These real-life
instances are, I repeat, irrelevant. The only question is whether Mr.
Barker has made us feel that a man of Trebell's character would
certainly not survive the paralysing of his energies; and that question
every spectator must answer for himself. I am far from answering it in
the negative. I merely suggest that the playwright may one day come
across a theme for which there is no conceivable ending but suicide, and
may wish that he had let Trebell live, lest people should come to regard
him as a spendthrift of self-slaughter.
The suicide which brings to a close Mr. Clyde Fitch's very able play,
_The Climbers_, stands on a somewhat different level. Here it is not the
protagonist who makes away with himself, nor is his destiny the main
theme of the play. Mr. Fitch has painted a broad social picture, in
which, if there is any concentration of interest, it is upon Blanche and
Warden. Sterling's suicide, then, though it does in fact cut the chief
knot of the play, is to be regarded rather as a characteristic and
probable incident of a certain phase of life, than as the culmination of
a spiritual tragedy.
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