Why
should it be tabu on the stage? Because the French dramatist, forty
years ago, would sometimes construct a Chinese-puzzle play around some
stolen letter or hidden document, are we to suffer no "scrap of paper"
to play any part whatever in English drama? Even the Hebrew sense of
justice would recoil from such a conclusion. It would be a case of "The
fathers have eaten sour grapes, and other people's children must pay the
penalty." Against such whimsies of reactionary purism, the playwright's
sole and sufficient safeguard is a moderate exercise of common sense.
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: So, too, with the style of Congreve. It is much, and
justly, admired; but who does not feel more than a touch of mannerism in
such a passage as this?--
MILLAMANT: "... Let us never visit together, nor go to a play
together; but let us be very strange and well-bred: let us be as
strange as if we had been married a great while; and as well-bred as
if we were not married at all.
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