sentiment and hysteria; framed to bring trouble on herself and everybody else. Acted at the best, she might be pitiable. Miss Harned made her moderately interesting.

There was nothing remarkable in the acting of Mr. Oscar Ashe, an English actor, who appeared as Maldonaldo. The part presents no difficulties, being merely that of a sensual brute, whose aspect and manners are thinly veneered with superficial polish, and who lives for pleasure. This animal is frequently encountered in actual life, and he has long been a familiar figure on the stage. The ill employment upon which the dramatist has set him in the play of "Iris" is the seduction of a weak, frivolous, unprincipled, helpless woman, a crime congenial with his propensities and readily perpetrated. The actor has to be burly, jocund, aggressive, crafty, sensual, common, mean, and furious. His course is straight, and it ends in a vulgar, noisy explosion. Anybody can play Maldonaldo who can play anything. Mr. Ashe played it well, especially in the moments of lewdness, arrogant self-complacency and craft, and in the crash of the final catastrophe. Stress was laid upon the momentous fact that the actor had been specially "imported" for this achievement. It seems a pity that a respectable gentleman should be constrained to make himself publicly odious, and it was hoped that Mr. Ashe,-who thoroughly fulfilled his professional duty as Maldonaldo,-would have occasion

to manifest his talents in something above the level of a swine. That, as yet (1912), he has not done; at least, not in America.

"THE THIEF."

Henri Bernstein's comedy called "The Thief," adapted in English by Haddon Chambers, was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, on September 9, 1908. It is a work of rare merit and remarkable significance, and the performance of it was exceptionally good. The title of it is not appropriate, for the reason that it does not indicate the subject. That subject,one of supreme importance to society, is the love existent between married persons; the persons, that is to say, by whom society mainly is constituted and sustained. That love, the love existent in the marital relation, a common topic of satirical and sometimes ribald levity, is the basis on which the entire social fabric rests; yet nothing is, customarily, so foolishly, so deplorably treated by the mass of persons who should reverence and guard it. The man or woman who possesses affection, however little, so that it be real,-possesses the greatest blessing that life can receive; yet, in general, nothing is so little valued. Every day, almost every hour, men and women alienate it by abuse or barter it from motives of vanity. A cynical writer long ago remarked that in every case of love there is one person who loves and another who submits to be loved.

That, unhappily, is, almost always, true. Often it happens that the moment a woman becomes sure that a man loves her (and Nature has provided her with an unerring instinct by which she inevitably knows) she begins to become indifferent to him. Often it happens that the moment a man knows that he is loved by a woman (and, commonly, he is slow in absorbing that knowledge) he feels that the situation is exactly what it ought to be and that her homage is well bestowed, and he gazes around for other votaries. That is not the invariable occurrence, but that is the custom,-the reason being that, in both sexes, vanity is generally the strongest of all the passions of human nature.

In the comedy of "The Thief" the wife's love for the husband is idolatrous, and in her forlorn, pitiable, wretched dread that she will lose his love,which indeed seems more condescending than passionate, she becomes actually a monomaniac, and she steals money with which to pay for pretty raiment intended to make herself more attractive in his eyes. The theory of passionate devotion is pushed to its fullest extent, but those observers who think that such love is impossible know but little about mankind. It is not only possible, it is of frequent occurrence, and the social philosopher is unwise who does not include it in his philosophy. Much is suggested by the play of "The Thief,"-to persons, that is, who possess receptive minds. The elaboration of the plot,-the