nly, who has some public claim to
be named with these artists, though his aim is the negation of art. Mr.
Shaw is a mind without a body, a whimsical intelligence without a soul.
He is one of those tragic buffoons who play with eternal things, not
only for the amusement of the crowd, but because an uneasy devil capers
in their own brains. He is a merry preacher, a petulant critic, a great
talker. It is partly because he is an Irishman that he has transplanted
the art of talking to the soil of the stage: Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, our
only modern comedians, all Irishmen, all talkers. It is by his
astonishing skill of saying everything that comes into his head, with a
spirit really intoxicating, that Mr. Shaw has succeeded in holding the
stage with undramatic plays, in which there is neither life nor beauty.
Life gives up its wisdom only to reverence, and beauty is jealous of
neglected altars. But those who amuse the world, no matter by what
means, have their place in the world at any given moment. Mr. Shaw is a
clock striking the hour.

With Mr. Shaw we come to the play which is prose, and nothing but
prose. The form is familiar among us, though it is cultivated with a
more instinctive skill, as is natural, in France. There was a time, not
so long ago, when Dumas fils was to France what Ibsen afterwards became
to Europe. What remains of him now is hardly more than his first "fond
adventure" the supremely playable "Dame aux Camelias." The other plays
are already out of date, since Ibsen; the philosophy of "Tue-la!" was
the special pleading of the moment, and a drama in which special
pleading, and not the fundamental "criticism of life," is the dramatic
motive can never outlast its technique, which has also died with the
coming of Ibsen. Better technique, perhaps, than that of "La Femme de
Claude," but with less rather than more weight of thought behind it, is
to be found in many accomplished playwrights, who are doing all sorts of
interesting temporary things, excellently made to entertain the
attentive French public with a solid kind of entertainment. Here, in
England, we have no such folk to command; our cleverest playwrights,
apart from Mr. Shaw, are what we might call practitioners. There is Mr.
Pinero, Mr. Jones, Mr. Grundy: what names are better known, or less to
be associated with literature? There is Anthony Hope, who can write, and
Mr. Barrie who has something both human and humourous. There are many
more names, if I