Welsh Journals

as attempt, when the carnage is over, to infuse mystery and grace into Strife or The Silver Box. His less- known and less effective plays are in this respect more successful. The Little Dream is a conscientious attempt to be dreamily beautiful. The Eldest Son conveys a certain grace of background,-that atmos- phere of a country house which Mr. Galsworthy has so admirably given in his novels. The Pigeon is half- way between emotional drama as in The Eldest Son and the nagging admonitions of Justice. It contains good social satire and well-drawn types, especially an admirable Frenchman with at least one noble speech which clearly marks the writer's kinship with Shaw and Hankin. Ferrand is indeed the prodigal Eustace of Hankin, with less calculation but more alertness and profundity. The speech is Galsworthy's own expres- sion,-no other dramatist of our time could have penned it. Since I saw you, Monsieur, I have been in three institutions. They are palaces. One may eat upon the Aoor-though it is true-for kings-they eat too much of skilly there. One little thing they lack- those palaces. It is understanding of the 'uman heart. In them tame birds pluck wild birds naked Oh Monsieur, I am loafer, waster-what you like-for all that poverty is my only crime. If I were rich, should I not be veree original, 'ighly respected, with soul above commerce, travelling to see the world ? And that young girl, would she not be that charming ladee "veree chic, you know And the old Tims-good old fashioned gentleman-drinking his liquor well. Eh! bien-what are we now? Dark beasts, despised by all.' The Silver Box (1906) is the earliest of the plays. In brief, it presents a sinister contrast. A dissipated young man of fair position, and a dissipated young man of no position, both commit the same offence. Each steals something to spite those whom they dislike- the undergraduate a lady's reticule, the ex-groom a silver box. For the undergraduate everything is made easy by his father the M.P., by a discreet solicitor, and by the smooth negligences of the law. No one stands up for the ex-groom, and he goes to prison loudly protesting against the advantage given to his brother offender by money and influence. Construction is given by the ex-groom's wife, who is a charwoman employed by the undergraduate's mother, and by the fact that the stolen box is the property of the undergraduate's father. The woman is accused of stealing the box. After denying the theft she goes home to find her husband in possession of the plunder. While she is reproaching him, they are surprised by a detective sent by the MP. The third act is concerned entirely with the scene in a police-court, where the sinister contrast between rich immunity and helpless poverty is demonstrated with pungency. On the artistic side the play is very good. All the characters are alive and work together admirably to produce dramatic effect. There is nothing exaggerated or strained the collision in the last act is acute but quite naturally induced. The propagandist side of the drama does not fully concern us. It is, however, important to notice that Mr. Galsworthy entirely agrees with the comment of the unhappy Jones: Call this justice? What about 'im ? 'E got drunk 'E took the purse- e took the purse, but it's 'is money got 'im off--justice With this he agrees, and his whole aim is to impress us with the contention that men are not equal before the law. It is not his contention, but his method of handling it, with which we are concerned, and to which we shall return later. Justice is even more simple in outline-a plain heartrending story of a weak young man who, to save the woman he loves from a brutal husband, deter- mines to leave the country with her, and for this purpose swindles his employers. The fraud is discovered before he escapes the result is prison for three years and the utter ruin of his life and of the woman's. The whole second act is filled by an elaborate law-court scene, where Mr. Galsworthy's doctrinaire manner reaches its apotheosis in an extraordinarily long speech by the counsel for the defence, in which (here is the vital point) the view taken by the playwright himself is given with complete exactness as well as eloquence. On the stage it must take pretty nearly ten minutes to deliver-a porten- tous length. Sheridan, Robertson, and Pinero would have staked their reputations upon it that such a harangue would ruin any play ever penned. But what does Mr. Galsworthy care ? He intends to give the public, not what it wants or thinks it wants, but what it ought to want. The speech is not excused by beauty or surprising strokes, like numberless orations in Shakespeare. It has nothing but a direct and simple eloquence. In those four minutes the boy before you has slipped through a door, hardly opened, into that great cage which never again quite lets a man go-the cage of the Law." — that is the most moving passage. The third and fourth acts depict photographically the prison-life of this youth, and the maimed creature who at length comes forth with a ticket-of-leave. He cannot keep employment, he has to forge references, he does not report himself to the police; they come for him again, and he escapes only by instant suicide. In artistry Justice is the extreme case of photographic