tten satire of the 'nineties, "Paris
Fin-de-Siecle."

I find it very hard to classify "The New York Idea" under any
of the established rubrics. It is rather too extravagant to
rank as a comedy; it is much too serious in its purport, too
searching in its character-delineation and too thoughtful in
its wit, to be treated as a mere farce. Its title--not,
perhaps, a very happy one--is explained in this saying of one
of the characters: "Marry for whim and leave the rest to the
divorce court--that's the New York idea of marriage." And
again: "The modern American marriage is like a wire
fence--the woman's the wire--the posts are the husbands.
One--two--three! And if you cast your eye over the future,
you can count them, post after post, up hill, down dale, all
the way to Dakota."

Like all the plays, from Sardou's "Divorcons" onward, which
deal with a too facile system of divorce, this one shows a
discontented woman, who has broken up her home for a caprice,
suffering agonies of jealousy when her ex-husband proposes
to make use of the freedom she has given him, and returning
to him at last with the admission that their divorce was at
least "premature." In this central conception there is
nothing particularly original. It is the wealth of humourous
invention displayed in the details both of character and
situation that renders the play remarkable.

It is interesting to note, by the way, a return on Mr.
Mitchell's part to that convenient assumption of the
Restoration and eighteenth century comedy writers that any
one in holy orders could solemnize a legal marriage at any
time or place, without the slightest formality of banns,
witnesses, registration or anything of the sort. One gathers
that in New York the entrance to and the exit from the holy
estate of matrimony are equally prompt and easy; or that, as
one of the characters puts it, "the church is a regular
quick-marriage counter."

I presume there is some exaggeration in this, and that a
marriage cannot actually be celebrated at midnight, over a
champagne-and-lobster supper, by a clergyman who happened to
drop in. But there can be no doubt that whatever the social
merits or demerits of the system, facility of divorce and
remarriage is an immense boon to the dramatist. It places
within his reach an inexhaus