"WHY MARRY?"

The popular success of Why Marry?, by Jesse Lynch Williams, obtrudes a hopeful indication that our theatre is becoming civilised. This piece has been published by Charles Scribner's Sons-under the different title, And So They Were Married: and it constitutes a contribution not only to the American drama but also to American literature.

Mr. Williams has come forward as a satirist of marriage as a social institution. The defects of marriage are discussed and illustrated from the different points of view of half a dozen various and truthfully imagined characters. The author's art is indicated by his reticence in forbearing to express, ex cathedra, an opinion of his own. In answer to his initial question, "Why marry?", he finally says, "Why not?": and this rejoinder is the biggest joke of an unusually lively evening.

Mr. Williams is so much a public figure that it is scarcely necessary to inform the reader that he has been happily married for a score of years and is the father of three sons, one of whom is sufficiently grown-up to be serving now in the navy of the United States. This author, in his own experience, has never had occasion to quarrel with the institution of marriage. Precisely for this reason, he is ready to laugh-with liveliness of mind—at the causes and effects of matrimony. His wit is all the more engaging because it dallies lightly with ideas that are sacred to such persons as himself; and the suc cess of his satire bears witness to a corresponding nimbleness of mind on ine part of the theatre-going public.

"THE MADONNA OF THE FUTURE"

No idea is cherished more punctiliously by nine-tenths of humankind than the idea of motherhood: yet this is precisely the point that

Mr. Alan Dale has chosen as a target for satirical attack in his playful comedy entitled The Madonna of the Future. The heroine of this play is a very rich young woman, unencumbered with relatives, who desires to become a mother but does not desire to be saddled with a husband. In consequence of her convictions, she picks out an apparently eugenic mate and becomes, in due time, the mother of a nameless child. The play deals with her endeavour to reestablish, after this adventure, her position in conventional society, and records her ultimate surrender to that extraneous insistence which demands that she shall father of her child.

marry the

Mr. Dale, with agile mind, has dallied lightly with many intimations of immorality; yet his play is sound in thesis and reasonable in its resolution. The author may not care to have the reader furnished with the information that he is himself the father of a successful family: yet this personal point affords an underscoring to the lightness of his laughter.

"THE GIPSY TRAIL"

There is nothing more sacred in life than the miracle of being young. As Stevenson remarked, in his immortal essay on The Lantern-Bearers, "A poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid." To recall the poetry of youth and to crown it with the laurel of commemorative laughter is to achieve a satirical endeavour of the highest order. This endeavour has been accomplished by Mr. Robert Housum in The Gipsy Trail. In this play, a very young and very foolish hero [as foolishness is reckoned up by men much wearier and wiser than himself] is inspired to dive headlong into life and enjoy a series of madcap and preposterous adven. tures. Finally, however, the laugh is turned against him when he is caught and tamed and married by an utterly conventional young lady. One trembles to think of the future of this

ill-assorted couple:-but that is, of course, another story.

The play takes its tone, as well as its title, from the glowing song composed, in the heyday of his young adventuring, by Rudyard Kipling. There is ample evidence, throughout the dialogue, that Mr. Housum has steeped his mind in the collected works of the greatest living master of our English fiction. It is evident also that the author of The Gipsy Trail has trained his ear by reading lovingly aloud the chapter entitled Wayfarers All in Mr. Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. These annotations are intended in his praise. Too few of our American playwrights are endowed with ears to hear, or give evidence that they have ever read anything worth reading. Mr. Housum is a graduate of Yale; and New Haven should be proud of his developed literary taste, and his light ability to laugh at many matters that must, perforce, seem sacred to a mind so cultivated as his own. "JOSEPHINE"

In past years, most of the successful satires that have been shown on the American stage have been written by authors that were not American.

The reason for this fact is obvious. A successful satirist-so to speak-must have a grandfather; and the literary lineage of most of our American playwrights cannot be traced back beyond the second generation. In the special realm of satire, our native theatre is still admittedly provincial, and tributary to the primal sources overseas.

Our tardy decision to defend ourselves against the insufferable bestiality of the Huns has led us to regard their friends, the Austrians, as "alien enemies"; but critics of the arts cannot forget the fact that Vienna is, in many respects, a more cultivated capital than New York. Herman Bahr is the second greatest living dramatist of Austria. While regretting his nationality, no theatre

patron in New York who has enjoyed The Concert and The Master would be willing to deny his manifest ability; and in Josephine he has written a satire that is delightful to the civilised intelligence.

No historical idea is more commonly accepted than the image of Napoleon as a sort of super-human hero. This idea is ridiculed by Herman Bahr in Josephine. He sets forth, with sufficient plausibility, the leading points in the chronicle of Napoleon's rise to power, and, as each successive incident occurs, laughs lightly at the hero of the narrative. The play contains a memorable scene between Napoleon and the famous actor, Talma. The Corsican adventurer, on the eve of being crowned, realises that he stands in need of lessons in imperial deportment. He sends, therefore, for the noted artist who has never failed to live up to that line of Shakespeare's -"Every inch a king"-to rehearse him in the part that he is called upon by destiny to play. Talma studies his physical peculiarities and limitations, and finally invents the pose and gesture that have come down to posterity-immortalised by many painters--as most definitive of the imperial Napoleon.

The American public is still sufficiently provincial to be bewildered by the satirical intention of a European author who has dared to make a joke of the most tremendous man of modern times. For this reason it seems likely that a New York audi ence may miss many of the subtle laughs that have been planned and planted by the author of Josephine. Napoleon, no doubt, was a very human person and was subject to many of our common frailties. But, to most minds, the image of Napoleon calls up an image of France. And France is not a joke, and nevermore a theme for jesting:-not even among minds more nimbly satirical than any others in the world.

I. TRIVIA

THE AVIARY

PEACOCK Vanities, great crested Cockatoos of Desire and painted Daydreams what a pity it is that all these blue birds of impossible Paradises have such beaks and dangerous claws, that one really has to keep them shut up in their not very cheerful cages.

ACTION

I am no mere thinker, a creature of dreams and imagination. I stamp and post letters, I buy new boot-laces and put them in my boots; and when I set out to get my hair cut, it is with the iron determination of a man of action and intrepid will-of those Cæsars and Napoleons whose footsteps shake the earth.

THE EPITHET

"Occult, " "night-wandering," "enormous," "honey-pale,"

There lay the morning paper unopened I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon-the magical unheard-of, moony epithet which, could I find or invent it, what then would the earth's conflicts and quakes matter?

IN THE CAGE

"My own view is, my own view"I vociferate, as a Parrot in the great cage of the world, I hop screeching

II. MAKING THE NURSERY SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

Our Four-Year-Old is profoundly ignorant of history and political experience. He would not distinguish between a Tammany alderman and a justice of the supreme court. He is

"My own view is!"-from perch to perch.

REASSURANCE

I look at my overcoat and hat hanging in the hall with reassurance; for although I go out of doors with one ego to-day, when yesterday my individuality was quite different, yet my clothes keep my varying selves buttoned up together, enable these otherwise irreconcilable aggregates of psychological phenomena to pass as one person.

VOICES

"You smoke too much," the still small voice of Conscience mutters; "you are a failure; nobody likes you," Self-Contempt keeps whispering; "What's the good of it all?" sighs Disillusion, like an arid breath from Sahara.

I cannot tell you how these persistent voices bore me; but I can listen all day with grave attention to the plausible and wise voice which with polite but incontrovertible logic keeps on unweariedly proving that all my appetites and inclinations and actions are in the completest harmony with Reason's dictates and the Moral Law. Only I am a little staggered sometimes by the image of myself which this bosom-Jesuit forces on me: can anything of such exceeding brightness, so pure, so noble, so unspotted, really exist, really go on existing in this imperfect world?

Logan Pearsall Smith.

unaware that there are forty-eight States in the Union, or indeed that such things as States exist, or even the Union itself. The struggles of our forefathers, the founders of the Republic, to establish democracy and overthrow the rule of kings have not

come within his knowledge. The story would puzzle him. Undoubt edly he would feel aggrieved over the action of those heroic radicals who deprived our country of the trap pings of royalty forever.

Kings, in his experience, are invariably wise and good and princesses surpassingly beautiful and princes wonderful and brave. He is pleas antly familiar with their appearance and habits. In fact he can recognise a king at a glance-in his story books. The word democracy is without significance in his young life, but he is most enthusiastic about kings.

Each evening after he has finished his meal and while I am waiting for mine, he sidles up to my chair with the request: "Daddy, read me a story?"

If I agree to this he comes in hugging an armful of multi-coloured vol. umes, of which he carefully selects one, usually night after night the

“One day a hen was picking peas in a farmyard, under a pea-stack, when a pea fell on her head with such a thump that she thought the sky was falling. I must run to tell the king,' she cried.

"So she ran and she ran, till she met a goose,” etc.

Now in the world of reality no man, bird or beast who was convinced that the sky was falling would think of running to a king. He might call up the police department, or attempt to get in touch with Washington, or communicate with Mr. Edison or the Standard Oil Company (thereby probably sending the price of gaso line up a notch) or the Associated Press.

I picture to myself a king, seated in state at his evening repast, being

interrupted with this intelligence. Probably he would exclaim: "My word, what a bother!" and, after an interval, frowning petulantly over the food, would continue his meal. Or he might turn to his German consort (so many kings seem to be provided with German queens) and remark: "My dear, I am informed the sky is falling. Most annoying, I'm sure. And the lady, biting angrily through a peach stone or chewing up the stem of her wine glass, would reply: "Humph! I don't believe it. It's probably just another British lie,” and would hurry through her dinner and go out to distribute Potsdamerei among the officers of the royal army.

At this point in the narrative of Henny-Penny these misanthropic reflections occur to me, but my son is not troubled with them. To him, in the case of some untoward event, it seems most natural to seek the wise aid of some crowned head.

Among the illustrations in our edition of the excellent tale of HennyPenny is no picture of a king, but usually, as soon usually, as soon as I conclude the reading, the new generation rum mages through some other story book and holds up triumphantly for my admiration the likeness of a resplendent individual with crown and sceptre, clad in purple and gold and ermine. "There, daddy! There's the king!" There is a thrill in his voice!

We take up our Mother Goose and find ourselves in a nest of royalty.

When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing.
Wasn't that a dainty dish

To set before the king?

On the next page is that jovial inebriate, King Cole, and beyond him the melancholy tale of Humpty Dumpty, whose accident was 80 serious that even the king's restorative might could not aid him. Even a king, it seems, is unable to unscramble eggs. Just beyond this tragedy we find the itinerant feline: