rama,
and Mr. Moore no doubt would have attempted drama in the natural course
of things, even if he had not been interested in "The Independent
Theatre" and thus led to a situation in which consistency demanded that
he write a play. It was his articles on the drama, gathered into
"Impressions and Opinions" (1891), that provoked Mr. G.R. Sims to taunt
him into "The Strike at Arlingford" (1893). In "Our Dramatists and their
Literature," one of these papers, Mr. Moore, in hitting all the heads of
all the contemporaneous dramatists, so stung Mr. Sims that he said he
would give a hundred pounds for a stall from which to witness a
performance of "an unconventional play" written by Mr. Moore. Mr. Moore
accepted the challenge, and "The Strike at Arlingford," as I have said,
was the result, Mr. Sims having agreed to withdraw the word
"unconventional" on Mr. Moore's objection that he would be at the mercy
of Mr. Sims' judgment if the word was retained. "The Independent
Theatre" played the play and Mr. Sims paid the money. It was perhaps
just as well for Mr. Moore that the adjective was withdrawn, for the
play was little less conventional than "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" or
"Sowing the Wind," to mention two successes of that year by play-makers
that took their art a little more seriously than Mr. Sims. In a way,
too, "The Strike at Arlingford" is unoriginal. Lady Ann Travers is only
a more fortunate Hedda Gabler who in the end accepts the protection of
her Chancellor Brack, the capitalist Baron Steinbach, after her Loevberg
turned labor agitator, John Reid has, like his prototype, made a wreck
of his life. "The Strike at Arlingford" has its excellences: its plot is
logically unfolded; it is believable; it is true to human nature; it has
moments of intensity. Had Mr. Moore power of dialogue it might have been
a fine play, for the characterization is what one would expect from so
conscientious a depicter of life as Mr. Moore, and the problem, a man's
choice between his love and his duty, one that has never failed to
appeal to men. Mr. Moore is careful to tell us that, in his own
conception of the play, "the labor dispute is an externality to which I
attach little importance."

Its performance and publication, though neither event was of very much
more than journalistic importance, served to give Mr. Moore something of
a position as an authority on the drama, coming as they did after his
association, since 1891, with "The Independent