The charm of the lighter passages fled; and the strong scenes,
though they again carried everything before them, yet discharged that
duty in a grim fashion, doing execution on the enemy rather than moving
them to repentance and confession. Still, to those who had not seen the
first performance, the effect was sufficiently impressive; and they
had the advantage of witnessing a fresh development in Mrs Warren, who,
artistically jealous, as I took it, of the overwhelming effect of the
end of the second act on the previous day, threw herself into the fourth
act in quite a new way, and achieved the apparently impossible feat of
surpassing herself. The compliments paid to Miss Fanny Brough by
the critics, eulogistic as they are, are the compliments of men
three-fourths duped as Partridge was duped by Garrick. By much of her
acting they were so completely taken in that they did not recognize it
as acting at all. Indeed, none of the six players quite escaped this
consequence of their own thoroughness. There was a distinct tendency
among the less experienced critics to complain of their sentiments and
behavior. Naturally, the author does not share that grievance.

PICCARD'S COTTAGE, JANUARY 1902.

MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION

[Mrs Warren's Profession was performed for the first time in the theatre
of the New Lyric Club, London, on the 5th and 6th January 1902, with
Madge McIntosh as Vivie, Julius Knight as Praed, Fanny Brough as Mrs
Warren, Charles Goodhart as Crofts, Harley Granville-Barker as Frank,
and Cosmo Stuart as the Reverend Samuel Gardner.]

ACT I

[Summer afternoon in a cottage garden on the eastern slope of a hill a
little south of Haslemere in Surrey. Looking up the hill, the cottage is
seen in the left hand corner of the garden, with its thatched roof and
porch, and a large latticed window to the left of the porch. A paling
completely shuts in the garden, except for a gate on the right. The
common rises uphill beyond the paling to the sky line. Some folded
canvas garden chairs are leaning against the side bench in the porch. A
lady's bicycle is propped against the wall, under the window. A little
to the right of the porch a hammock is slung from two posts. A big
canvas umbrella, stuck in the ground, keeps the sun off the hammock,
in which a young lady is reading and making notes, her head towards
the cottage and her feet towards the gate. In front of the hammock,
and within reach of her hand, is