the English stage, with remarkable ability. The
action was a little cramped by the smallness of the stage, but, for all
that, the play was seen under quite fair conditions, conditions under
which it could be judged as an acting play and as a work of art. It is
brilliantly clever, with a close, detective cleverness, all made up of
merciless logic and unanswerable common sense. The principal characters
are well drawn, the scenes are constructed with a great deal of
theatrical skill, the dialogue is telling, the interest is held
throughout. To say that the characters, without exception, are ugly in
their vice and ugly in their virtue; that they all have, men and women,
something of the cad in them; that their language is the language of
vulgar persons, is, perhaps, only to say that Mr. Shaw has chosen, for
artistic reasons, to represent such people just as they are. But there
is something more to be said. "Mrs. Warren's Profession" is not a
representation of life; it is a discussion about life. Now, discussion
on the stage may be interesting. Why not? Discussion is the most
interesting thing in the world, off the stage; it is the only thing that
makes an hour pass vividly in society; but when discussion ends art has
not begun. It is interesting to see a sculptor handling bits of clay,
sticking them on here, scraping them off there; but that is only the
interest of a process. When he has finished I will consider whether his
figure is well or ill done; until he has finished I can have no opinion
about it. It is the same thing with discussion on the stage. The subject
of Mr. Shaw's discussion is what is called a "nasty" one. That is
neither here nor there, though it may be pointed out that there is no
essential difference between the problem that he discusses and the
problem that is at the root of "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray."

But Mr. Shaw, I believe, is never without his polemical intentions, and
I should like, for a moment, to ask whether his discussion of his
problem, taken on its own merits, is altogether the best way to discuss
things. Mr. Shaw has an ideal of life: he asks that men and women should
be perfectly reasonable, that they should clear their minds of cant, and
speak out everything that is in their minds. He asks for cold and clear
logic, and when he talks about right and wrong he is really talking
about right and wrong logic. Now, logic is not the mainspring of every
action, nor is justice only the inevitable w