splendid Puritans who howled about _A Wife without a Smile_? Could
it be--the thought is painful--that they did not quite understand _L'Age
d'Aimer_ and imagined that all the people were married? This idea is
simply humiliating to one of the craft. "Ne rien comprendre, c'est tout
pardonner" is a very novel view of a famous phrase.

Madame Rejane, it was stated in the papers, has expressed herself
shocked by _A Wife without a Smile_, and alleged that she would never
act in such a piece; but it may well be that her horror lay in the fact
that the parties concerned in the farce had been through a ceremony of
marriage, and that she would have accepted it as permissible if it were
correctly entitled _A Cocotte without a Leer_. The point is, not that
those who understand these plays or those who do not are affected in
their moral ideas by them, but that they give a deplorable picture of
French life and in such a guise as to suggest that it is a picture of
normal French life; unfortunately _L'Age d'Aimer_ is only one of many.

It is a great pity to use such a powerful vehicle as the stage for
slandering a nation. That there is a certain amount of truth in works of
the _Zaza_, _Sapho_, _Les Demi-Vierges_ and _L'Age d'Aimer_ type is
incontestable; yet so far as they are true to general life one can find
their parallel in this holy island. Unfortunately, whilst the fast
society of Paris is no bigger than that of London, and whilst Paris is
infinitely less in relation to France than London in relation to
England, the great French nation is generally judged over here by flashy
pictures of the fast section of Paris society, drawn, very often, if not
always, from the outside, by clever people too indolent to know that the
psychology of decent people is quite as interesting and dramatic as that
of the gutter-creatures of mere passion who dignify their cynical
desires with noble names, and, so far as the latest school is concerned,
fail even to reach the humblest concept of free love.

Scripture Plays

There have been some complaints about the attitude of several of the
dramatic critics concerning Mr Jerome's drama _The Passing of the Third
Floor Back_. It has been suggested that they have not welcomed with
sufficient warmth a sincere attempt "to broaden the basis," a phrase
apparently borrowed from the Tariff Reformers, to enlarge the boundaries
of the British drama, but have treated the production of the piece as an
everyday aff