And for ourselves we may be quite " aisy " ; for the
"deliberate" methods of these enthusiasts will surely
lose their stiffness in due course of time. Meanwhile
one is sincerely grateful to them for an hour or two
of real refreshment, a train of curious suggestions,
a series of new " thrills."



fVJRP AND WOOF

(Camden, /une 1904)

OF course Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton's play abounds in
faults. Of course her stage-craft is amateurish.
Of course she overstates her case. What else, pray,
did anyone expect from a novice ? More important
than her degree of skill or the precise measure of her
accuracy is the question of her impulse and her choice
of theme. It is a comfort to know, in these days of
dramas manufactured for the market, that " indignation "
not only " makes verses," but sometimes also makes
plays. And a play which, avoiding the beaten track
of amorous or domestic adventure, deals fearlessly with
some actual remediable evil of our social system,
however naive in conception that play may be,
however clumsily written — and War/> and Woof is
both naive and clumsy — is, just now, a valuable
playhouse asset. The fact is, Mrs Lyttelton, in a
jejune prentice fashion, has attempted to do for a
corner of London life what Brieux has done for many
corners of France. She sees something wrong, some-
thing which outrages her sense of justice, and she would
do her best to right the wrong by exposing it before
a whole playhouse. One knows all that is to be said
about the difficulty of reconciling art with propagandism.
