There are social and economic ideas at the bottom of The Fugitive, which is to a certain extent symbolical—a study of woman’s position when, for any reason, she is separated from the herd. But in this, as in other of his later plays, Galsworthy’s command of his art is not equal to his enthusiasm for his subject. Moving and forcible as it all is, it has not the balance, the inevitableness, of Strife or The Silver Box. We feel that events are being arranged to suit the basic theory. The career of Clare Dedmond, from her revolt to her downfall, is not a thing foreseen, a thing of fate. We feel somehow that her end is arbitrary—at all events we are not shown the steps that lead to it. The actual catastrophes we witness do not demand it.

None the less the study of Clare is arresting—the woman who is “fine, but not fine enough.” She alienates our sympathies a little in the first act; there is no denying that she behaves childishly, and her husband, uncongenial as he may be, is not quite such a bounder as Malise, in whom, apparently, she finds satisfaction. But somehow that whole first act has an air of unreality about it, a remoteness from life, and a staginess we do not expect from Galsworthy. Later on the movement becomes swifter, and we have the sense of impending tragedy, which is realised in the scene where Clare leaves Malise, though she loves him and he is her only protector, because she discovers that she has become a drag on him and is spoiling his career.

The scene at the Restaurant, too, has its fine points, thoughthough it is spoilt by a riot of symbolism and a tendency towards false sentiment. The continuous singing of “This Day a Stag must die” by the revellers at another table is rather an obvious and cheap effect, so too the courtesan’s kiss as the curtain falls. On the whole one feels that The Fugitive is a play in which the author’s plan has been better conceived than carried out.

The central situations of Joy and of The Mob have nothing to do with any social or economic problem, even in a narrowed, personal sense. They deal with conduct, and special cases of conduct. Joy and The Mob, with A Bit o’ Love, stand at the bottom of the scale at the top of which are Justice and Strife. The interest of the two latter is centred in the social and industrial problems they are built on; then come The Silver Box, The Eldest Son, and The Fugitive, in which the social problem undoubtedly exists, but which depend for interest on its personal variations; then come Joy, The Mob, and A Bit o’ Love, in which the interest is purely personal and unconnected with any social idea.

Joy is a play built round an attitude rather than a problem. “A Play on the Letter I” is the sub-title, and from first to last we see how the consideration of self is the governing motive of widely different characters. We see it working openly, in characters that are frankly and aggressively egotistic; we see it acting more subtly in characters of a different stamp. The one person who is free from it is the old governess, Miss Beech, who lives only in her interest in those around her. Somehow, as is often the case with characters purposely in contrast with his general scheme, Galsworthy is occasionally artificial in dealing with Miss Beech. Her “devilishness” is more than once a trifle forced—the author so obviously wants her to be original, unlike both the conventional stage governess, and the conventionally selfless person. She fills to a certain extent the position of Chorus, and her vocation takes from her humanity. She becomes, as the play goes on, more and more of a Voice.

On the other hand, there is a great deal of humanity about Joy herself and her mother. Mrs Gwyn’s lover, Maurice Lever, is also real enough, though the same cannot always be said of Joy’s Dick. The scenes between the young people ring true, but the boy loses reality when away from Joy; he becomes more a part of stage machinery.

In spite of some languors, the play is quick-moving and closely knit, and the author keeps the central situation well in hand. There are one or two haunting scenes—the scenes of young love between Joy and Dick, the scenes of older, sadder love, more passionate and more disillusioned, between Mrs Gwyn and Lever—and one particularly good scene between Mrs Gwyn and Joy, after the girl has discovered her mother’s secret.

Joy [covering her face]. I’m—I’m ashamed.

Mrs Gwyn. I brought you into the world; and you say that to me? Have I been a bad mother to you?

Joy. Oh, mother!

Mrs Gwyn. Ashamed? Am I to live all my life like a dead woman because you’re ashamed? Am I to live like the dead because you’re a child that knows nothing of life?... D’you think—because I suffered when you were born and because I’ve suffered since with every ache you ever had, that gives you the right to dictate to me now? I’ve been unhappy enough, and I shall be unhappy enough in the time to come. Oh, you untouched things, you’re as hard and cold as iron.

Joy. I would do anything for you, mother.

Mrs Gwyn. Except—let me live, Joy. That’s the only thing you won’t do for me, I quite understand.

Joy [in a despairing whisper]. But it’s wrong of you—it’s wicked.

Mrs Gwyn. If it’s wicked, I shall pay for it, not you.

Joy. But I want to save you, mother!

Mrs Gwyn. Save me? [Breaking into laughter.]

Joy. I can’t bear it that you—if you’ll only—I’ll never leave you ... oh, mother! I feel—I feel so awful—as if everybody knew.

Mrs Gwyn. You think I’m a monster to hurt you. Ah! yes! You’ll understand better some day.

Joy [in a sudden burst of excited fear]. I won’t believe it—I—I—can’t—you’re deserting me, mother.

Mrs Gwyn. Oh, you untouched things! You—--

[Joy looks up suddenly, sees her face, and sinks down on her knees.]

Joy. Mother—it’s for me!

Mrs Gwyn. Ask for my life, Joy—don’t be afraid!

[Joy turns her face away. Mrs Gwyn bends suddenly and touches her daughter’s hair; Joy shrinks from that touch, recoiling as if she had been stung.]

Mrs Gwyn. I forgot—I’m deserting you.

[And swiftly without looking back she goes away. Joy left alone under the hollow tree crouches lower, and her shoulders shake.]

The Mob is rather an irritating, unsatisfactory play. It is meant to be a study in ideals, but it is astonishing how blunderingly and at the same time how coldly Galsworthy puts these ideals before us. The title is also a mistake. The attitude of the mob towards Stephen More is merely of secondary and artificial importance. He meets his death at its hands, it is true, but it plays little part in the spiritual fight he wages. The exhibition, in a final tableau, of its changing fancy—in the statue it erects to his memory—is dangerously near anti-climax, and no integral part of the whole. One cannot see that the mob is anywhere a dominant force—it is an incident, far less important here than in Strife, though there is one scene in which Galsworthy shows again, as he showed in Strife, his power of dealing with stage crowds:

[More turns and mounts the steps.]

Tall Youth. You blasted traitor.

[More faces round at the volley of jeering that follows; the chorus of booing swells, then gradually dies, as if they realised that they were spoiling their own sport.]

A Rough Girl. Don’t frighten the poor feller.

[A girl beside her utters a shrill laugh.]

More. Well, what do you want?

Voice. A speech.

More. Indeed! That’s new.

Rough Voice. Look at his white liver. You can see it in his face.

A Big Navvy. Shut it. Give ’im a chanst.

Tall Youth. Silence for the blasted traitor?

[A youth plays on the concertina; there is laughter, then an abrupt silence.]

... and so on.

The whole of this scene is vigorous and convincing, so too the scene of More’s death; but again and again we are irritated by the way Galsworthy misses his chances. Take, for instance, the scene in which Katherine uses her beauty and his love for her to tempt More from his ideal—it is full of magnificent opportunities, and there is some fine stuff in it, but somehow it misses fire. This may be partly due to the fact that in his later plays Galsworthy’s restraint occasionally seems to lose its force. Economy of words and emotion is effective only when used to control the riches of both.

A Bit O’ Love is in a sense the most personal of all the plays—I say in a sense, because, for the first time, we find Galsworthy definitely exploiting Place. The importance of Place in literature is a comparatively new discovery, for we must not count the descriptive and local novels which have been with us more or less from the first. Studies in Place, which set out deliberately to bring forward the personality—if I may use the term—of Place, are only just beginning, and Galsworthy, with A Bit O’ Love, comes among the pioneers. It is his latest play, and it will be interesting to watch if he chooses to develop along this line.

We have the Devonshire village as a central character in the piece—the various types which compose it are just so many parts of the whole, and it would be a mistake to treat them as separate persons. The village is at once sturdy and sweet and foolish, it is curious, it is pig-headed—it is built of the wisps of moon-and-dew cobwebs, and of the sty-door stakes from which they float. It is the common life of the village which is dealt with here, rather than subtleties of atmosphere—the actual locality has no definite existence apart from its inhabitants, which is a milder practice of the art of Place. But the central idea is the same as in all Place studies—the effect of the Place on the Man.

The man here is Michael Strangway, curate of the village, “a gentle creature burnt within,” who plays the flute, and loves dumb animals, and acts St Francis without the adorable Franciscan coarseness. His wife pleads with him not to ruin her lover’s career by bringing a divorce, and for love of her he promises. Unfortunately the interview is overheard by a little gossiping village girl who has a grudge against him because he had set free her imprisoned skylark. The news is spread, and the village is righteously indignant, wrath culminating when the curate crowns his impious toleration by falling upon the man who has used a few plain words about his wife in a public-house. Attacked and shunned on all sides for his attempt at a literal gospel, and betrayed within by the ache and emptiness of his heart, the curate resolves on suicide, but is rather tritely saved at the last moment by the little che-ild of such occasions, who offers him “a bit o’ love.”

There is some good work in the play, an atmosphere of beautiful wistfulness, tenderly combined with the bumpkin clump and flit. The dance in the big barn has its full effect of mystic and rustic beauty; there is infinite pathos in Strangway and Cremer setting out for a long tramp together in the link of their bruised hearts—and Galsworthy has done nothing more kindly-humorous than the meeting at the village inn, with Sol Potter uneasily in the chair.

The play is beautifully written, but it would seem as if the author had scarcely a clear idea himself of Strangway, and a little more planning might have saved him from one or two banalities. The extreme individuality, so to speak, of the curate’s problem—for no one can deny that his was an exceptional case—is a bit in the way of a writer whose chief concern is the social and general. But we must give a particular welcome to A Bit o’ Love, because it is Galsworthy’s first real experiment in Place, and one has a feeling that here is a grand new road for him to tread.

There remain two plays, which are called respectively “A Fantasy” and “An Allegory”—The Pigeon and The Little Dream.

The first is a fantasy based on sober facts. Indeed it would be rightly called a satire. It is a study—carried through in a spirit of comedy, in spite of drunkenness, vice, poverty, and suicide—of three irreclaimables, and of those who would reclaim them. Old Timson, the drunkard; Mrs Megan, born light of love, who even while drowning thinks of dancing; Ferrand, the vagabond, the wanderer of quaint philosophy—they are a fantastic trio, because the sorrow and sordidness of their lives is all hazed over by this half-comic, half-satiric glow in which their creator chooses to see them. In themselves more hopeless and tragic than any of the characters in Strife or Justice, they raise smiles instead of tears. It would seem almost as if the tragedy of the outcast had stirred in Galsworthy those depths beyond sorrow, which can find no expression save in laughter.

Various theorists argue about these three outcasts, and one good-natured man befriends them. Wellwyn is a kindly study, and his easy methods, however much his practical little daughter may blame him, do more to humanise the poor wretches than the sterner tactics of Professor Calway or Sir Thomas Huxton. But as a matter of fact no generosity will meet the case, no theory. We can only laugh, and through laughter learn a little more of pity.

There is some delightful humour in The Pigeon. As a rule Galsworthy’s humour is too deeply tinged with bitterness to ring true; when it is not embittered it is often ineffective or trivial, as in Joy or The Eldest Son. In The Pigeon, however, there are scenes of genuine humour and fine satire, both in situation and in dialogue. The various conceptions of character too are essentially humorous, which is seldom, if ever, the case in the other plays. It is a sharp stroke which right at the end of the play avenges the kindly Pigeon whom everyone has plucked.

Chief Humble-man [in an attitude of expectation]. This is the larst of it, sir.

Wellwyn. Oh! Ah! Yes!

[He gives them money; then something seems to strike him and he exhibits certain signs of vexation. Suddenly he recovers, looks from one to the other, and then at the tea-things. A faint smile comes on his face.]

Wellwyn. You can finish the decanter.

Chief Humble-man [clinking the coins]. Third time of arskin’! April fool! Not ’arf. Good old Pigeon!

Second Humble-man. ’Uman being, I call ’im.

Chief Humble-man [taking three glasses from the last packing-case, and pouring very equally into them]. That’s right. Tell you wot, I’d never ’a’ touched this unless ’e’d told me, I wouldn’t—not with ’im.

Second Humble-man. Ditto to that! This is a bit of orl right! [Raising his glass.] Good luck!

Third Humble-man. Same ’ere!

[Simultaneously they place their lips smartly against the liquor, and at once let fall their faces and their glasses.]

Chief Humble-man [with great solemnity]. Crikey! Bill! Tea!... E’s got us!

The Little Dream is rather a bitter allegory of the adventures of the soul in search of life and happiness. Seelchen, the little mountain girl, hears the call of the Wine Horn, typifying the delights of the town and the world, and the Cow Horn, typifying the pleasures of her mountain home, but there is a strange resemblance in the hard disillusions they are bound to offer after their gifts, and only the lonely Great Horn behind points to something finer and higher. There is really not much interest, or indeed, much originality in the little sketch, but there is some beautiful language, and Galsworthy is able to give free rein to his sense of words and poetic faculty. There is real poetry in some of the lyrics, and by them, rather than by his published volume of verse, one judges him poet as well as playwright.