But it is, on the other
hand, such a crude and unreasoning means of exit from the tangle of
existence that a playwright of delicate instincts will certainly employ
it only under the strongest compulsion from his artistic conscience.
Sir Arthur Pinero has three suicides on his record, though one of them
was, so to speak, nipped in the bud. In _The Profligate_, as presented
on the stage, Dunstan Renshaw changed his mind before draining the fatal
goblet; and in this case the stage version was surely the right one. The
suicide, to which the author still clings in the printed text,
practically dates the play as belonging to the above-mentioned period of
rebellion against the conventional "happy ending," when the ambitious
British dramatist felt that honour required him to kill his man on the
smallest provocation.[4] Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since
then, and the disproportion between such a play and such a catastrophe
is now apparent to everyone. It is not that we judge Renshaw's
delinquencies to be over-punished by death--that is not the question.
Pages:
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483