deas
of social and family life and their view of the sanctity of true
marriage they were forced to exhibit the perils caused by lawless
passion, and frequently their works, as in such extreme instances as _Le
Mariage d'Olympe_ and _La Femme de Claude_, which has the memorable
preface with the _Tue la_ phrase, deal candidly with very ugly matters.

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 _joyeusetes_ 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