talk does not interest me; it makes me feel uncomfortable.  But I am ready to admit that it is justified if I find that the dramatic movement of the play requires it, that it is itself an essential part of the action.  In “The New Idol” I think this is partly the case.  The other medical play which has lately been disturbing Paris, “Les Avaries,” does not seem to me to fulfil this condition at any moment:  it is a pamphlet from beginning to end, it is not a satisfactory pamphlet, and it has no other excuse for existence.  But M. de Curel has woven his problem into at least a semblance of action; the play is not a mere discussion of irresistible physical laws; the will enters into the problem, and will fights against will, and against not quite irresistible physical laws.  The suggestion of love interests, which come to nothing, and have no real bearing on the main situation, seems to me a mistake; it complicates things, things which must appear to us so very real if we are to accept them at all, with rather a theatrical kind of complication.  M. de Curel is more a thinker than a dramatist, as he has shown lately in the very original, interesting, impossible “Fille Sauvage.”  He grapples with serious matters seriously, and he argues well, with a closely woven structure of arguments; some of them bringing a kind of hard and naked poetry out of mere closeness of thinking and closeness of seeing.  In “The New Idol” there is some dialogue, real dialogue, natural give-and-take, about the fear of death and the horror of indestructibility (a variation on one of the finest of Coventry Patmore’s odes) which seemed to me admirable:  it held the audience because it was direct speech, expressing a universal human feeling in the light of a vivid individual crisis.  But such writing as this was rare; for the most part it was the problem itself which insisted on occupying our attention, or, distinct from this, the too theatrical characters.

IV.  “MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION”

The Stage Society has shown the courage of its opinions by giving an unlicensed play, “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” one of the “unpleasant plays” of Mr. George Bernard Shaw, at the theatre of the New Lyric Club.  It was well acted, with the exception of two of the characters, and the part of Mrs. Warren was played by Miss Fanny Brough, one of the cleverest actresses on the English stage, with remarkable ability.  The action was a little cramped by the smallness of the stage, but, for all that, the play was seen under quite fair conditions, conditions under which it could be judged as an acting play and as a work of art.  It is brilliantly clever, with a close, detective cleverness, all made up of merciless logic and unanswerable common sense.  The principal characters are well drawn, the scenes are constructed with a great deal of theatrical skill, the dialogue is telling, the interest is held throughout.  To say that the characters, without exception, are ugly in their vice