art of their keen
sense of the game. They talk at cross-purposes, as they wander in and
out of the garden terrace; they plan out their lives, and life comes and
surprises them by the way. Then they speak straight out of their hearts,
sometimes crudely, sometimes with a naivete which seems laughable; and
they act on sudden impulses, accepting the consequences when they come.
They live an artificial life, knowing lies to be lies, and choosing
them; they are civilised, they try to do their duty by society; only, at
every moment, some ugly gap opens in the earth, right in their path, and
they have to stop, consider, choose a new direction. They seem to go
their own way, almost without guiding; and indeed may have escaped
almost literally out of their author's hands. The last scene is an
admirable episode, a new thing on the stage, full of truth within its
own limits; but it is an episode, not a conclusion, much less a
solution. Mr. Barker can write: he writes in short, sharp sentences,
which go off like pistol-shots, and he keeps up the firing, from every
corner of the stage. He brings his people on and off with an
unconventionality which comes of knowing the resources of the theatre,
and of being unfettered by the traditions of its technique. The scene
with the gardener in the second act has extraordinary technical merit,
and it has the art which conceals its art. There are other inventions in
the play, not all quite so convincing. Sometimes Mr. Barker, in doing
the right or the clever thing, does it just not quite strongly enough to
carry it against opposition. The opposition is the firm and narrow mind
of the British playgoer. Such plays as Mr. Barker's are apt to annoy
without crushing. The artist, who is yet an imperfect artist, bewilders
the world with what is novel in his art; the great artist convinces the
world. Mr. Barker is young: he will come to think with more depth and
less tumult; he will come to work with less prodigality and more mastery
of means. But he has energy already, and a sense of what is absurd and
honest in the spectacle of this game, in which the pawns seem to move
themselves.

II. "THE LADY FROM THE SEA"

On seeing the Stage Society's performance of Ibsen's "Lady from the
Sea," I found myself wondering whether Ibsen is always so unerring in
his stagecraft as one is inclined to assume, and whether there are not
things in his plays which exist more satisfactorily, are easier to
believe i