Device Squads  Currently on View: Puppets, Politics, Pianologue,
and Peonage  Right-angled but never rigid in its logic, Diana of
Dobson's (Mint Theater) is another tasty sprig in the Mint's
growing patch of rediscoveries. A 1908 comedy by the British
feminist Cicely Hamilton (1872-1958), ithasn't been played here
since its original unveiling, and deserves more notice. Though
demonstrably indebted to Shaw and Granville Barker, it has a
feisty charm of its own, and may even have repaid the debt by
influencing both Misalliance and The Madras House, which
postdate it.  Hamilton's heroine, the impoverished orphan
daughter of a country doctor, is trapped in the grinding peonage
of pre-union sales clerks until a tiny legacy allows her a
month's escape: She goes to a Swiss resort, where her
outspokenness charms both a peer's debt-ridden younger son and a
haberdashery magnate from one of whose chain stores she's been
fired. Refusing to marry either, she reveals the shocking truth
of her low-class status and flees bac