Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), like so many writers of comedy during the last two centuries, was born in Ireland, the son of wellknown and brilliant, but somewhat ill-balanced, parents. During the years 1874-8 he made his mark in scholarship and literary work at Oxford; and in the latter year began а career of artistic pose, social conspicuousness, and literary success in London. sides his plays he wrote poems, novels, essays, and lectures; his first light comedy, the present one, came out with great success in 1892. He died in obscurity.

Be

Wilde was a chief exponent of the socalled esthetic movement among certain clever young men in the eighties and nineties. It began under the influence of such men as Ruskin, William Morris, and Pater; but while their love of beauty broadened and deepened into something more manful and humane, high artistic creation and work toward social betterment, Wilde's was too shallow and unstable a nature to drive him to any more solid achievement than polished literary form and superficial brilliance. His plays are his best work, and are interesting for two reasons. They are admirable so far as they go, and indicate and helped on an important change in dramatic style.

Lady Windermere's Fan is a comedy of manners, brilliantly constructed and written, with much clever satire on social vapidity, some insight into human nature, and some appearance of depth, sympathy, and earnestness. When it first appeared, the influence on it of such earlier dramatists as Congreve and Sheridan was remarked at once, and also (less obvious to the general reader) that of nineteenth-century French comedy. The sparkling dialogue is what especially recalls Sheridan and Congreve. Airy unexpectedness and paradox are even more essential in Wilde, especially that which consists in contradicting or inverting a proverbial saying or a social commonplace" the youth of the present have absolutely no respect for dyed hair," "he has one of these weak natures that are not susceptible to influence" (An Ideal Husband), “ I can resist anything except temptation." Some of his agile twists passed from Wilde's plays into the common talk. Further, no one can fail to be reminded of the screen-scene in The School for Scandal by the third act in Lady Windermere's Fan, where Mrs. Erlynne and Lady

Windermere are concealed in Lord Dam, ton's rooms. It cannot be said that r dramatic effectiveness Wilde has fallen 18 hind his master. The situation is as pr able, the final sensation as well led up to, tel complication is greater yet as clear, the na tional state of things is more intricate more serious the conventionally g woman shows her real flimsy character. the bad woman rises to the sort of self-samfice which meant most heroism for her. T scene is masterly. It is admirably plan from the extraordinary meeting of the t women, and Dumby's unconscious draz irony ("The lively part of the evening only just beginning"), to the device by w Lady Windermere escapes. The fine fee which the scene shows is rare in Wilde, whe, moral tone is not greatly different from C greve's, and embodies that of the class social life which he constantly satirizes. really respected and chose to identify hims with. One feels dissatisfaction with the e ing that Lady Windermere's folly sh. be huddled up from her husband, so that. 1 stead of facing it down, she may forget precisely as any worldly and super woman in the audience would have de The decent and satisfying ending Wilde pr ably rejected as too obvious." This is scene has the emotional complexity tioned earlier, husband and wife each kn ing something essential to the situation known to the other, and all the threads t tering in Mrs. Erlynne's hand. Again stands on a dramatic pedestal. She is sort of person in portraying whom W shows most insight and depth; the people i whom he is most fond of showing possibiliti of goodness and sacrifice are women ** with past and languid dandies. He makes : specialty of the heroism that may lurk ber the rouged or expressionless face, and in th he has been followed by many a later pl wright; for nothing makes less demand fre the moral feelings of the superficial, or s cites more the genial mood of charity wh is one of the pleasantest products of a dra matic performance.

In dramatic history, Wilde and his first comedy mark the rise of a realistic pros drama of genuine literary worth. It was a reaction against the literary mediocrity, the sentimentality, the somewhat narrow cor- 1 ventionalism, the moral primness, which are

times associated with the middle part e reign of Queen Victoria. In Wilde, more or less in his like, we find in cona fine literary finish, more or less realzynicism or an affectation of it, and an mation to treat the relations of the sexes Freely as modern decorum will allow. matic writing refused longer to be bound, aimed more truth and more art. Much his is true of the entire prose drama h was the form characteristic of the end he nineteenth century. Without implythat they were chiefly influenced by de, and without ignoring new influences, that of Ibsen, we find much the same ary finish, the same or more freedom, same interest in the relations of the es and in the woman "with a past," with ch more insight and moral earnestness in r treatment, in the "problem plays" of à men as Sir Arthur W. Pinero and Mr. A. Jones.

Since the present collection stops at the verge of the contemporary drama, it can do no more than barely mention such new tendencies as those toward plays on living social problems and issues, and toward a vitalized poetic drama. The former style has been most able and revolutionary, though not most agreeable, with Mr. George Bernard Shaw. Poetic drama in America has been most worthy and significant in the hands of Mr. Percy MacKaye and Mrs. Josephine Peabody Marks; in the British Isles (besides the rather weak plays of the late Stephen Phillips) with a school of Irish dramatists; a most original form of imaginative drama (not always in verse) has developed in 1reland, in the plays of Mr. W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the late J. M. Synge, as a part of the wonderful renascence of Irish national spirit which was one of the most remarkable spectacles in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Lady W. How do you do, Lord Darlington? No, I can't shake hands with you. My hands are all wet with these roses. Are n't they lovely? They came up from Selby this morning.

Lord D. They are quite perfect. (Sees a fan lying on the table.) And what a wonderful fan! May I look at it? Lady W. Do. Pretty, is n't it! It's got my name on it, and everything. I have only just seen it myself. It's my husband's birthday present to me. You know to-day is my birthday?

Lord D. No? Is it really? Lady W. Yes; I'm of age to-day. Quite an important day in my life, is n't it? That is why I am giving this party tonight. Do sit down.

(Still arranging flowers.) Lord D. (Sitting down.) I wish I had known it was your birthday, Lady Windermere. I would have covered the whole street in front of your house with flowers for you to walk on. They are made for you.

(A short pause.)

Lady W. Lord Darlington, you annoyed me last night at the Foreign Office. I am afraid you are going to annoy me again.

Lord D. I, Lady Windermere?

(Enter Parker and Footman c. with tray and tea-things.)

Lady W. Put it there, Parker. That will do. (Wipes her hands with her pockethandkerchief, goes to tea-table l. and sits down.) Won't you come over, Lord Darlington?

(Exit Parker c.)

Lord D. (Takes chair and goes across 1. c.) I am quite miserable, Lady Windermere. You must tell me what I did. (Sits down at table 1.) Lady W. Well, you kept paying me elaborate compliments the whole evening. Lord D. (Smiling.) Ah, now-a-days we are all of us so hard up, that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They 're the only thing we can pay. Lady W. (Shaking her head.) No, I am talking very seriously. You must n't laugh, I am quite serious. I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he does n't mean. Lord D. Ah, but I did mean them.

Woman

(Takes tea which she offers him.)

Lady W. (Gravely.) I hope not. should be sorry to have to quarrel wit you, Lord Darlington. I like you ver much, you know that. But I should: like you at all if I thought you w what most other men are. Believe 1 you are better than most other men, ar ¦ I sometimes think you pretend to ▷

worse.

Lord D. We all have our little vanities.. Lady Windermere.

Lady W. Why do you make that you | special one?

(Still seated at table l.) Lord D. (Still seated 1. c.) Oh, now-i a-days so many conceited people go about Society pretending to be good. that I think it shows rather a sweet and modest disposition to pretend to be bad Besides, there is this to be said. If you i pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it does n't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

Lady W. Don't you want the world to take you seriously then, Lord Darlington?

Lord D. No, not the world. Who are the people the world takes seriously? All the dull people one can think of. from the Bishops down to the bores. I should like you to take me very seriously, Lady Windermere, you more than any one else in life.

Lady W. Why-why me?

Lord D. (After a slight hesitation.) Because I think we might be great friends. Let us be great friends. You may want a friend some day.

Lady W. Lord D.

Why do you say that?

Oh!-we all want friends at

times. Lady W. I think we 're very good friends already, Lord Darlington. We can always remain so as long as you don'tLord D. Don't what? Lady W. Don't spoil it by saying extravagant, silly things to me. You think I am a Puritan, I suppose? Well, I have something of the Puritan in me. I was brought up like that. I am glad of it. My mother died when I was a mere child. I lived always with Lady Julia, my father's eldest sister, you know. She was stern to me, but she taught me, what the world is forgetting, the difference that there is between what is right and what is wrong. She allowed of no compromise. I allow of none.