Eyes, in so far as they are successfully drawn, really do mean a certain advance on our knowledge of feminine human nature.  Unfortunately, owing to the author’s over-facile and over-hasty method of work, they are now and then a little out of drawing.  The most striking piece of psychology known to me in American drama is the Faith Healer in William Vaughn Moody’s drama of that name.  If the last act of The Faith Healer were as good as the rest of it, one might safely call it the finest play ever written, at any rate in the English language, beyond the Atlantic.  The psychologists of the modern French stage, I take it, are M. de Curel and M. de Porto-Riche.  MM.  Brieux and Hervieu are, like Mr. Shaw, too much concerned with ideas to probe very deep into character.  In Germany, Hauptmann, and, so far as I understand him, Wedekind, are psychologists, Sudermann, a vigorous character-drawer.

It is pretty clear that, if this distinction were accepted, it would be of use to the critic, inasmuch as we should have two terms for two ideas, instead of one popular term with a rather pedantic synonym.  But what would be its practical use to the artist, the craftsman?  Simply this, that if the word “psychology” took on for him a clear and definite meaning, it might stimulate at once his imagination and his ambition.  Messrs. Hichens and Fagan, for example, might have asked themselves—­or each other—­“Are we getting beneath the surface of this woman’s nature?  Are we plucking the heart out of her mystery?  Cannot we make the specific processes of a murderess’s mind clearer to ourselves and to our audiences?” Whether they would have been capable of rising to the opportunity, I cannot tell; but in the case of other authors one not infrequently feels:  “This man could have taken us deeper into this problem if he had only thought of it.”  I do not for a moment mean that every serious dramatist should always be aiming at psychological exploration.  The character-drawer’s appeal to common knowledge and instant recognition is often all that is required, or that would be in place.  But there are also occasions not a few when the dramatist shows himself unequal to his opportunities if he does not at least attempt to bring hitherto unrecorded or unscrutinized phases of character within the scope of our understanding and our sympathies.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1:  If this runs counter to the latest biological orthodoxy, I am sorry.  Habits are at any rate transmissible by imitation, if not otherwise.]

[Footnote 2:  Chapter XIX.]

CHAPTER XXIII

DIALOGUE AND DETAILS

The extraordinary progress made by the drama of the English language during the past quarter of a century is in nothing more apparent than in the average quality of modern dialogue.  Tolerably well-written dialogue is nowadays the rule rather than the exception.  Thirty years ago, the idea that it was possible to combine naturalness with vivacity and vigour had scarcely dawned upon the playwright’s mind.  He passed and repassed from stilted pathos to strained and verbal wit (often mere punning); and when a reformer like T.W.  Robertson tried to come a little nearer to the truth of life, he was apt to fall into babyish simplicity or flat commonness.