With the advent of the Naquet divorce bill in France the countenance of problem plays underwent a radical change. A ministerial stroke of the pen invalidated Dumas _fils_ and his unhappy women as a theme for dramatic treatment. We have had plays dealing with the unpleasant subject since then, but these were either frankly frivolous like those of Alfred Capus, or wittily cynical with those of Maurice Donnay. The modern master builder of French drama, Henry Becque, wrote L'Enlèvement, in which he presented the question with his accustomed clearness and probity. Hervieu, in Le Dédale, shows the influence of at least one scene of Becque, though he has handled the incident so individually as to deflect its conclusions completely. Since L'Enlèvement there has been no such literary performance as Le Dédale, which proved a labyrinth indeed for its unhappy characters and a masterpiece in form. The story is a simple one, direct as antique tragedy, and far from being improbable. Divorce in France is a much more complicated matter than in America. Society, notwithstanding its cynical attitude, is not too favourable to divorced men and women, particularly women. The church refuses to sanction separation if it is to be followed by remarriage. Whether forged in heaven or elsewhere, the fetters of wedlock are never to be loosed unless by death. Now Hervieu does not pretend to a sympathy with either society or the church. He does not attempt to win our suffrages for the woman or for the man. His is too judicial an intellect to show partisanship, and he is too superior an artist to turn his play into a moral tract. He dives deeper than the law or society; he dives straight into the human heart, and after setting forth his situations his summing up is irrefragable. From the clash of his warring souls comes his tragedy; the divorce is a mere pretext to set his people in action. The law of the species, that compelling and terrible law, is his weapon, a formidable one in his skilled hands. His thesis, baldly stated, is this: A man and a woman once married are married until death, if there be a child. Let the law supervene, let vagrant passion demolish the social structure, this stark, naked fact remains--the flesh of the child unites the parents in the bond of eternity.