upon them, and that of late there have been signs of the growth of a
thoughtful, serious drama in England. ["Hear! Hear!"] I venture to
think, too, that these signs are not in any sense exotics; I make bold
to say that they do not consist of mere imitations of certain models; I
submit that they are not as a few critics of limited outlook and
exclusive enthusiasm would have us believe--I submit that they are not
mere echoes of foreign voices. I submit that the drama of the present
day is the natural outcome of our own immediate environment, of the life
that closely surrounds us. And, perhaps, it would be only fair to allow
that the reproaches which have been levelled for so long a period at the
British theatre--the most important of these reproaches being that it
possessed no drama at all--perhaps I say we may grant in a spirit of
charity that these reproaches ought not to be wholly laid at the door of
the native playwright. If it be true that he has been in the habit of
producing plays invariably conventional in sentiment, trite in comedy,
wrought on traditional lines, inculcating no philosophy, making no
intellectual appeal whatever, may it not be that the attitude of the
frequenters of the theatre has made it hard for him to do anything else?
If he has until lately evaded in his theatrical work any attempt at a
true criticism of life, if he has ignored the social, religious, and
scientific problems of his day, may we not attribute this to the fact
that the public have not been in the mood for these elements of
seriousness in their theatrical entertainment, have not demanded these
special elements of seriousness either in plays or in novels? But
during recent years, the temper of the times has been changing; it is
now the period of analysis, of general restless inquiry; and as this
spirit creates a demand for freer expression on the part of our writers
of books, so it naturally permits to our writers of plays a wider scope
in the selection of subject, and calls for an accompanying effort of
thought, a large freedom of utterance.

At this moment, perhaps, the difficulty of the dramatist lies less in
paucity of subject, than in an almost embarrassing wealth of it. The
life around us teems with problems of conduct and character, which may
be said almost to cry aloud for dramatic treatment, and the temptation
that besets the busy playwright of an uneasy, an impatient age, is that
in yielding himself to the allurements of c