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This same revolt against the decencies and conventions of our humanist civilization occupies a great part of present literature. How far removed from the clean and virile stoicism of George Meredith or the honest pessimism of Thomas Hardy is Arnold Bennett's The Pretty Lady or Galsworthy's The Dark Flower.
Among the novelists, Conrad tells impressive stories of distant seas and shores; Bennett's strongest fiction gives realistic pictures of life in English industrial towns; Galsworthy's novels present the problems that affect the upper class of Englishmen; Wells writes scientific romances and sociological novels.
There are no foot-lights, but the best theory of stage lighting is that there should be none. One of the most effective scenes in the modern theater is the court setting in Galsworthy's Justice. The lighting is indirect and the spots of red and green lights at the judge's desk, the corners of the jury-box and the shaded ones at the clerk's elbow, give a remarkable impression of mysterious terror.
Shaw's Devil's Disciple, Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest, Mr. Galsworthy's Silver Box. Widely as these plays differ in type and tone, they are alike in this, that they do not attempt to present very complex character-studies, or to probe the deeps of human experience.
Galsworthy's mind from his actually having seen in conflict the two men who were the prototypes of Anthony and Roberts, and thus noted the waste and inefficacy arising from the clash of strong characters unaccompanied by balance. It was accident that led him to place the two men in an environment of capital and labour.
In connexion with these remarks the section "Plays with a Purpose" should be read if possible. It should be added that Mr Galsworthy's admirable play, Justice, has had some effect upon the treatment of prisoners. The Optics Thick-and-thin admirers of Duse, an actress of indisputable genius, used to praise her because she dispensed with the "make-up" that other players deem necessary.
Such a man must be regarded as a kind of pioneer or explorer, who goes into the solitudes not of the physical but of the spiritual realm, there to blaze new trails, and, perhaps like Captain Scott, to die alone. A striking example of heroism of this kind, presented in exact antithesis to the ordinary heroism of the soldier, may be found in John Galsworthy's play, The Mob.
What I am concerned to show is that we have in him a trained philosopher adopting towards the theory of knowledge a point of view strangely similar to that which Mr. Galsworthy takes up towards the social ethics of modern England. Is it not Mr. Galsworthy's function to "condemn all noble, clean-cut, fixed, eternal, rational, temple-like systems" of morality and etiquette?
Galsworthy's Island Pharisees sufficiently expurgated to be declaimed by a well-bred clergyman in search of preferment on the ground of attention to the evils of his time. It describes undoubted facts, and it shows that the era of content has gone. But its careful periods and strangely far-off air lack the eagerness for truth which Rousseau put into his questions.
Things grew to such a height that one Saturday the mayor, with half a dozen aldermen, walked out to the little cottage on the Wem Road, and besought Captain Galsworthy's aid. The captain and I chanced to be in the thick of an encounter with the foils, and neither of us heard the rap on the door which announced the visitors.
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