igued. A classical example of both faults may be found
in Congreve's so-called comedy _The Double-Dealer_. This is, in fact, a
powerful drama, somewhat in the Sardou manner; but Congreve had none of
Sardou's deftness in manipulating an intrigue. Maskwell is not only a
double-dealer, but a triple--or quadruple-dealer; so that the brain soon
grows dizzy in the vortex of his villainies. The play, it may be noted,
was a failure.

There is a quite legitimate pleasure to be found, no doubt, in a complex
intrigue which is also perspicuous. Plays such as Alexandre Dumas's
_Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle_, or the pseudo-historical dramas of
Scribe-_Adrienne Lecouvreur, Bertrand et Raton, Un Verre d'Eau, Les
Trois Maupin,_ etc.--are amusing toys, like those social or military
tableaux, the figures of which you can set in motion by dropping a penny
in the slot. But the trick of this sort of "preparation" has long been
found out, and even unsophisticated audiences are scarcely to be
thrilled by it. We may accept it as a sound principle, based on common
sense and justified by experience, that an audience should never be
tempted to exclaim, "What a marvellously clever fellow is this
playwright! How infinitely cleverer than the dramatist who constructs
the tragi-comedy of life."

This is what we inevitably exclaim as we watch Victorien Sardou, in whom
French ingenuity culminated and caricatured itself, laying the
foundations of one of his labyrinthine intrigues. The absurdities of
"preparation" in this sense could scarcely be better satirized than in
the following page from Francisque Sarcey's criticism of _Nos Intimes_
(known in English as _Peril_)--a page which is intended, not as satire,
but as eulogy--

At the sixth performance, I met, during the first interact, a man of
infinite taste who ... complained of the lengthiness of this first
act: "What a lot of details," he said, "which serve no purpose, and
had better have been omitted! What is the use of that long story
about the cactus with a flower that is unique in all the world? Why
trouble us with that dahlia-root, which M. Caussade's neighbour has
thrown over the garden wall? Was it necessary to inflict on us all
that talk about the fox that plays havoc in the garden? What have we
to do with that mischievous beast? And that Tolozan, with his
endless digressions! What do we care about his ideas on love, on
metempsychosis, on friendship, etc.? All this stuff