Page:Robert Louis Stevenson, the dramatist.pdf/28

26 naturally introduced, and therefore more dramatic, is an earlier speech of Dorothy's wherein she turns almost fiercely upon her aunt who has, in ignorance, been praising Beau Austin for his gallantries. "Stop!" cries the girl,

""Aunt Evelina, stop; I cannot endure to hear you. What is he after all but just Beau Austin? What has he done—with half a century of good health, what has he done that is either memorable or worthy? Diced and danced and set fashions; vanquished in a drawing-room, fought for a word; what else? As if these were the meaning of life! Do not make me think so poorly of all of us women. Sure, we can rise to admire a better kind of man than Mr. Austin. We are not all to be snared with the eye, dear aunt; and those that are—O! I know not whether I more hate or pity them.""

Ladies and gentlemen, it is not my intention to trouble you with any further extracts from this play. I should, I fear, lay myself open to a charge of unfairness by quoting scenes with the sole object of proving their ineffectiveness, even tediousness. I ask you to turn, at your leisure, to Beau Austin and to study the play for yourselves. I ask you to read the passages—some of them great passages—of dialogue between Dorothy and Fenwick, between Fenwick and Beau Austin, between the Beau and Dorothy; and I submit to you that while there is much in these passages that is beautiful, much that is true and subtle, there is very little that is truly and subtly expressed. The beauty the authors aimed at was, I believe you will agree with me, the absolute beauty of words, such beauty as Ruskin or Pater or Newman might achieve in an eloquent passage, not the beauty of dramatic fitness to the character and the situation.

Now, I am not attacking—and I should be sorry if you so under-