MR. PINERO'S NEW PLAY.*

MR. PINERO treats his clever comedy as a mere comedy, one which only raises " the old, often-asked question,—' Can the depths be sounded of ignorance, of vulgarity of mind, of vanity,- and of self-seeking ?" But he might have added, ' of falsehood

and of deliberate hypocrisy,' for these two qualities, also, are what he delineates in the vulgar tuft-hunters to whom he in- troduces us, as well as in their aristocratic adviser, whom they bribe to push them into the world of rank and fashion. There is something almost more tragic than comic in the picture of people so frankly indifferent whether they win their way into the society of the titled classes by fair or foul means. They invent the most astounding lies in order to smooth their rise in London society, and throw over without even a qualm the courted acquaintances of yesterday, in order to please the more courted acquaintances of to-day. The picture is made more farcical in general effect than any reality from which it is likely to have been taken. But if it were in any sense an approximation to the truth of the worldliness and falsehood of any of the strata of London society, it would certainly shock a great deal more than it would amuse uP...

Here are a group of people who, with two exceptions, have but one desire, to appear to be not only what they are not, but what no one with the smallest discernment could ever by any possibility suppose them to be. They do not even aspire to be so much as "bad imitations of polished ungodliness," but only by lavish bribes to stop the months of those who recognise fully what they are, and so prevent their undisguisable vulgarity from being proclaimed aloud to all their acquaintances. Here- are the sole contrasts to the impostors of whose sayings and doings Mr. Pinero is the comic showman :—

" Denham.—I shall be at Mrs. Cathew's about eleven.

Beryl.—A trifle early for us.

Denham.—Early ?

Beryl.—H'm. We used to go very early to such places and stay' right through, but, now that papa has got on,' we arrive late everywhere and murmur an apology !

Denham.—Ha, ha!

Beryl.—Ah, don't laugh ! If you realised as I do the sham, the falseness, of this sort of thing you wouldn't, you couldn't laugh— you'd cry. And one's life seems to be made up of parade and pre- tension—and sometimes I feel it is more than I can—Ah ! Forgive my complaining to you. Denham.—You forget I am as hemmed in as yourself—bound by conventionalism, fettered by fashion.

Beryl.—You could revolt.

Denham.—I might rush away to shoot big game in America_ That would not be declaring independence of character, that would, be escaping from declaring it. Beryl.—Are you sure you have an independent character to declare ?

Denham.—At least I desire to behave as an individual ; at pre- sent I am a phonograph rolled up in a coat. I don't aspire to•

• The Times a Comedy in Four Acts. By A. W. Pinero. London : William Heinemann.

great things, but I wish to speak of great things with gratitude and of mean things with indignation.

Beryl.—It is good of you even to talk like this. And, mind, if

you ever break away, pray for an adventurer.

.Denham.—You may begin to-day, then. Beryl.—Why ? Denham.—I am just about to break away.

Beryl.—What are you going to do

Denham.—Entreat to be allowed to pay my addresses to you.

Beryl [in a murmur].—Oh ! Denham.—Now you guess the object of my mother's visit this

afternoon.

Beryl.—We—we are in different worlds. Denham.—Let us come out of our little worlds and meet each

other.

Beryl.—But I—I am—nothing. Denham.—Ah, I have watched you, I know you—you are an in-

dividual. Consent to marry me, and you confer upon me the gift of individuality. Answer me.

Beryl.—Lord Lurgashall-4 Denham [holding out his hand].—My dear Beryl. Beryl [laying her hand in his].—Denham !"

But the play does not turn at all on the sincerity of these young people, but entirely on the innumerable and inex- haustible falsehoods of their relatives, whose demeanour the audience is intended to laugh at and enjoy. Mr. Pinero is skil- ful in painting the perverted but ardent humility of these vulgar people's worldliness. They are not only willing to submit with- out challenge to the accepted social standards, bat to be con- tent without reaching or even approaching them, so long as they can find the means to prevent those who know what they them- selves are from applying those standards so as to shut them out from the society they covet. One would think there could be no humility deeper than that which is thankful to sham a conformity to the ideas and manners and tastes of a class with which they have no more in common than they have with the stately sedateness of Asiatic dignity ; but it is humility of a very base kind. The scene in which the Hon. Montague Trimble explains on what terms some of his own acquaintances will consent to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Bompas to meet the Maharajah of Shikapoor, on condition that " a dinner may not be held to constitute an acquaintance," is not badly conceived, the chief diner-out conditioning for £25 if he is not expected to tell his newest stories, and for £30 if he is. But the comic side of all this profound social humility, which aims at nothing better than not to have its falsehood and vuglarity exposed, is not quite so amusing as it is intended to be. Indeed, it would have been more so, if there had been some slight trace of real humilia- tion in these bourgeois tuft-hunters, who accept all the insolence of their grand associates with a little too much eagerness, and never (till the fiasco) betray even the faintest suspicion that, instead of rising in the world by all this pur- chasing of grand associates, they are really falling in the world, and making themselves infinitely more contemptible than their own mere ignorance and vulgar tastes could ever have made them. The most bourgeois human nature could hardly feel the sort of eager pride which Mr. and Mrs. Egerton Bompas are represented as feeling in being allowed to give a dinner to people who despise and insult them. If they were painted as feeling more disgust, the humour of the situation would'be greater.

The character of the parvenu himself is the chief study in Mr. Pinero's play, and what we miss in that study is the force to organise a great business which has made him a rich man, and which could hardly have existed consistently with so much willingness to accept the silliest advice, and the credulity to believe that so inconsistent a story as was in- vented to gloss over his son's marriage to a poor Irish girl, could be in circulation for a month without being exposed by the evidence of the very people who were depended upon to give it credence. Mr. Bompas's greedy desire to rise in the world, his uncontrollable excitement when he thinks he is rising, his fussy preparations to speak in the House of Commons, his craven fear of being exposed, and his almost insane rage with those who stand in his way, is of course very cleverly sketched; but then, there is nothing in him except his sudden conversion to see the folly and contemptibleness of his ways, so soon as his failure is assured,—and that is a great deal too complete and too creditable for the man who had previously degraded himself so spontaneously as be had done, —which accounts for his success in life at all. Whatever he had not known, he must surely have known that to put a most complicated lie into the month of such people as his dull son,

his giddy daughter-in-law, and her still more giddy mother, was an imbecile contrivance for securing his own position in society. The shrewdness necessary to a tradesman who is successful on the large scale, is missing in Mr. Egerton Bompas. Perhaps the best bit in the comedy is the scene in which Mr. and Mrs. Bompas recall their gradual rise in wealth, their setting up a new house of business in West London, their taking the house on Haverstock Hill, their first half-past 7 dinner and its vulgarities, and the regret with which they look back to the time when they could put their hands openly to the only kind of work for which they were fit. That is all very good, and is not inconsistent with the shrewdness of a success- ful tradesman and such knowledge of the world as he must have gained. But the humour of the play as a whole, would be greater if there were more consciousness of their degrada- tion in the two chief actors in it. Mrs. Egerton Bompas is not even so strongly conceived as her husband. But they are both of them poor creatures ;. and yet, in people so genuinely humble-minded towards those with any pretension to wealth, rank, and station, one would think there might have been some stirrings of humility towards the honest disgust for all this servility and falsehood which their own daughter displays. Even the perverted humility of tuft- hunters ought, we imagine, to have some affinity with the true humility which looks for guidance to the habits and instincts of true nobility. As a picture of " the times," we may fairly consider the play a caricature. There is surely much more ambition to be yourself, and less to show that you can crawl after people who stand high in the fashionable world, than there used to be even half-a-century ago.