STEAD AND PINERO

Evening Star, Issue 12396, 9 January 1905, Page 5

STEAD AND PINERO

Mr Stead's general' impression of the Jew Pinero play, 'A Wife Without a bmdc, has already been made public. m the November number of 'Review of Reviews' he indulges in more extensive criticism. That he is severe may be Judged from the following extracts : "My first play found mo in Prospero's Enchanted Isle. My second took me by the way of a caricature of history to the eve of the Restoration. My third has landed me in the Abyss of Lost Souls. And what I feel most acutely and resent most bitterly is that I have been made to laugh at Hell. Yes, I laughed—laughed heartily, as I suppose men laughed at the plays of Wycherley and Congreve and other comedies of the Restoration, and it was none the less a moral degradation to have- been made to langh at the effacement of the Divine Image of God in man, and still worse in woman." "It is as inhuman a performance as was the old practice of turning out some poor natural to, display his witless inanity and naked"obscenity for the amusement of carousers after dinner."

lhe glitter of the dialogue is but like tho phosphorescent shimmer over the putrefying body of the dead." "Apart from the detestable vulgarity and atmosphere of morality which are the distinguishing characteristics of this play, ■what are we to think of its one supreme Joke which, often repeated, convulsed the louse with laughter?' "What may bo Mr Pinero's idea of the nature of the physical demonstration of the amorous instincts of a newly-married couple I do not know. Bnt the leaps and bounds of the puppet, driven by the movements on the couch abovo, suggest an excess of demonstrative affection which was hot edifying, to say the least. It may be said that it is permissible to indicate by this mechanical means the conjugal transports of young married people. But that excuse is not available for a later Bcene, where as soon, as the wife goes upjrtairs with her artist lover the puppet begins its leaps and bounds in mid-air." " At the time it seemed to me sheer downright screaming farce, and I laughed With the rest. Bnt afterwards, thinking s>ver the connection between cause and effect, it was evident that the sniggerers jarre right. If bo, tho ' Eroioateter J

ought to have been suppressed by the ?ouce as an outrage on public decency, t is not even the plain, straightforward passion of healthy brutes, but partakes rather of the unclean antics of the monkeys of the Zoo.".