that it has been performed and
produced mainly through the determination of women that it should be
performed and produced; that the enthusiasm of women made its first
performance excitingly successful; and that not one of these women had
any inducement to support it except their belief in the timeliness and
the power of the lesson the play teaches. Those who were "surprised to
see ladies present" were men; and when they proceeded to explain that
the journals they represented could not possibly demoralize the public
by describing such a play, their editors cruelly devoted the space saved
by their delicacy to an elaborate and respectful account of the progress
of a young lord's attempt to break the bank at Monte Carlo. A few days
sooner Mrs Warren would have been crowded out of their papers by an
exceptionally abominable police case. I do not suggest that the police
case should have been suppressed; but neither do I believe that regard
for public morality had anything to do with their failure to grapple
with the performance by the Stage Society. And, after all, there was no
need to fall back on Silas Wegg's subterfuge. Several critics saved the
faces of their papers easily enough by the simple expedient of saying
all they had to say in the tone of a shocked governess lecturing a
naughty child. To them I might plead, in Mrs Warren's words, "Well,
it's only good manners to be ashamed, dearie;" but it surprises me,
recollecting as I do the effect produced by Miss Fanny Brough's delivery
of that line, that gentlemen who shivered like violets in a zephyr as
it swept through them, should so completely miss the full width of its
application as to go home and straightway make a public exhibition of
mock modesty.

My old Independent Theatre manager, Mr Grein, besides that reproach to
me for shattering his ideals, complains that Mrs Warren is not wicked
enough, and names several romancers who would have clothed her black
soul with all the terrors of tragedy. I have no doubt they would; but
if you please, my dear Grein, that is just what I did not want to do.
Nothing would please our sanctimonious British public more than to throw
the whole guilt of Mrs Warren's profession on Mrs Warren herself. Now
the whole aim of my play is to throw that guilt on the British public
itself. You may remember that when you produced my first play, Widowers'
Houses, exactly the same misunderstanding arose. When the virtuous young
gentleman rose up i