it is worked _out_. Brieux never (with the possible exception
above mentioned) works an idea _out_. Because he can't. He doesn't know
enough of his business. He can only do the easy parts of his business.
Last autumn also, the Comedie Francaise revived "La Robe Rouge." The
casting, owing to an effort to make it too good, was very bad; and the
production was very bad, though Brieux himself superintended it. But, all
allowances made for the inevitable turpitudes of this ridiculous national
theatre, the was senile; it was done for! Certainly it exposes the abuses
of the French magistrature, but at what cost of fundamental truth! The
melodramatic close might have been written in the Isle of Man.

* * * * *

Take the most notorious of all his plays, "Les Avaries." It contains an
admirable sermon, a really effective sermon, animated by ideas which I
suppose have been in the minds of exceptionally intelligent men for a
hundred years or so, and which Brieux restated in terms of dramatic
eloquence. But the sentimentality of the end is simply base. The
sentimentality of another famous play, "Maternite," is even more
deplorable.

* * * * *

It is said that Brieux's plays make you think. Well, it depends who you
are. No, I will admit that they have several times made me think. I will
admit that, since I saw "Les Avaries," I have never thought quite the same
about syphilis as I did before. But what I say is that this has nothing to
do with Brieux's position as a dramatist. Brieux could have written a
pamphlet on the subject of "Les Avaries" which would have impressed me
just as much as his play (I happened to read the play before I witnessed
it). Indeed, if he had confined himself to a pamphlet I should have
respected him more than I do. Brieux has never sharpened my sense of
beauty; he has never made me see beauty where I had failed to see it. And
this is what he ought to have done, as a serious dramatist. He is
deficient in a feeling for beauty; he is deficient in emotion. But that is
not the worst of him. Mr. Shaw is deficient in these supreme qualities.
But Mr. Shaw is an honest playwright. And Brieux (speaking, of course, in
a sense strictly artistic) is not. That he is dishonest in the cause of
moral progress does not mitigate his crime. Zealots may deny this as
loudly as they please. Nothing can keep Brieux's plays alive; they are
bound to go precisely where the