* * * * *

It may not be superfluous to give at this point a little list of subjects which, though not blind-alley themes, are equally to be avoided.  Some of them, indeed, are the reverse of blind-alley themes, their drawback lying in the fact that the way out of them is too tediously apparent.

At the head of this list I would place what may be called the “white marriage” theme:  not because it is ineffective, but because its effectiveness is very cheap and has been sadly overdone.  It occurs in two varieties:  either a proud but penniless damsel is married to a wealthy parvenu, or a woman of culture and refinement is married to a “rough diamond.”  In both cases the action consists of the transformation of a nominal into a real marriage; and it is almost impossible, in these days, to lend any novelty to the process.  In the good old Lady of Lyons the theme was decked in trappings of romantic absurdity, which somehow harmonized with it.  One could hear in it a far-off echo of revolutionary rodomontade.  The social aspect of the matter was emphasized, and the satire on middle-class snobbery was cruelly effective.  The personal aspect, on the other hand—­the unfulfilment of the nominal marriage—­was lightly and discreetly handled, according to early-Victorian convention.  In later days—­from the time of M. George Ohnet’s Maitre de Forges onwards—­this is the aspect on which playwrights have preferred to dwell.  Usually, the theme shades off into the almost equally hackneyed Still Waters Run Deep theme; for there is apt to be an aristocratic lover whom the unpolished but formidable husband threatens to shoot or horsewhip, and thereby overcomes the last remnant of repugnance in the breast of his haughty spouse.  In The Ironmaster the lover was called the Duc de Bligny, or, more commonly, the Dook de Bleeny; but he has appeared under many aliases.  In the chief American version of the theme, Mr. Vaughn Moody’s Great Divide, the lover is dispensed with altogether, being inconsistent, no doubt, with the austere manners of Milford Corners, Mass.  In one of the recent French versions, on the other hand—­M.  Bernstein’s Samson—­the aristocratic lover is almost as important a character as the virile, masterful, plebeian husband.  It appears from this survey—­which might be largely extended—­that there are several ways of handling the theme; but there is no way of renewing and deconventionalizing it.  No doubt it has a long life before it on the plane of popular melodrama, but scarcely, one hopes, on any higher plane.