The recent revival of "Raffles" at one of the London theatres has set anxious people inquiring into the morality of burglar plays. In the February number of the '"'Nineteenth Century'' an article dissects the character of Raffles and urges that the linking together of criminal and sporting instincts is likely to have a dangerous effect upon imaginative boys, "A. J.", thinks the writer, the more harmful because he is a first class cricketer.
He holds boy audiences in virtue of his first rate capacity for taking wickets and renders them entirely oblivious to the immorality of stealing spoons. He preaches the captivating doctrine of excitement and sends them out of the theatre anxious for it in any form, g>xi or bad. There is much truth in all this, but would it not be rather hard on the "grown ups" if Rates were banned from the stage to save impressionable schoolboys from possible contamination? 'Raffles' is a good play and eminently suited to the personality of Mr. Gerald clu Maurier. Granted that it is dangerous, so are a great many books: where are you going to stop refuse to have anything to with them merely for that reason?
March. 17.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.