In the illuminating lecture on Stevenson as a writer of plays delivered by Sir Arthur Pinero in 1903 before the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, the confessions contained in 'A Penny Plain and Two Pence Colored' are skilfully employed to explain Stevenson's flat failure as a playwright. Many of his ardent admirers must have wondered why it was that he adventured four times into dramatic authorship, only to undergo a fourfold shipwreck. Yet Sir James Barrie and Mr. John Galsworthy, essayists and novelists at first, as Stevenson was, strayed successfully from prose fiction into the acted drama. Was not Stevenson as anxious for this theatrical triumph as any one of these? Was he not as richly dowered with dramatic power, as inventive, as responsive to opportunity, as ready to master a new craft? Why, then, did he fail where they have succeeded? For these baffling questions Sir Arthur Pinero has an acceptable answer. Stevenson was unable to establish himself as a play-maker, first, because he did not take the art of play-making seriously; he did not put his full strength in it, mind and soul and body, contenting himself when he was a man with playing at play-making as he had played with his toy theater when he was a boy. The second cause of his disappointment as a dramatist was due to the abiding influence of this toy theater, and to the fact that the pieces he attempted were planned in rivalry with the 'Miller and His Men,' and therefore that they were hopelessly out of date before they were conceived. (There is a third reason, not mentioned by Sir Arthur, and yet suggesting itself irresistibly to any one who knew the editor of the _Magazine of Art_ personally; all four of Stevenson's attempts at play-writing were made in collaboration with Henley, who was the least equipped by temper and by temperament for the practise of dramaturgy.) _Scene II_ POLLOCK'S SCENES _IN THE MILLER AND HIS MEN. Nº9_ [Illustration: _London. Published by B Pollock,73 Hoxton Street Hoxton_ Explosion of the mill. A back drop in the 'Miller and His Men,' Scene II]