on the enemy rather than moving them to repentance and confession.  Still, to those who had not seen the first performance, the effect was sufficiently impressive; and they had the advantage of witnessing a fresh development in Mrs Warren, who, artistically jealous, as I took it, of the overwhelming effect of the end of the second act on the previous day, threw herself into the fourth act in quite a new way, and achieved the apparently impossible feat of surpassing herself.  The compliments paid to Miss Fanny Brough by the critics, eulogistic as they are, are the compliments of men three-fourths duped as Partridge was duped by Garrick.  By much of her acting they were so completely taken in that they did not recognize it as acting at all.  Indeed, none of the six players quite escaped this consequence of their own thoroughness.  There was a distinct tendency among the less experienced critics to complain of their sentiments and behavior.  Naturally, the author does not share that grievance.

PICCARD’S cottage, January 1902.

MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION

[Mrs Warren’s Profession was performed for the first time in the theatre of the New Lyric Club, London, on the 5th and 6th January 1902, with Madge McIntosh as Vivie, Julius Knight as Praed, Fanny Brough as Mrs Warren, Charles Goodhart as Crofts, Harley Granville-Barker as Frank, and Cosmo Stuart as the Reverend Samuel Gardner.]

ACT I

[Summer afternoon in a cottage garden on the eastern slope of a hill a little south of Haslemere in Surrey.  Looking up the hill, the cottage is seen in the left hand corner of the garden, with its thatched roof and porch, and a large latticed window to the left of the porch.  A paling completely shuts in the garden, except for a gate on the right.  The common rises uphill beyond the paling to the sky line.  Some folded canvas garden chairs are leaning against the side bench in the porch.  A lady’s bicycle is propped against the wall, under the window.  A little to the right of the porch a hammock is slung from two posts.  A big canvas umbrella, stuck in the ground, keeps the sun off the hammock, in which a young lady is reading and making notes, her head towards the cottage and her feet towards the gate.  In front of the hammock, and within reach of her hand, is a common kitchen chair, with a pile of serious-looking books and a supply of writing paper on it.]

[A gentleman walking on the common comes into sight from behind the cottage.  He is hardly past middle age, with something of the artist about him, unconventionally but carefully dressed, and clean-shaven except for a moustache, with an eager susceptible face and very amiable and considerate manners.  He has silky black hair, with waves of grey and white in it.  His eyebrows are white, his moustache black.  He seems not certain of his way.  He looks over the palings; takes stock of the place; and sees the young lady.]