This is precisely the attitude of many a critic of our own time.  He is looking for a literary drama which shall be different in kind from the popular play; and as he fails to find this to-day—­as he would have failed to find it in every period of the theater’s most splendid achievement—­he asserts that the literary drama is nowadays nonexistent.  He does not care to inquire into the genuine qualities of the plays that happen to be able to attain “the standard of material prosperity.”  He is quick to perceive the attempt to be literary in the plays of Mr. Stephen Phillips, because this promising dramatic poet has so far tended rather to construct his decoration than to decorate his construction:  and, therefore, the literary merit in Mr. Phillips’s acted pieces seems sometimes to be somewhat external, so to speak, or at least more ostentatiously paraded.  He is forced to credit ‘Quality Street’ with a certain literary merit, because Mr. Barrie has published novels which have an undeniable literary flavor.

Considering literary merit as something applied on the outside, too obvious to be mistaken, the critic of this type disdains to give to certain of the plays of Mr. Pinero the discussion they deserve.  In the ‘Benefit of the Doubt,’ in the ‘Second Mrs. Tanqueray,’ in ‘Iris,’ Mr. Pinero has used all his mastery of stage-craft, not for its own sake, but as the instrument of his searching analysis of life as he sees it.  All three plays bring out the eternal truth of George Eliot’s saying that “Consequences are unpitying.”  In all three plays the inevitable and inexorable catastrophe is brought about, not by “the long arm of coincidence,” but rather by the finger of fate itself.  In ‘Iris’ more particularly we have put before us the figure of a gentle and kindly creature of compelling personal charm, but weak of will and moving thru life along the line of least resistance—­a feminine counterpart of the Tito Melema etched with such appalling veracity in ‘Romola.’  And Mr. Pinero has the same sincerity in his portrayal of the gradual disintegration of character under the stress of recurring temptation, until the woman is driven forth at last stript of all things that she held desirable, and bare of the last shred of self-respect.  The play may be unpleasant, but it is profoundly moral.  It is not spoon-meat for babes, but it is poignant and vital.  The picture of human character betrayed by its own weakness is so true, so transparently sincere, that the spectator, however quick he may be to discuss the theme, remains unconscious of the art by which the wonder has been wrought; he gives scarcely a thought to the logic of the construction, and to the honesty with which character is presented—­literary merits both of them, if literature is in fact a criticism of life.