The play is a
comedy, and the situations are not allowed to get beyond the control of
good manners. The game is after all the thing, and the skill of the
game. When the pawns begin to cry out in the plaintive way of pawns,
they are hushed before they become disturbing. It is in this power to
play the game on its own artificial lines, and yet to play with pieces
made scrupulously after the pattern of nature, that Mrs. Craigie's
skill, in this play, seems to me to consist.
Here then, is a play which makes no demands on the pocket handkerchief,
to stifle either laughter or sobs, but in which the writer is seen
treating the real people of the audience and the imaginary people of the
play as if they were alike ladies and gentlemen. How this kind of work
will appeal to the general public I can hardly tell. When I saw "Sweet
and Twenty" on its first performance, I honestly expected the audience
to burst out laughing. On the contrary, the audience thrilled with
delight, and audience after audience went on indefinitely thrilling with
delight. If the caricature of the natural emotions can give so much
pleasure, will a delicate suggestion of them, as in this play, ever mean
very much to the public?
The public in England is a strange creature, to be studied with wonder
and curiosity and I am not sure that a native can ever hope to
understand it.
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