Their successors, putting aside such men as Brieux and Hervieu--whose intentions are strictly honourable--may pretend to be moralists, but they adopt an impudently unconventional attitude. They seem to modify the phrase that "property is theft" into the proposition that "marriage is a selfish monopoly." We have had play after play apparently based upon a merely sensual idea of free love. Like their predecessors they handle mud, and they handle it as Walton bade the angler handle the frog when using it as bait. Some of them seem to have no prejudice in favour of people who try to exercise decent self-restraint. Without pleading their cause, one must point out that in the domain of lawless passion there are hundreds of thrilling or vastly comic situations at the command of the dramatist, whether he be moralist or simply boulevardier. No wonder then that there seem to be far more original plays in France than in England. The advantage of the foreigners is even greater in the matter of dialogue than subject. With the aid of tact and certain elaborate conventions the English dramatist is able to handle many of his competitor's themes and has contrived to adapt some of his forward, if hardly advanced, plays and by ridiculous changes decidedly emasculating them, has succeeded in presenting a sort of version of a number of the saucy farces. The dialogue baffles him. It cannot be denied that a great deal of the dialogue of French plays is very funny, rather shocking, and not exactly gross. As a rule the more distinguished writers avoid the tone of the _joyeusetés_ of an Armand Sylvestre, a writer capable of using bluntly without acknowledgement the crudest of Chaucer's tales and also of writing beautiful poetry quite free from offence; but even when the humbler _gauloiseries_ are neglected the finer indelicacy is employed, and the men laugh and ladies pretend to put up their fans. Nobody, perhaps, is at all worse, for the _jeune fille_ is only taken to carefully selected plays, except at the seaside, where in the casino she attends performances of works that in Paris she would not be allowed to see; and, moreover, there is truth in what a French manager once shrewdly observed--"Those who can't understand the jokes won't be hurt, and those who can, can't." CHAPTER VIII CASUAL NOTES ON ACTING Mr H.B. Irving on his Art To the reviewer of books fell the task of criticizing Mr H.B. Irving's book, "Occasional Papers," as literature. The dramatic critic has the right of considering the views expressed in it concerning the stage. There are two essays of importance, from reading which one may learn the ideas, admirably expressed, of Mr Irving concerning his art--"The English Stage in the Eighteenth Century" and "The Art and Status of the Actor." The study of them, which they deserve, leads to certain conclusions hardly, it may be, anticipated by the author.