The convention maintained itself firmly down to the
days of _Money_ and _London Assurance_, the dullness of the intervening
period being due, not to any change of theory, but to sheer impotence of
practice. T.W. Robertson, as above mentioned, attempted a return to
nature, with occasional and very partial success; but wit, with a dash
of fanciful sentiment, reasserted itself in James Albery; while in H.J.
Byron it degenerated into mere punning and verbal horse-play. I should
not be surprised if the historian of the future were to find in the
plays of Mr. Henry Arthur Jones the first marked symptoms of a
reaction--of a tendency to reject extrinsic and fanciful ornament in
dialogue, and to rely for its effect upon its vivid appropriateness to
character and situation. In the early plays of Sir Arthur Pinero there
is a great deal of extrinsic ornament; especially of that
metaphor-hunting which was one of the characteristic forms of euphuism.
Take this, for example, from _The Profligate_.
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