he names, and yet nobody suggested that the play was
particularly rich in solecisms.

This form of snobbery has at least one advantage, it saves the
playwright from the trouble of considering the questions of money in the
play. If there is to be an elopement in it there is no difficulty on the
score of expense--a difficulty that, in vulgar real life, has caused
some intrigues to become sordid hole-and-corner divorce dramas instead
of idylls of passionate irregular love.

One notices that certain professions are under a kind of ban upon the
stage. The country contains thousands of solicitors, most of them well
educated and drawn from the class that feeds the Bar, the Church, the
Army, Navy, Medicine, Science and the Arts. This body of solicitors has
an enormous influence upon the conscience of the country--more influence
than any other class, except, perhaps, that of the parsons. How is the
solicitor treated on the stage? Almost always with contempt, at the best
as a humble adviser. He is the comic character or the villain;
generally, as a further insult, the secondary villain. The attorney is
sometimes the hero of a farce, as in _The Headless Man_--never in
comedy, or to be more correct, hardly ever, for Mr Granville Barker in
_The Voysey Inheritance_ gave a very fine and sympathetic study of a
young solicitor. The dramatist may say in defence that he is truthful,
that he merely reflects the vulgar prejudice against the profession,
founded upon the misdeeds of a very small proportion of its members.

The barrister receives better treatment, but, of course, he is generally
deemed to be a more "genteel" person; yet, in considering stage
barristers, one notices that they are drawn very superficially, that
their profession is accidental to the play, and little or nothing turns
on the influence of the career upon the man. Judges, like solicitors,
are usually regarded as comic.

Our stage has hardly inherited Moliere traditions concerning the
doctors; there were two important plays, _The Medicine Man_ and _The
Physician_, in which members of the healing art are treated
seriously--though Dr Tregenna in the former was rather a caricature, and
in _The Doctor's Dilemma_ we had a brilliantly painted group of medical
men. The Christian Scientist may complain of neglect, even if there was
some anticipation of him in _Judah_, and a humble branch of the craft
was handled ably by Mrs Merrick in _Jimmy's Mother_. The real quack has