"Tue PLAYS oF JOHN Dainxwaren" 2 ole, B5 Ga each. (Sidewick The re-reading of Mr. Drink-plays in a collected edition offers no solution of the problems of his immense popularity. Judged by the standards usual in such circumstan work has none of the qualities which are assumed to} be the equipment of best-sellers} and longest-runners. Sex, as subject, is all but absent from his plays; of farcical humour there is rone; of comedy very little; of intellectual wit none. There is no meretricious sentiment, or truckling, or violence of thought or expression; and yet his plays run for hundreds of nights and sell to the tune of 20,000 to 40,000 copies.
Seeking for a solution outside the intrinsic worth of the plays, one comes upon this fact: that the production of "Abraham Lincoln," with] which Mr. Drinkwater first fired the popular imagination, synchronized with a moment in our national his tory when our minds (and our hearts) were peculiarly prepared to receive it. The Great War was trailing to its end. War-weariness was heavy upon combatants and noncombatants alike. The glamour of had long since passed, and -evet those who, four earlier, ha been thrilled by the excitement of it and had offered themselves. with generous enthusiasm in ity service, beginning to doubt. They were eager to cling to anything which offered: them some solace for the tragic situation in which they found themselves.
The theatre in those dark days was given over to the providers of rubbish—spy-plays, crook drama, brazen revues and the like—anything that would refresh Tommies
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.