctly at the points, and turning awkward corners with easy assurance. In the rocket and in chancery, Mr. Pinaro's puppets were more lifelike than most, but they were really no more than lay figures cleverly constructed for the purposes of a ramified plot. His later work was very different. In the Court Series, the characters are astonishingly actual. They live and move and have their being quite apart from the demands of the plot. Indeed, they themselves and their idiosyncrasies are the plot. It was a bold experiment to set about amusing audiences which included so many admirers of magistrates and deans and cabinet ministers and school mistresses by showing them these high and mighty personages in absurd and undignified situations. And by turning upon them the highlights of satire and ridicule, yet this was the leading motive of each play, to make fun of various types of modern character by creating real people, exhibiting them in their actual surroundings and making them act in a highly improbable and yet just possible way. It required a great deal of wit and a great deal of tact to do this without arousing annoyance and resentment. Both ingredients were supplied by Mr. Pinero in just proportion. His wit made everyone laugh, and when you can make people laugh, they cannot. Even if they would, continue to be angry with you when you hear complaint that a playwright has made fun of this or that institution, the church or the law or the army or marriage or divorce. It simply means that he has not been funny enough or that he has been funny on wrong lines. Mr. Pinero had both wit enough to be genuinely funny and tact enough to keep him upon the right lines. The Dean and Dandy Dick, for instance, is so real in essence and so unreal in action that no one could be offended. He is a real person, but he is doing for the moment what a real person would never do. This is one of the conventions between the writer of farce and the spectator. The characters of farce should be as real as their creator can make them, but they must not act as real people would act if we could imagine an impecunious Dean suddenly discovering that money could be made by betting upon horses, commissioning his butler to back a horse for him, making a brand mash for the animal in his anxiety that it shall run well, administering it himself and then being arrested on suspicion of trying to poison a starter on the eve of a race. If this were really the playwright's suggestion, the only play to be made on such a theme would have to be a very serious play, almost a tragedy, in fact. But in this case, it is the very incongruity of the idea that sets our minds at rest. And upon this basis of incongruity, Mr. Pinero built up each of his famous farces. No magistrate we know would allow his largy stepson to take him to a fast supper and gambling establishment just about to be raided by the police. No schoolmistress we know would spend her Christmas holidays figuring as a queen of comic opera. No cabinet minister and his wife would be likely to act as Sir Julian and Lady Twombly act. It is highly improbable that any Dean would behave like the Dean of St. Marvel's. However much he wanted money for his cathedral spire. Yet, of course, it is just possible that any of these things might happen. We can just imagine it. And that is where the fun comes in. When people behave on the stage as considering their characters, they could never by any possibility behave in real life. They fail to awaken our interest. This is what weakens melodrama and all plays based on a purposeless sacrifice or an idiotic refusal to take a natural straight forward course. But we can all be interested in improbable, incongruous actions so long as they are logically led up and so long as we know that the playwright is enjoying the joke too. The persons in farce then should act always in character. They may do improbable things, but they must not do altogether impossible things. The immense superiority of Mr. Panero's farces to others, even of their kind, lies in his observance of these rules and in the solidity of his central characters. He has drawn them with so sure a hand that they remain real people in spite of the unreality of their actions. They would never behave as they do, but they do it so naturally that we are almost convinced in spite of ourselves. M. Brunetier, I know, has defined farce as the spectacle of a human will striving toward some end and meeting with some obstacle such as the irony of chance or ridiculous prejudice or a want of proportion between means and end. But then M. Brunetier bases his whole theory of drama upon what Stevenson called the struggle between adverse wills coming nobly to the grapple. C'est qui nous demandons au théâtre. C'est l'espectacle d'une volonté qui s'y diploie in tendent verse 1, qui a conscience, de la nature, de moyens, que la vie suffire. Thus when the obstacles to a human will are insurmountable as destiny, providence, a law of nature or a grand passion, we have tragedy. When there is a chance of overcoming the obstacles as in the case of a strong social convention or prejudice or a passion not quite of the grand order, we have drama or romantic drama. When two adverse wills conflict one with the other, we have comedy. And when, as I have already said, the obstacle to will is found in the irony of chance or ridiculous prejudice or a want of proportion between means and end. Then, according to M. Brunetteier's classification, we have farce. It seems impertinent to offer to disagree with so imminent a man of letters, but I cannot help thinking that, so far as any rate as comedy and farce are concerned, M. Brunetteier's definition scarcely covers the whole ground. Comedy, according to Mr. George Meredith, is a game played to throw reflections upon social life. Now there are ways of throwing reflections upon social life which are not based altogether upon a conflict of wills. And there is also a certain farcical in congruity of which M. Brunetteier takes no account. Apply his test to the Panero farces. It does not comprehend them at all. They are a form of drama quite outside its scope. May we not say that there is a distinct form of farce which is based entirely upon in congruity and arouses merriment by appealing to that sense of the unfitness of things which lies so near the root of humor. The difference between comedy and farce then is, I would submit this. Comedy shows us possible people doing probable things. Farce shows us possible people doing improbable things. Thus the school for scandal is comedy. She stoopes to conquer is farce. The relapse trenches upon farce. The comedy of errors is farce. The country wife is farce. While love for love and indeed all congrieves plays may justly be called comedy. Put it another way and we get almost the same result. Comedy depends more upon wit. Farce more upon humor. Comedy keeps us smiling. Farce sets us on to laugh. And this is done with the greatest success when it is founded upon some incongruity which is seen at once by all the world to be an incongruity. Of course there are farces which depend upon wit rather than humor. Such are the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw and the earlier plays of Captain Marshall. These would be comedies if the characters were possible people. Mr. Shaw's wit is so spontaneous that he almost persuades us his characters are real. But really they are only so many Mr. Bernard Shaw's in disguise. Captain Marshall's creations are a little more lifelike but his wit, on the other hand, is more mechanical. He brings four things new and old out of a well-stored notebook. Too often his fireworks seem to have been left out in the rain. Then, again, there is the farce of intrigue. And lately to that has succeeded the farce of misunderstanding. These, as a rule, depend either upon wit nor upon humor. But upon a large number of doors and upon the rapidity with which the actors are able to get through their lines and neither kind is any attempt made to draw character or to display the fruits of observation or even to make fun of the passing follies of the hour. They are born old-fashioned. They leap from their author's brains fully armed with japes which have done service so long that the mind of man runneth not back to the contrary. Thespies must have joked so in his cart and the clowns of an earlier age have clowned it not otherwise. Of the two orders, I think, the farce of intrigue is preferable. Here there is really something to be concealed. The husband really has deceived his wife. The young man has actually married the cook or the artist's model. In the other, there is no reality at all. The whole thing is a mistake. No one has done anything wrong at all. And you wish all the time that someone would be sane enough to say so and end the play, but they do not even pretend to be sane. They are merely impossible people doing impossible things. Mr. Panero then brought back to life the farce of character, the farce based upon incongruity, the farce which shows us in the most lighthearted and entertaining fashion, possible people doing improbable things. To understand how witty and observant these pieces are, how genuine the humor which inspired them, they need to be read as well as seen on the stage. Anyone who can read them without being amused must be like Mr. Fraser of Lockheen, who had never learnt to laugh. And then consider what unspeakable torture it would be to be obliged to read the ordinary farce or light comedy which passes muster with the average audience of the first three farces. Dandy Dick is, I should say, the best, considered all-round. The character is more developed and riper, and the situations grow naturally out of the idiosyncrasies of the dramatist, Personae. The magistrate is perhaps more mirth-provoking, but the fun is more forced than in Dandy Dick. There are signs here and there of a determination to get a laugh at any cost, and when you come to think it over, the idea of the young man nearly 20 passing as a schoolboy of 14 is not very delicately worked out. There is no need to dwell upon this, but I cannot help feeling that Sis Beringdon's relations with his mother's friends and maid-servants might have been touched upon if it was necessary to touch upon them at all with a lighter hand. However, this affects very little of the play, which is full of uproarious humor from beginning to end. It is interesting to observe that Charlotte Verrinder is, as it were, a first sketch of the inimitable George Tidd in Dandy Dick. You see it in this very funny conversation between Charlotte and her sister, Mrs. Postcott, in the first act. Agatha, now, we can tell each other our miseries are disturbed. Will you begin? Charlotte, well, at last I am engaged to Captain Horace Vale. Agatha, oh, Charlie, I am so glad. Charlotte, yes, so is he, he says. He proposed to me at the Hunt Ball in the passage. Tuesday week. Agatha, what did he say? Charlotte, he said, by Jove, I love you awfully. Agatha, well, what did you say? Oh, I said, well, if you're going to be as eloquent as all that, by Jove, I can't stand out. So we settled it in the passage. He bars flirting till after we're married. That's my misery. What's yours, Aggy? Agatha, something awful. Charlotte, cheer up, Aggy. What is it? Agatha. Well, Charlie, you know, I lost my poor dear first husband at a very delicate age. Charlotte, well, you were 5 and 30, dear. Agatha, yes, that's what I mean. 5 and 30 is a very delicate age to find yourself single. You're neither one thing nor the other. You're not exactly a two-year-old, and you don't care to pull a handsome. However, I soon met Mr. Posket at Spa. Bless him, Charlotte. And you nominated yourself for the matrimonial stakes. Mr. Ferring duns the widow by bereavement out of mourning 10 pounds extra. Agatha, yes, Charlie. And in less than a month, I went triumphantly over the course. But, Charlie, dear, I didn't carry the fair weight for age. And that's my trouble, Charlotte. Oh, dear. Agatha, undervaluing Aeneas' love in a moment of, I hope, not unjustifiable vanity, I took five years from my total, which made me 31 on my wedding morning. Charlotte, well, my dear, many a misguided woman has done that before you. Agatha, yes, Charlie. But don't you see the consequences? It has thrown everything out. As I am now 31 instead of 36, as I ought to be. It stands to reason that I couldn't have been married 20 years ago, which I was. So I have had to fib in proportion. Charlotte, I see making your first marriage occur only 15 years ago. Agatha, exactly. Charlotte, well, then, dear, why worry yourself further, Agatha? Why, dear, don't you see? If I am only 31 now, my boy couldn't have been born 19 years ago. And, if he could, he oughtn't to have been, because on my own showing, I wasn't married till four years later. Now you see the result? Charlotte, which is that, that fine strapping young gentleman over there is only 14? Agatha, precisely. Isn't it awkward? And his mustache is becoming more and more obvious every day. Charlotte, what does the boy himself believe? Agatha, he believes his mother, of course, as a boy should. As a prudent woman, I always kept him in ignorance of his age in case of necessity, but it is terribly hard on the poor child, because his aims, instincts, and ambitions are also horribly in advance of his condition. His food, his books, his amusements are out of keeping with his palate, his brain and his disposition. And with all this suffering, his wretched mother has the remorseful consciousness of having shortened her offspring's life. Charlotte, oh, come, you haven't quite done that. Agatha, yes, I have, because if he lives to be a hundred, he must be buried at 95. The school mistress is wilder farce than either the magistrate or dandy dick, but the wit of the dialogue and the neatness of the characterization remove it far away from anything like the rough and tumble variety of comic drama. Vir Quicket is a genuine creation. There is much more of him in the piece than of the school mistress herself, who, unless Mrs. John Wood had played the part, would have been almost a secondary character, but Vir would make up for any number of shortcomings. The contrast between the immense pomposity of his sesquipedalian verbiage and the utter insignificance of his person and character is delicious. His description of the small, lark pie, which was ordered for eight persons, is irresistible. The pie is architecturally disproportionate. His excuse for fibbing could not be improved upon. A habit of preparing election manifestos for various members of my family may have impaired a fervent admiration for truth, in which I yield to no man. As a foil to Vir, we have Admiral Rankling, the man of action, the admiral who is distinguished in the surface. Because his ship has never run into anything, the man of few words, who, in reply to the letter which tells him of his daughter's engagement, telegraphs from Walton the single word Bosch, Peggy Hesleridge. The article, Pupil, is a delightful little creature. Every line of the part recalls with pathetic force the personality of Miss Rose Norris. Sheba in Dandy Dick was another character which this young actress played with delicious humor. The scenes between the deans' daughters and the eccentric officers who make love to them are a long way below the rest of the play, both in for similitude and in humor. But Miss Norris carried them off triumphantly by the dainty charm of her art. The Dean himself, his sporting sister, George Tidd, Sir Tristram Martin and the Butler Bloor are each perfect. The constable and his wife are scarcely less. When you think of the magistrate, your memory goes back to situations, to the raid on the gambling establishment or the confronting of the unlucky Mr. Posket on the bench with his wife and his sister-in-law in the dock. When you recall the school mistress, it is the laughable ingenuity of the imbroglio that chiefly occurs to you, the piling up of misadventures and misunderstandings and the gradual closing of the net around poor Peket. But in Dandy Dick, it is the people themselves whom we remember and over whose peculiarities we smile. The plot we almost forget, but the characters stand out clear and distinct in recollection. They are like people we have known rather better than we know the most of our acquaintances in real life. The whole play coheres so admirably is all so much of a piece that one can single out no particular scenes for special commendation. It is the general effect that leaves its impression upon the spectator's mind. Yet I should like to quote one scene, both for its own sake and also to establish the relationship between Charlie Burrinder and Georgiana Titman, Sir Tristram Martin and George Tidd have just succeeded in rescuing the Dean from the ferocious village constable Noah Topping, Georgiana. But, oh, Tris Martin, what can I ever say to you, Sir Tristram? Anything you like, except, thank you. Georgiana, don't stop me. Why, you are the man who hauled Augustine out of the cart by his legs, Sir Tristram. Oh, but why mention such trifles? Georgiana, they're not trifles. And when his cap fell off, it was you, brave fellow that you are, who pulled the horse's nosebag over my brother's head so that he shouldn't be recognized. Sir Tristram, my dear Georgiana, these are the common courtesies of everyday life, Georgiana. They are acts which any true woman would esteem. Gus won't readily forget the critical moment when all the chaff ran down the back of his neck, nor shall I, Sir Tristram. Nor shall I forget the way in which you gave Dandy his whiskey out of a soda-water bottle just before the race. Georgiana, that's nothing. Any lady would do the same. Sir Tristram, nothing. You looked like the Florence Nightingale of the Paddock. Oh, Georgiana, why, why, why won't you marry me? Georgiana, why? Sir Tristram, why? Georgiana, why? Because you've only just asked me, Tris. Sir Tristram, but when I touched your hand last night, you reared, Georgiana, yes, Tris, old man, but love is founded on mutual esteem. Last night you hadn't put my brother's head in that nosebag. Mrs. John Wood was, of course, thoroughly at home as Georgiana, but the part is not one that plays itself. As so many of Mr. Pinero's women's parts do, Miss Ada Rehan was not a success in it in America, and when Dandy Dick was revived in 1900 at Winham's Theatre Miss Violet, Van Bra failed to get into the character the right touch of good-hearted loudness, which is Mrs. Wood's particular gift. Three years after Dandy Dick came the Cabinet Minister, another triumph for Mrs. John Wood, another popular success, but not another comic masterpiece like its predecessor. It is scarcely in accordance with the formula of possible people doing improbable things. We might accept as possible the Secretary of State who plays the flute and allows his wife to do the most desperate things in her efforts to escape from money entanglements. We might accept Lady Trombly with an effort, but Joseph Lebanon, one cannot regard as anything but a stock figure of low comedy. He is extremely funny, but he is never for a moment convincing. His sister, Mrs. Gay Luster, the pushy, fashionable dressmaker, is much more real. A low-class money lender with social ambitions would not behave as Joseph behaves. Accompanying social ambition is always some faint idea of social conventions. The vulgarian who likes to tell long, tedious tales about his own vulgar exploits has no fancy for what Mr. Lebanon excuse his humor, describes as the top of the social tree where the coconuts are. The very fact of the existence of social ambition implies an instinct, however rudimentary for what Matthew Arnold called fit and pleasing forms of social life and manners. Mr. Lebanon has no such instinct. Therefore his anxiety to cut an 8 on the frozen lake of gentility has no apparent motive, not even the desire to advance his financial schemes at the expense of his aristocratic acquaintances. No, Mr. Lebanon is not observed freshly, but taken for granted, and he ought not to be taken for granted because off the stage he does not exist. The rest of the characters, beyond the four mentioned, merely serve to fill up spaces. The cabinet minister is a play that can always be counted upon to amuse, but it goes no further than that. Vastly better in every way is The Amazons, produced at the court theater in 1893 and written after the second Mrs. Tankeray. Apparently by way of relaxation, Mr. Panero's art gained greatly, even in the writing of a farce, from his more serious effort to offer criticism upon life, the cabinet minister was loosely planted in the topsoil of character. Its relation to life was of the smallest. The Amazons has its roots deep down. It is founded upon eternal principles of human nature. In a jesting manner it brings us to face with realities. There is more insight into the heart of things in it. More sympathy with the beating heart of humanity than in any of the farces Mr. Panero had given us before it. Take the scene quite early in the play in which Lady Castle Jordan tells the old family, clergyman, her life's sorrow. Lady Castle Jordan, you knew Jack, my husband? Mention. Yes, indeed. Lady Castle Jordan, what was he? Mention. A gentle giant. A grand piece of muscular humanity. In frame the Vikings must have been of the same pattern. Lady Castle Jordan, and you remember me as I was 20 years ago? Mention, looking at her. I have no excuse for forgetting. Lady Castle Jordan, I was a fit maid for my husband. Mention. Perfect. Lady Castle Jordan, even in Jack's time I never scaled less than 10 stone. And he could lift me as if I were a sawdust doll. Old friend. What a son my son and Jacks ought to have been. She leans upon the gate. Mention. But it didn't please Providence to send you a son. Lady Castle Jordan, beating the gate. Mention. Come, come. Do learn to view the matter resignedly. Lady Castle Jordan, girls, girls. Mention. It's an old story now. Lady Castle Jordan, girls. Mention. Why despise girls? Many people like girls. Less my heart. I like girls. Lady Castle Jordan, you can recall Noeline's arrival. I was sure she was going to be a boy. So was Jack. So did Jack. The child was to have been christened no well. Jack's second name. Mention. Yes, I was up at the hall that night. Smoking with Castle Jordan to keep him quiet. Lady Castle Jordan, poor dear, I remember his bending over me afterwards and whispering. Damn it, Miriam. You've lost a whole season's hunting for nothing. Then the second. Mention. Lady Wilhelmina. Lady Castle Jordan. Yes, Billy came next. Jack wouldn't speak to me for a couple of months after that. The only fallout we ever had. Mention. But your third. Lady Thomasine. Lady Castle Jordan. Dearest Tommy. Oh, by that time, Jack and I had agreed to regard anything that was born to us as a boy and to treat it accordingly. And for the rest of his life, in our three children, there never was another to ride, fish, shoot, swim, fence, fight, wrestle, throw, run, jump, until they were as hardy as Indians and their muscles burst the sleeves of their jackets. And when Jack went, I continued their old training. Of course, I recognize my boy's little deficiencies, but I'm making the best of the great disappointment of my life. And I, well, call me the eccentric Lady Castle Jordan. What do I care? She sits, wiping her eyes. There is an undercurrent of tenderness and sympathy beneath the light tone. There is evidence in every line that the writer of it understands the hidden tragedies of men's and women's lives and is set upon creating character. Not merely upon scratching a little from off the surface aspect of things, the three Amazons themselves are cleverly distinguished. Noeline, the average nice young woman. Wilhelmina, the embodiment of all that is essentially feminine. Thomasine, the delightful tomboy, whose manishness never swagger itself into vulgarity. The three men are capitally drawn to. Though Lord Teenway's strains a little one's belief with his family pride even in the ailments that have been transmitted to him from the generations of his race who have made history. As he was played by Mr. Whedon Grossmith it was impossible to do anything but laugh at the ridiculous Lordling. But in the printed book he seems a trifle overdrawn. Andre D. Grievel is now and then just a shade too much the stage Frenchman. But then a Frenchman freshly observed and faithfully presented might be resented by the majority of playgoers as untrue to their ideas. All together the Amazons is a piece full of entertainment and charm. And as I said above a piece that strikes two or three notes of a deeper tone than we find in any of the other plays heroes category of Farce to sum up in a few words the qualities that give these Farces their special merit are the substantial reality of the character drawing. Not of the central figures alone but many of the subordinate characters as well. The natural manner in which the plots and situations arise out of the idiosyncrasies of the people the easy humor and wit of the dialogue they are not valuable as pictures of the manners of the time as the way of the world is valuable and the school for scandal and in a sense Robertson's more sincere comedies they contain indeed little enough social observation their milieu is the accepted land of theatrical make believe where people behave as an average audience likes to think it behaves itself they will scarcely live then as congrief and charitans plays live but they will not be willingly let die at any rate by this generation. End of section four section five of Arthur Wayne Pinero play right this is a labor box recording all labor box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit laborbox.org Arthur Wayne Pinero play right a study by Hamilton five section five sentiment respect for dates and convenience of arrangement both lead me to interpolate between the consideration of the farces and the serious plays of modern life some few words on Mr. Pinero's plays of sentiment perhaps sentimentality would be the more strictly accurate word to use in the lavender certainly and in the weaker sex the play right sought to draw the tear that lies near the surface to bring the feelings of those whose emotions may be easily stirred the times is based rather upon sentiment than upon an entirely humorous view of life its sentiment is more wholesome embracing than in either of the foregoing instances Trelawney of the wells relapsed a little into sentimentality as excuse that its fictitious date was that of a sentimental age in point of time the weaker sex was the first in point of interest it is the least of the four pieces thus grouped together the theme of a mother and daughter loving and loved by the same man is a difficult theme to handle with acceptance there is something in the idea so imminently distasteful to the mind of the average healthy person that a play dealing with it starts at a heavy disadvantage also it is difficult to reconcile such a situation with probability in this case Philip Leuster is obliged not only to have been absent from England for 18 years just time enough for the daughter to be born and grow up but also to have assumed another name a poetical nam diger under which he is known to the young girl our sense of the reasonable and the likely is revolted as well by lady vivacious sentimental treasuring up of the memory of the man she quarreled with 18 years before the date of the play there are women who treat men badly she admits that she was willful capricious cruel and then wander over their bad behavior for the rest of their lives but the dramatist who takes the same view of life ought never to treat such women seriously they should be shown as they actually are monsters of egotism going through life wrapped in a mantle of selfish complacency and self consciousness indulging themselves with the luxury of a wall that has no existence saving their own temporary imaginations put such creatures into comedy and let people laugh at them and go away feeling that you have cleared the air of a little Kent but do not ask us to sympathize with their smug pretense of emotion with their endeavor to persuade themselves that they are vastly interesting persons consumed by a passion of which they know perfectly well they are by nature incapable of course Mr. Pinheiro did not believe in his theme if he had he would hardly have provided the play with alternative endings for the provinces he made Philip Leicester Mary Sylvia after all in London the more rational conclusion prevailed if an unnatural situation can have any natural conclusion and Philip passed out of the lies of both mother he does it in the most approved manner of the sentimentalist deadly oh Philip is there no way but this Philip none you know it Dudley once my shadow is taken from the lies of these two women there will be light again I pray to time to do the rest time will bless somewhere there a man that I with Sylvia's sweet companionship and then the first laugh from Sylvia's lips will wake Mary from her long dream cannot you hear the audience rustling for its hats and coats and umbrellas and murmuring to itself about getting out before the crowd all sentiment what atrocities are perpetrated in my name I suppose sweet lavender is the most popular of Mr. Pinheiro's plays it is in many ways a delightful entertainment and it is perfectly easy to understand its attractions there is a great deal of fun in it and a good deal of tenderness and the characters are so pleasantly unreal that we judge them not according to our moral sense of their conduct but as beings who move in a world that is not governed by the hard facts of life as we know it the persons of the play are as Charles Lamb called those of the artificial comedy of the 18th century the fictitious half-believed personages of the stage and sweet lavender is a piece that allows us to escape from the pressure of reality its similarities generally explained by a vague reference to its genial humanity and kindness and sweetness I confess I failed to see the genial humanity of a man who ruins a woman and leaves her with a child to become a lodging house drudge I do not discern the sweetness of a frowsy old barrister with no occupation but fuddling and scandalizing his neighbors I do not quite know that I duly appreciate the human nature of the young man who persuades himself that the daughter of the lodging house drudge a child who so far as we see in the play has not an idea in her head will make him a suitable wife but then Mr. Pinero having chosen such characters showed his cleverness by working upon the general fondness for unpleasant people who have some good in them after all and really with Dick Fennel he succeeded wonderfully well of course Mr. Edward Harry's talent for presenting eccentric types of character was of great service but Dick Fennel is a character out of which any actor of parts can make a good deal to a certain extent it plays itself the actor helped the author but he certainly did not make the play Dick is too good to depend upon the personality of any particular player the old fellow is a genuine creation and the kind of creation you cannot help liking his reformation like Mr. Witterburn's remorse comes a little late in the day these third act repentance is always leave one in doubt as to how long they will last but then in this case at any rate we do not follow them out in thought beyond the fall of the final curtain Thackeray outraged all right feeling when he wrote at the end of Vanity Fair come children let us shut up the box and the puppets for our play is played out but no one could resent Mr. Fennel in Pretty Little Lavender and Mrs. Gill Filion in The Charming Many and the ghoul is a cucumber Horus being called puppets for puppets they are though it must be admitted that they are uncommonly flexible in the joints and lively on the wire that is the secret of the enormous success of Sweet Lavender the frank on likeness to life of the play as a whole of the playwright in making its details familiar and up to a certain point real plays that deal with the surface elements of life in such a fashion as to make the majority of people laugh and cry and as not to make them think will be always popular if they are written so cleverly a sweet lavender is written much more the playwright's neck is needed to deal acceptably with a piece of this class than to handle a serious theme with sincerity the very earnestness of an inexpert dramatist will sometimes carry him through in the latter case unless you are by nature a sentimentalist you must write pieces like Sweet Lavender with your tongue in your cheek I am afraid I do not carry Mr. Pinero with me when I put the times into the class of pieces depending for their interest more upon sentiment than upon humor and this introductory note to the printed play he says that in its design it is a comic play yet I am unrepentant to me the times appeals by reason of its sentiment and I fancy it appeal to most people in that way for look you we are not asked merely to laugh at Mr. Edgerton bomb pass in his nobri and cheap ambitions his wife is not drawn with the sole view of exciting ridicule and pouring contempt upon the figure that paper's wives cut in society no we are invited to extend to them a certain measure of our sympathy and what is more Mr. Pinero compels us to sympathize with them Percy Edgerton bomb pass is very human and real almost all through Mrs. Bomb Pass is entirely real a clever study in a genuine woman bomb passes unreal moments are few but he has them in the last act for example he is made to moralize in a preposterously lifeless stream I wasn't always as I am now it is getting on in the world that has ruined me I've thought of it all night through a self-taught man must always be a proud fool he has a double share of vanity the vanity of the ready pupil and the vanity of the successful tutor combined he is blown out till he bursts I say there ought to be a law to stop men like me from getting on beyond a certain point prosperity weakens our brains and hardens our hearts all true enough of a certain kind of parvenu but quite out of plays in bomb passes mouth it is the author speaking not the character but this does not occur often enough to spoil an admirably drawn figure no play that I know and scarcely any novel brings out the pathos of the new man's position in society more truly than the times the fruitlessness of all his drivings to take his place in a world that is not his the deceit and meanness into which his social ambitions plunge him the futility of all his efforts to make money do what money alone never can do that is to bestow contentment and happiness all this is shown to us without being too much insisted upon and we are left with something to think about when we have done laughing and the play is over many dramatists have pictured for us the disillusion of the man who will not believe until he has tried how much it is better to be lowly born and range with humble livers and content than to be perked up in a glistering grief and wear a golden sorrow no one who has attempted to do this with a light hand has done it more effectively than Mr. Pinero and that is why I call the times a play of sentiment and not merely a comic play what is it that makes most impressions upon us in the times not the purely comic scenes but those in which tears lie not far beneath the humor this one for example at the beginning of the fourth act when all the bomb past troubles are ready to come to a head at once the unfortunate Percy has been up all night trying to find reasons for shifting his allegiance from the conservative side of the house to the Irish a change which he has compelled to contemplate on pain of having his private affairs disclosed by a reptile Irish member Mrs. Bomb Pass old man do you remember 20 years ago when you just sold our business at Kennington and bought the two shops which were to grow into our present colossal establishment bomb pass rather as if it were yesterday Mrs. Bomb Pass and do you remember how we sat down together and I and drew up an announcement to our old customers our ideas used to flow in those days didn't they old man bomb pass I suppose it was because we were younger both together sighing he sits beside her bomb pass but this was when we took a house at Haverstock Hill do you remember Mrs. Bomb Pass do I remember our first home this side of the water bomb pass sadly how we have got on since then Mrs. Bomb Pass haven't we it was a nice house though bomb pass you think so because we did so much to it ourselves Mrs. Bomb Pass I put up the short blinds in the bedrooms with my own hands I know that I preferred doing it bomb pass I hung every blessed picture in that house I can almost feel the blisters from the cord now Mrs. Bomb Pass I wonder what we would think of it all today if we could see it again bomb pass not much after this Mrs. Bomb Pass I suppose not we've got on so since then haven't we bomb pass rather both together sighing she gently puts her hand in his Mrs. Bomb Pass our first big half pass dinner party do you remember bomb pass oh lord yes Clara never mind that Mrs. Bomb Pass well dear we were inexperienced then we gave them plenty to eat though a bomb pass it took you half an hour to write each menu Mrs. Bomb Pass part of the food was sent in I recollect and part of it was done at home bomb pass it doesn't matter much now many that were there won't clatter another knife and fork but to this day I regret part of it that was done at home that was the night too when we had one of our men from the shop with P bomb pass round his coat collar to announce the guests Mrs. Bomb Pass it seemed alright then bomb pass yes by Jove it's astonishing how we've got on since Mrs. Bomb Pass Percy oh man do you ever feel you'd like to go back bomb pass back Mrs. Bomb Pass I mean to keep our experience but to go back to the contented simple part of the old times bomb pass it's no good wishing that Clara when you've got knowledge you've got everything else it seems to me there's only one thing to do in this world to go on even if you're on the wrong road Clara my dear get on get on even if bomb pass were merely ridiculous the times could never be an entirely comic place along as Mrs. Bomb Pass remained in it there is a tragic suggestion about her the tragedy of a woman's life spoiled of her true instincts crushed of her capacity for happiness and content strained and twisted out of its natural shape she is a snob too but she is so mainly because she knows the gratification of snobbish instinct is her husband's chief pleasure when they have secured the Maharaja to dine with them she seconds Percy in scouting the idea that they should ask their friends to meet him I should like the best people in London she says to which Mr. Monague Tremble discreetly adds the best we can get she does not wince at the deception that is practiced with the object her son's foolish marriage seemed to be something quite other than it really is but there is a point beyond which she cannot pass when bomb pass wildly declares that their policy must be for the future self and that they must throw over their friends if they find it necessary Mrs. Bomb Pass sees the pitifulness of such a resolve she is still left some of the feelings of honesty and loyalty that animate her daughter barrel she cannot persuade herself that a position in society is worth all that it costs she it is therefore who puts into her husband's head the idea of giving it up her first thought is always for her husband she is always ready with a cheerful encouraging word beneath her vulgarity there beats the heart of a true woman of the other characters Tremble is the only one who leaves a distinct impression on the mind it is a clever sketch of the decadent aristocrat that Mr. Pinero gives us there are numbers of Tremble's to be found in these days acting as guides philosophers and friends to families of the Edgerton bomb pass type as jackals to the husband as social consulers to the wife the Tremble's are what Dumas feels called the vibreons of society creatures engendered from the corrupt artificiality of modern manners and morals one of Montague's greatest troubles is when for the first time for nearly 40 years he finds himself at 8 o'clock not in evening dress by dwelling upon his little peculiarities Mr. Pinero gives us a vivid portrait of this contemptible parasite he comes before us clearly with his insinuating manner his anxiety to please his habit of sucking lozenges his low cunning difficulties have to be met his selfish annoyance when his ingenuity fails to avert unpleasant occurrences Montague Trumbull is a creation a valuable footnote to the social history of the period the moderate success which Trelani of the wells enjoyed was mainly a success de curiosity if it had not been dressed in the costumes of the Kremlin period it would hardly have secured much of a hold upon those you may say perhaps that if it had not been placed in this period Mr. Pinero would not have written it as he did it is a fair retort and it does not make my statement any of the less true there was much that was amusing in the story of the actress of the mid 19th century who left her own Tadri little world to marry into the great world and found that the great world bored her to death and went back to her profession and found that making believe could not satisfy after her taste of reality and finally was reunited to her lover and lived happily ever after there was a good deal that was tender too but somehow the humor and the tenderness did not make very well it was a fairy tale and as such it ought to have kept our sympathies decidedly in one direction but in this somehow it did not quite succeed perhaps it was because the characters were so lightly sketched because we really knew so little about them yet this on the other hand was an advantage for if they had been more solidly blocked in Mr. Pinero's dainty handling of them would have seemed insincere as it was the characters and the dramatists treatment of his theme suited one another exactly and furnished a pleasant evening's entertainment and as this was what Mr. Pinero aimed at furnishing it is both more courteous and more just to admit so much frankly and freely than to complain that Trelawney of the Welles is not very striking as a play if one is inclined to take the latter course the reason must be sought in the hopes that Mr. Pinero had inspired by the character of the work which immediately preceded Trelawney when a man has just created a Paula Tangare and a Mrs. Evesmith and a Theo Fraser it seems a little like retrogression to toy with a Trelawney and a Sir William Gower but then this has always been Mr. Pinero's way it is difficult to believe that he is greatly interested in any one form of drama more than in the others he has never taken a line and kept to it any kind of framework suits him so long as it gives free play to his talents for construction and for studying fine shades of eccentricity in character he appears to care more about the way in which his neatness of hand enables him to do things than about the things themselves ideas are acceptable to him less for their own sake than for the sake of the use to which he can put them in drama this I think explains much that is otherwise difficult of explanation in Mr. Pinero's playwriting career the comicalities of the player many of the wells had more life in them than the sentimental side of the piece though more stress seemed to be laid upon the latter side by the author himself the ridiculous heirs of the Jean Premier were laughably hit off the low comedian was a very amusing little creature the heavy Tregidium and his wife represented a real type not altogether extinct even today the farewell dinner in the first act in the incursion of the soaked actors into Sir William Gower's drawing room during the thunderstorm in the second were exceedingly funny but the two later acts had less attraction it was not easy to take much interest either in Rose Trellani's love affair or in the efforts of the deserving young playwright supposed to have been modeled on T. W. Robertson to obtain a hearing for his plays Miss Irene van Raas performance helped to bring her to the front and Mr. Dion Brusico's strong sense of character made Sir William a striking figure and the eye was taken by the familiar strangeness of the ladies dresses with their enormous hoops and their staring colors and their white stockings and flat-footed elastic-sided boots but there was little more in the piece to call for discussion but there is it likely to be reckoned among the plays which gave Mr. Panero his name End of Section 5