adulteress in the west would be an atrocity because few of us
hate an adulteress to the extent of desiring such a penalty, or
of being prepared to take the law into our own hands if it were
withheld. Now what applies to this extreme case applies also in
due degree to the other cases. Offences in which sex is concerned
are often needlessly magnified by penalties, ranging from various
forms of social ostracism to long sentences of penal servitude,
which would be seen to be monstrously disproportionate to the
real feeling against them if the removal of both the penalties
and the taboo on their discussion made it possible for us to
ascertain their real prevalence and estimation. Fortunately there
is one outlet for the truth. We are permitted to discuss in jest
what we may not discuss in earnest. A serious comedy about sex is
taboo: a farcical comedy is privileged.


THE FAVORITE SUBJECT OF FARCICAL COMEDY.

The little piece which follows this preface accordingly takes the
form of a farcical comedy, because it is a contribution to the
very extensive dramatic literature which takes as its special
department the gallantries of married people. The stage has been
preoccupied by such affairs for centuries, not only in the
jesting vein of Restoration Comedy and Palais Royal farce, but in
the more tragically turned adulteries of the Parisian school
which dominated the stage until Ibsen put them out of countenance
and relegated them to their proper place as articles of commerce.
Their continued vogue in that department maintains the tradition
that adultery is the dramatic subject par excellence, and indeed
that a play that is not about adultery is not a play at all. I