e he was so hard to catch, to classify, and to keep
track of. This middle-class notion about the immobility of the soul
was transplanted to the stage, where the middle-class element has
always held sway. There a character became synonymous with a
gentleman fixed and finished once for all--one who invariably
appeared drunk, jolly, sad. And for the purpose of characterisation
nothing more was needed than some physical deformity like a
clubfoot, a wooden leg, a red nose; or the person concerned was
made to repeat some phrase like "That's capital!" or "Barkis is
willin'," or something of that kind. This manner of regarding human
beings as homogeneous is preserved even by the great Moliere.
_Harpagon_ is nothing but miserly, although _Harpagon_ might as
well have been at once miserly and a financial genius, a fine
father, and a public-spirited citizen. What is worse yet, his
"defect" is of distinct advantage to his son-in-law and daughter,
who are his heirs, and for that reason should not find fault with
him, even if they have to wait a little for their wedding. I do not
believe, therefore, in simple characters on the stage. And the
summary judgments of the author upon men--this one stupid, and that
one brutal, this one jealous, and that one stingy--should be
challenged by the naturalists, who know the fertility of the
soul-complex, and who realise that "vice" has a reverse very much
resembling virtue.

Because they are modern characters, living in a period of transition
more hysterically hurried than its immediate predecessor at least,
I have made my figures vacillating, out of joint, torn between the
old and the new. And I do not think it unlikely that, through
newspaper reading and overheard conversations, modern ideas may
have leaked down to the strata where domestic servants belong.

My souls (or characters) are conglomerates, made up of past and
present stages of civilisation, scraps of humanity, torn-off pieces
of Sunday clothing turned into rags--all patched together as is the
human soul itself. And I have furthermore offered a touch of
evolutionary history by letting the weaker repeat words stolen from
the stronger, and by letting different souls accept "ideas"--or
suggestions, as they are called--from each other.

_Miss Julia_ is a modern character, not because the man-hating
half-woman may not have existed in all ages, but because now, after
her discovery, she has stepped to the front and begun to make a
nois