THE COUNT.  But is it a good play, Mr Bannal?  Thats a simple question.

BANNAL.  Simple enough when you know.  If it’s by a good author, it’s a good play, naturally.  That stands to reason.  Who is the author?  Tell me that; and I’ll place the play for you to a hair’s breadth.

THE COUNT.  I’m sorry I’m not at liberty to divulge the author’s name.  The author desires that the play should be judged on its merits.

BANNAL.  But what merits can it have except the author’s merits?  Who would you say it’s by, Gunn?

GUNN.  Well, who do you think?  Here you have a rotten old-fashioned domestic melodrama acted by the usual stage puppets.  The hero’s a naval lieutenant.  All melodramatic heroes are naval lieutenants.  The heroine gets into trouble by defying the law (if she didnt get into trouble, thered be no drama) and plays for sympathy all the time as hard as she can.  Her good old pious mother turns on her cruel father when hes going to put her out of the house, and says she’ll go too.  Then theres the comic relief:  the comic shopkeeper, the comic shopkeeper’s wife, the comic footman who turns out to be a duke in disguise, and the young scapegrace who gives the author his excuse for dragging in a fast young woman.  All as old and stale as a fried fish shop on a winter morning.

THE COUNT.  But—­

GUNN [interrupting him] I know what youre going to say, Count.  Youre going to say that the whole thing seems to you to be quite new and unusual and original.  The naval lieutenant is a Frenchman who cracks up the English and runs down the French:  the hackneyed old Shaw touch.  The characters are second-rate middle class, instead of being dukes and millionaires.  The heroine gets kicked through the mud:  real mud.  Theres no plot.  All the old stage conventions and puppets without the old ingenuity and the old enjoyment.  And a feeble air of intellectual pretentiousness kept up all through to persuade you that if the author hasnt written a good play it’s because hes too clever to stoop to anything so commonplace.  And you three experienced men have sat through all this, and cant tell me who wrote it!  Why, the play bears the author’s signature in every line.

BANNAL.  Who?

GUNN.  Granville Barker, of course.  Why, old Gilbey is straight out of The Madras House.

BANNAL.  Poor old Barker!

VAUGHAN.  Utter nonsense!  Cant you see the difference in style?

BANNAL.  No.

VAUGHAN. [contemptuously] Do you know what style is?

BANNAL.  Well, I suppose youd call Trotter’s uniform style.  But it’s not my style—­since you ask me.