t this theme goes far toward explaining the
remarkable vogue of this admirable comedy. Without a theme so clear,
agreeable and interpretive, a play equally skillful would never have had
like fortune.

And this theme in a play, as was hinted, must, to be acceptable, express
the author's personal opinion, honestly, fearlessly put forth. If it be
merely what he ought to think in the premises, what others
conventionally think, what it will, in his opinion, or that of the
producer of the play, pay to think, the drama will not ring true, and
will be likely to fail, even if the technic of a lifetime bolster it up.
It must embody a truth relative to the writer, a fact about life as he
sees it, and nothing else. A theme in a play cannot be abstract truth,
for to tell us of abstract truth is the _metier_ of the philosopher, and
herein lies his difference from the stage story-teller. Relative truth
is the play-maker's aim and the paramount demand upon him is that he be
sincere. He must give a view of life in his story which is an honest
statement of what human beings and human happenings really are in his
experience. If his experience has been so peculiar or unique as to make
his themes absurd and impossible to people in general, then his play
will pretty surely fail. He pays the penalty of his warped, or too
limited or degenerate experience. No matter: show the thing as he sees
it and knows it, that he must; and then take his chances.

And so convincing, so winning is sincerity, that even when the view that
lies at the heart of the theme appears monstrous and out of all belief,
yet it will stand a better chance of acceptance than if the author had
trimmed his sails to every wind of favor that blows.

Mr. Kennedy wrote an odd drama a few years ago called _The Servant in
the House_, in which he did a most unconventional thing in the way of
introducing a mystic stranger out of the East into the midst of an
ordinary mundane English household. Anybody examining such a play in
advance, and aware of what sort of drama was typical of our day, might
have been forgiven had he absolutely refused to have faith in such a
work. But the author was one person who did have faith in it; he had a
fine theme: the idea that the Christ ideal, when projected into daily
life--instead of cried up once a week in church--and there acted on, is
efficacious. He had an unshaken belief in this idea. And he conquered,
because he dared to substitute for the co