back on the satisfaction to be got out of the author's dexterity
in the mechanics of his craft.

And here the critic's judgment is also apt to be more cold-blooded.
He recognises the crude improbability of certain details which are
essential to the tragic development of the play. The death of _Count
Vladimir_ (accented on the first or second syllable according to the
temporary emotion of the speaker) was due to the discovery of a letter
in an unlocked drawer where it could never possibly have been thrown,
being an extremely private letter of assignation. The death of
_Fedora_, again, was the direct result of a letter which she
despatched to Petersburg denouncing a man who proved, in the light of
fresh facts learned a few minutes later, to be the last (or last but
one) that she would wish to injure. It is incredible that she should
not have hastened to send a second letter withdrawing her charge;
"instead of which" she goes casually off on a honeymoon with his
brother, and apparently never gives another thought to the matter till
it is fatally too late.

However, I am not really concerned at this time of day with the
improbabilities of so well-established a tragedy, but only with the
most recent interpretation of it. And let me say at once that, for the
best of reasons, I do not propose to compete with the erudition of my
fellow-critics in the matter of previous interpreters, for I bring a
virgin mind to my consideration of the merits of the present cast.

_Fedora_ is the most exhausting test to which Miss MARIE LOeHR has
yet put her talent. The heroine's emotions are worked at top-pressure
almost throughout the play. At the very start she is torn with
passionate grief for the death of her lover and a still more
passionate desire to take vengeance on the man who killed him. When
she learns the unworthiness of the one and the justification of the
other those emotions are instantly exchanged for a passionate worship
of the late object of her vengeance, to be followed by bitter remorse
for the harm she has done him and terror of the consequences when he
comes to know the truth. And so to suicide.

I will confess that I was astonished at the power with which Miss LOeHR
met these exigent demands upon her emotional forces. It was indeed a
remarkable performance. My only reservation is that in one passage
she was too anxious to convey to the audience the intensity of her
remorse, when it was a first necessity that she shoul