The Liberal, Volume I, Number 44, 11 February 1893 — THE PROFESSOR'S LOVE STORY [ARTICLE]

THE PROFESSOR'S LOVE STORY

FROM PUCK. I wish to array myself upon the side of the few critics who have declared the above play to prove that "a man who can produce good literature is not necessarily capable of writing a good play." "The Professor's Love Story" is not an English play, because it has no murdered Baronets, no "estates" and no missing wills. It is not an American adaptation from the French, because it contains no young man who is forced by circumstances to prevaricate acrobatically for three acts. It is not an American play, because it does not deal with war, bankruptcy or embezzlement. It is to be condemned for the following reasons: Not only has it no villain, but there is not one person in it with a

dark past. It contains no pathos. I know this, because not once does the orchestra play softly while some one tells the story of his or her life. The orchestra doesn't open its head, and the characters are not allowed to tell stories of their lives. The play is just about an absentminded electrician, forty years old, who falls in love with his pretty secretary, and believes himself to be afflicted with some less serious malady, like paresis or rheumatism. And this pretty secretary shatters ruthlessly the most binding of dramatic tenets. By all hallowed tradition her name should be "Laura Fairweather," or "Hester Ruthven" or "Eleanor Rainsford;" but it is "Lucy White." She is selfsupporting! Who does not know what this condition, called, in play phrase, "fighting life's battle alone," demands of a heroine? She should have been reared in affluence, with her "every" wish gratified, "until the crash came" which carries "poor Papa" to his grave and left her with a mother and some sisters to support. She should be sadly amisble, drooping like a lily upon its stem, and always ready to weep, in company with the wood instruments of a German orchestra. When the haughty, well-bred people misunderstand and insult her, as they must in a real play, she should wilt, and refer to herself as a "defenceless geh-rul" But this one isn't that kind. No reference is made to her formed station in life, or to dependent relatives. She may be the daughter of a blooming tradesmen in good circumstances. She doesn't droop and she evidently spends all her salary for new clothes. When parties in the play try to take her downm she sasses them back. She not only lacks the irritating spirituality of real stage

heroines, but she is gifted with human intelligence. In truth, she is a real, live, meat girl; and when the Professor makes love to her, the audience feel like eavesdroppers. And how the closing scene jars upon us! We all know what it should be: all the characters on the stage (except the villain), the principals centre, and tapering off at either end to the juvenile and comic lovers. Everybody says a few words just to show that they have been acting in a play, and the curtain fails. The play in questions doesn't end at all, apparently; but the last glimpee we have of it is on a Summer evening, with moonlight that seems real because you don't see a hand-made moon. The Professor, having ascertained the nature of his malady, is undergoing the cimilia similibus curantur treatment with gratifying results. He and Lucy White wander out of the house, in an interested, aimless way, and the Professor says he thinks they might as well take a little walk. He gives

her a good, human hug, the like of which was never seen in a play before, and they saunter off down a moonlit lane. Then the curtain falls, and it seems to the audience that they really have walked down a moonlit lane instead of out into the wings. The people in this play are as much out of place on the stage as stage people would be amongst us.

And the worst of it is that a grossed in the thing that they forget to talk and cough and rattle programmes. They laugh with a sudden, atrocious abandon. A lot of them don't know whether they are laughing or crying. They go away as full of the Professor's love for Lucy White as if love stories had n't already been done to death. And, like as not, they think they would like to meet the Professor some time, and have him bring his wife to dine with them, and talk over old times. Mr. Barrie's play may be Nature but it is not Art. H.L. Wilson