VEDRENNE.  Everything at the Court Theatre, my dear sir, is real.  Ask Mr. Franks, he will tell you the door is not even a jar.  The art, the acting, the plays, even the audience is real, except a few dramatic critics I cannot exclude.  I admit the audience looks improbable at matinees; out of Court is a truth in art of which we are only dimly beginning to understand the significance. [Noise outside.

Enter JENNIFER, dressed in deep mourning.

JENNIFER (with a bright smile).  Mr. Vedrenne, I have just had a telegram saying that my husband, Leo, was killed in his motor after leaving me at the Synagogue.  His last words were:  ’Jennifer, promise me that you will wear mourning if I die, merely to mark the difference between Dubedat and myself.’  This afternoon I am going to marry Blenkinsop.  How are the sales going?

VEDRENNE.  Well, I think we might have the catechism or the churching of heroines.  What is your name?

JENNIFER.  Jennifer.

VEDRENNE.  Where did you get that name?

JENNIFER.  From Bernard Shaw in my baptism.

MR. REDFORD (Licenser of Plays).  Mr. Shaw, I really must point out that this passage comes from the Anglican Prayer-book.  Are you aware of that?  I have a suggestion of my own for ending the play.

BERNARD SHAW.  Oh, shut up!  Let us have my ten commandments.

GRANVILLE BARKER.  My dear Shaw, you sent them to Wells for revision and he lost them in the Tube.  I can remember the first one, ’Maude spake these words and said:  “Thou shalt have none other Shaws but me."’

BERNARD SHAW.  How careless of Wells.  I remember the second:  ’Do not indulge in craven imitation.’

W. L. COURTNEY.  The third commandment runs:  ’Thou shalt not covet George Alexander.’

GRANVILLE BARKER.  One of them runs:  ’Do not commit yourself to Beerbohm Tree, though his is His Majesty’s . . . ’ But we shall never get them right.  We must offer a reward for their recovery.  I vote that Walkley now says the credo.  That, I think, expresses every one’s sentiment.

A. B. WALKLEY (reluctantly).  I believe in Bernard Shaw, in Granville Barker, and (heartily) in The Times.

WILLIAM ARCHER.  Plaudite, missa est.

(1907.)

CURTAIN.

THE JADED INTELLECTUALS.  A DIALOGUE.

Scene:  The Smoking-room of the Elivas Club.

Characters:  LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS, aetat. 54, a distinguished literary critic, and LUKE CULLUS, a rich connoisseur of art and life.  They are not smoking nor drinking spirits.  One is sipping barley water, the other Vichy.

LUKE CULLUS.  You are a dreadful pessimist!

LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS.  Alas! there is no such thing in these days.  We are merely disappointed optimists.  When Walter Pater died I did not realise that English literature expired.  Yet the event excited hardly any interest in the Press.  Our leading weekly, the Spectator, merely mentioned that Brasenose College, Oxford, had lost an excellent Dean.