Towards the end of Irving's life! English drama awoke. It is now, hardly excepting the novel, the most flourishing of our semi-artistic industries, Wilde, Shaw, Hankin, Synge, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Barrie, Barker, Monkhouse, Housman, Dun-Lenox Robinson, Ervine, Milne, ' Masefel ingham, Arnold Bennett—are few of the names which make Mr. Morgan's book look provision list "for an academy of letters. Rightly he attaches most importance to Bernard Shaw. It is time we stopped apologising for Shaw, stopped writing nonsense about his plays being entertaining but not Plays, and so forth. "With the exception of Ibsen, no talent $0 considerable and no native genius so weighty and honesty has stage in our time.
In sheer spirits Lady Grego the only Irish dramatist who has learnt nothing from him—excels him, but she cannot approach him for range or force. In pure orality Barrie's talent is perhaps more natural but Barrie has too often evaded problems that he should have faced, and escaped by a lucky application of humour 'a world which he knows to exist.
"Mary Rose," it is true, he kes amends, and in "Shall Ladies?" but he has ly less humanity than The Realistic Schoo!
After those two men comes Mr, Galsworthy, easily at the head of the realistic school, with Mr. Monk-'Mr. St: John Es It is difficult to know this school of dra "John Bull's Other Island," but it may well be that our accurate drama, even in such supreme ples as "The Silver Box" and "Justice," may seem as dull as the! plays of Joanna Baillie, of Sheridan Knowles, and of Westland Marston }do to us.
Mr. Galsworthy has deliberately denied to himself that glorious preservative against—time—fine beauty of words; and without work whose chief appeal is topical is apt to lose its attraction for future generations. The Irish dramatists of our time have been wiser—Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory, Lennox Robinson, Padraic Colum, Dunsany—their " plays, however fashion may change, have an wsthewhich should ensure them the theatre, just as similar qualities have secured immortality for the great masters of the Restoration drama.
Mr. Morgan's book is an admirable guidebook. He begins with Victorian drama, and is very fairly full, though he ignores the poetic drama of men like Beddoes, Westland Marston, "Jon" Taylor, and, strangely enough, Stephen Phillips. Phillips will never stand as high ashe did when his plays were first produced; but it is curious to find no mention of him or of Mr. Axthur Symons or of Mr. Laurence Binyon.
Mr. Morgan is most at home with! the domestic drama and the drama excellent in his discussion of T. W.
Robertson; the chapters on Shaw are full of enthusiastic and truthful appreciation; and he gives. good historical account of the rise rand fall of the Manchester school. He has less aptitude for poetry and the fantastic, and so neglects Mil altogether, and is not at case with Barrie and Dunsany.
The Dramatic Critics Sometimes Mr. Morgan makes me wonder whether he-is quite as familiar with his subject as his of names, famous and obscure, would suggest. difficult, for instance, to believe that these " "sentences. written were seriously:
The theatre was viewed with less suspicion by puritan orities. At] the same time dramatic criticism was raised to a higher level by such men as Mr. Clement Scott and Mr William Archer. This produced ite effect on public taste, which gradually developed and became at once more discriminating and more truly appreciative, "Such men as Mr. Clement Scott and Mr. William Archer"! Has Mr. Morgan ever seen what Mr. Clement Scott wrote about Ibsen? What sort of a man does he think: Mr. Archer ist "If he needed. old-fashioned critic to balance the most distinguished of the new, why not Joseph Knight? Clement Scott know something about acting, but nothing at all about the drama." His criticism was the greatest enemy to 4 decent theatre which the pioneers of the-nineties had to overcome.
The book' has a useful list of plays at the end, which should, in a future edition, be amended to! fnelude, not only Stephen Phillips, Arthur' "Symons, and Laurence Binyon, who have been already mentioned, but also F. Anstey, G. A. Birmingham, H. N, "Maugham, Sutton Vane, Gertrude Jennings, 8. Gilbert, Joseph Conrad, Eden Phillpotts, J. Gregson, Henry James, Cicely Hamilton, J. B. Fagan, J. K. Jerome, Gilbert' Murray, William "Archer, and Sturge Moore—"Daily News."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.