Tony and Amy can go on quite cheerfully. It is the difference between the twentieth and the thirteenth century, perhaps. But the point is that both plays, great tragedy and competent melodrama, ring true to their own standards.

Of course popular approval does not settle the matter. Audiences go to melodramas like "Rain" or "White Cargo" because these plays allow their hearers to indulge vicariously in emotion which the auditors would perhaps hesitate to acknowledge. But it is obvious, despite excellent acting, that "Rain" does not have a "satisfactory" ending and that we do not follow either Sadie Thompson or the minister into a future state, mundane or subterrestrial, with confidence. We do believe in the possibility of a woman's worshiping something pure in a man and being willing to give up her passion in order to keep that ideal, for we have seen it made the theme of a fine melodrama in Mr. Sheldon's "Romance". When, however, the authors of "Rain" used that motive for their play, they left the charm and the verity both behind them. Maugham's story on which the play was based was sufficiently sordid and unnecessary, but at least it did not send Miss Thompson off to a cheerful domesticity after the minister had cut his throat!

Mr.

For melodrama has its own laws, not so clearly felt but still real. When any artist deliberately frees himself from certain restrictions, he either takes on others or he observes even more faith

fully the ones he preserves. We are willing to forgive the writer of melodrama if he heightens the sentiment a bit or even exaggerates the passion. But not only must he make the ending satisfactory to us, he must also provide situations that are well knit together the action must be sustained, the illu

sion of probability must be preserved. For remember, it is an illusion. Tragedy and comedy have their logic, for they are founded on the very facts of life; their characters speak for themselves. Fine tragedy and fine comedy are "actor proof" even a high school dramatic club cannot kill "The Rivals". But have you seen what an incompetent stock company can do to "The Easiest Way"? Not even Miss Starr has ever been able to convince me that the Laura of the first act is the same woman as the Laura of the second or of the third, and when I read the play I am still less convinced. Mr. Walter perhaps thought he was writing tragedy when he wrote "The Easiest Way" but he was not. The inconsistency of Laura's actions. turns the play, not into melodrama, but into a category outside of art. Compare the deftness with which a skilled writer of melodramas, Martin Brown, leads us through the scenes of "Cobra" or "The Lady", so intent on the action that we swallow any improbability. Both plays were extremely well acted; the sinuous heroine in "Cobra" was so real that she was almost uncanny. Once we granted the necessary concessions to probability, everything went along logically enough. But in "White Cargo" the whole artificial structure of poor melodrama is shown at its height. I went to see this play with one of the oldest and best informed teachers of dramatic literature in America, who has a broad tolerance based on wide historical knowledge of the drama. He became so indignant during the second act that he grew articulate, and I had difficulty in keeping him in his seat. We had not expected much; it was summertime and we were in a mood to be entertained. But the joints creaked so harshly and the actors shouted at us so shrilly that the illusion never blossomed. And when the maud

lin doctor interrupted the progress of the play to tell the story of his life, which had nothing to do with the plot if there was a plot-we felt a sense of outrage, for we were convinced that the playwright and the director did not know their business.

How different was Mr. Milton's stage direction of "Outward Bound". It is a great satisfaction to those who are watching the progress of our theatre to notice the growth of a profession of expert stage direction which emphasizes the play rather than the star actor. In that development lies the strongest hope of our drama. Here, in "Outward Bound", was an utterly impossible an utterly impossible situation, a group of souls who thought they were alive but were really dead. How easily it might have become intolerable can by appreciated by anyone who was fortunate enough to see the burlesque of the play which ornamented the delightful "Grand Street Follies" at the Neighborhood Playhouse. But the audience was caught and held at once by the realism of every detail of acting and setting. The playwright knew well that audiences will forgive mystery if they are admitted to his confidence before the characters in the play are all aware of it. The hearer wants to become identified with the solution and to share in the venture. Sutton Vane knew too that audiences will not resent impossibilities - but improbabilities they do not like. That is why he planted the suggestion of the abandoned dog in the first act and built up the last act upon it—and almost but not quite succeeded. Mr. Vane's father wrote melodramas many years ago, but the art of the melodrama has progressed since then. Those were the days when its old accompaniment, "soft music", was brought in to lull our critical judgment to sleep, to arouse our emotions so that they

would forgive the absurdities which it seemed necessary to employ. Music is

no longer needed in the new art of melodrama.

If we can take the form back into respectability, perhaps it may reward us. Its essential quality, freedom, is the life of art. Mr. O'Neill, Mr. Emery, and Miss Vollmer in tragedy, Mr. Kaufman, Mr. Connelly, Mr. Craven, and Mr. Kelly in comedy, are shattering delightfully the old academic conceptions. Two years ago Maxwell Anderson wrote a fine sombre tragedy of the northwest, "White Desert", but it failed to win popular support. Then he turned to melodrama, and gave us a provocative play in "What Price Glory?" Would Mr. Anderson and Mr. Stallings have tried to write a tragedy of war? Probably not. Could they have given us a play which causes us to think so hard, if they had built it up on regular lines of comedy? Probably not. The play rises to the climax in the dugout scene, and there is a grim note throughout the drama which holds one despite its weaknesses. its weaknesses. Yet it is essentially melodrama. I am not disposed to be led into the controversy concerning its reality- I have had equally good testimony on both sides—but it keeps one law of melodrama perfectly. Whether or not the relations of Captain Flagg and Top Sergeant Quirt are impossible, once they are established they are carried out consistently to the end. We may scout the idea that a French tavern keeper would leave his café unguarded while American soldiers pour out their drinks ad libitum. But these and other impossibilities are forgotten in the more interesting probability that when the call to duty comes, the American soldier, no matter what his condition, will respond without display. So the ending of "What Price Glory?" is "satisfactory" to the audience.

Perhaps I am a bit whimsical in defending the species; perhaps it can take care of itself. But I rather resent the criticism which called "The Shame Woman" a melodrama, as if it were a term of reproach. "The Shame Woman" was a tragedy, and it would have been a very much finer thing if it had been played as Miss Vollmer wrote it; but the critic who thought that the term "melodrama" meant a poor tragedy was using words recklessly. I found an unexpected ally not long ago in a forgotten dramatist, William Charles White, whose plays were acted in Boston about 1811. In the preface to "The Poor Lodger" he tells us that "the alternation of comic and serious scenes produces that variety which is universally pleasing; and like light and shade in a picture, creates that relief,

which is the soul both of painting and poetry; nor will it be denied that the mixed drama has been found by long experience, to be the most faithful mirror of nature and of life."

I think he was right. From the days of "Romeo and Juliet", yes, even from the earlier centuries of the miracle play, we have loved the drama that made us both cry and laugh-that thrilled us with a sense of danger, lifted us to heights of passion and self sacrifice, cheered us now and then with a laugh or a smile, while all the time we knew that the hero and the heroine were safe and that virtue would be rewarded and vice would be punished in the last act. For after all, tragedy comes to us and comedy, too, but life is for the most part just melodrama. And that is why we love it.

E seen everything and

was one of strict educational routine,

raeli of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, at thirty seven. And this knowledge of men and of affairs which he had so steadily assimilated was what enabled him to play the great part he did play when at the mature age of fifty nine years he commenced his short span as ruler of Great Britain and the Dominions beyond the

seas.

Never was a prince so rigidly educated by his parents. From his nursery days he was doomed to submit to a colossal educational regimen the study of which was for many years the chief concern of his father, the Prince Consort.

Nothing was to be left to chance. Unceasing surveillance by carefully chosen tutors who should answer Stockmar's definition of "persons morally good, intelligent, well informed and experienced, who fully enjoyed the parental confidence" was to check undesirable tendencies of adolescence. He was to be kept aloof from companions of his own age. Habits of mental concentration were to be fostered under fitting direction by unremitting study of literature, science, history, archæology and art. Sport and amusement of a sober kind were permitted but were to be strictly rationed and supervised. Freedom in any relation of life was to be sternly denied to the youth.

The year before he entered Oxford the Prince was sent by his father to Edinburgh, there to be crammed by tutors in the varied subjects of applied science, ancient history, Italian, French, German, law, modern history, Greek, and Roman history. His varsity life

authorized and approved by his father or his governor, and such relaxations took place always in the company of solemn people much older than himself. Even smoking at this time was forbidden him.

Before graduation from Oxford the Prince had visited the United States of America and also Canada, and on his return from these visits "even General Bruce his Governor pointed out to the Prince Consort that the light of publicity in which the Prince had lived could not be suddenly extinguished and that the continuance of the schoolboy discipline was out of keeping with the growth of circumstance". Nevertheless the Prince returned to Oxford, the Prince Consort meanwhile planning for him further studies at the sister university of Cambridge. It was from there that the Prince was called to the bedside of his dying father in December, 1861. And all this time the Prince had one idea for his own future his one wish was to be a soldier.

On his visit to this country he was to figure only "in the character of a student", was to adopt the incognito title of Baron of Renfrew, was to study American life; and save at Washington, where he might enjoy the President's hospitality, was to lodge in hotels and not in private houses. But the Prince's own simple letters to his mother, Queen Victoria, best give his impressions of the New World.