An attractive and deservedly successful drama by Mr. Zangwill, _Merely Mary Ann_, may be cited to illustrate the first mistake. Up to the last act its handling of the relation of the gentleman lodger and the quaint little slavey is pitched in the key of truth and has a Dickens-like sympathy in it which is the main element in its charm. But in the final scene, where Mary Ann has become a fashionable young woman, meets her whilom man friend, and a match results, the improbability is such (to say nothing about the impossibility) as to destroy the previous illusion of reality; the auditor, if intelligent, feels that he has paid too high a price for such a union. I am not arguing that the improbable may not be legitimate on the stage; but only trying to point out that, in this particular case, the key of the play, established in previous acts, is the key of probability; and hence the change is a sin against artistic probity. The key of improbability, as in some excellent farces, _Baby Mine_, _Seven Days_, _Seven Keys to Baldpate_, and their kind--where it is basal that we grant certain conditions or happenings not at all likely in life--is quite another matter and not of necessity reprehensible in the least. But _Merely Mary Ann_ is too true in its homely fashion to fob us off with lies at the end; we believed it at first and so are shocked at its mendacity. One of the best melodramas of recent years is Mr. McLellan's _Leah Kleschna_. Its psychology, founded on the assumption that a woman whose higher nature is appealed to, will respond to the appeal, is as sound as it is fine and encouraging. She is a criminal who is caught opening a safe by the French statesman whose house she has entered. His conversation with her is so effective that she breaks with her fellow thieves and starts in on another and better life in a foreign country, where the statesman secures for her honest employment.