The fact is simply that the characters are not large enough, true
enough, living enough--that the play does not probe deep enough into
human experience--to make the august intervention of death seem other
than an incongruity. The suicide of Paula Tanqueray, though it, too, has
been much criticized, is a very different matter. Inevitable it cannot
be called: if the play had been written within the past ten years, Sir
Arthur would very likely have contrived to do without it. But it is, in
itself, probable enough: both the good and the bad in Paula's character
might easily make her feel that only the dregs of life remained to her,
and they not worth drinking. The worst one can say of it is that it sins
against the canon of practical convenience which enjoins on the prudent
dramatist strict economy in suicide. The third case, Zoe Blundell's leap
to nothingness, in that harsh and ruthless masterpiece, _Mid-Channel_,
is as inevitable as anything can well be in human destiny. Zoe has made
a miserable and hopeless muddle of her life.
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