great success, but each of which received a fair meed of popular
support. I refer to such plays as "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," "A
Modern Magdalen," and "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." In such plays lies
the modern tragedy. They are addressed to the times, actual,
intelligible.

But such as held the New York stage in the past season were timorously
constructed, bowdlerized by stage managers and, for the most part,
poorly acted. Two of the three I have indicated are plays many seasons
old. The greatest of these is "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," interpreted
for us by the greatest actress who ever essayed the part. It indicated
a development I believe to be still in its infancy--a development that
was arrested before it had been weaned from its first timid suckling.

The public does not desire the problem play. It demands a play that
will end with a curtain definite, convincing. But in the problem plays
of the past it finds the material it fain would see applied to a
bolder, unequivocal purpose. In the eight years that have elapsed
since the production of Pinero's "Tanqueray," the public's stomach has
been strengthened. It is able to digest tragedies in drawing rooms. It
no longer requires peptonized drama. The playgoer no longer demands
whatever of primal passion is presented to him to be dressed in
doublet and hose. He can accept plain truths in the speech of the day,
villains and heroines in the costume of the clubs and Fifth Avenue.

The great play of the future must be a play of the times, must deal
with the real things of life, must balk at no expression of modern
tendencies, must reveal the skeleton in the twentieth century
cupboard.