148 



The Review of Reviews. 



dnctrine. And then caricaturing the absurdities 

 cherished in some quarters, I aslved in derision how 

 much money had been subscribed by the Vatican and 

 tlie Jesuits to subsidise tliis subtle attempt to pervert 

 the Protestant subjects of our Protestant king. I 

 thought that the extravagance and exaggeration of 

 my letter would have been sufficient to show my real 

 drift. But alas ! I underestimated tiie density of the 

 brain of the Protestant public. Imagine my dismay 

 at finding myself enthusiastically hailed as tlie one 

 man who dared to bear witness for the Protestant 

 faith ! In future, when I write anytliing in the same 

 vein I shall have to add like .\rtemus Ward, " N.B. — 

 'Phis is rote sarkastic." 



All the newspapers have described at such length 

 " The Miracle " and " (Edi- 

 pus " that I shall spare my 

 readers any detailed account 

 of either one show or the 

 other. I will address myself 

 to pointing out as simply and 

 clearly as I can the concep- 

 tions of life and of the rela- 

 tion of man to God which 

 these two plays of Rein- 

 liardt's have impressed upon 

 the mind of the public. 

 Judging them from our 

 present standpoint, they are 

 both distinctly immoral. 

 'I'hey both set forth ideas 

 as to the relation of God to 

 man in terms which only 

 need to be stated in their 

 naked simplicity to revolt 

 the moral sense. 



'Pake the earlier play, the 

 "(Kdipus" of Sophocles. 

 Here we have a man who, 

 so far as his own will and 

 conscience are concerned, 

 is absolutely innocent. 

 'K iipus, so far from doing 

 wrong, met his doom in try- 

 ing to escape from commit- 

 ting the crimes it was predicted he would couunit. 

 1 le was a man who wished to escape from sin. 

 lie was no monster of iniiiuity. He was indeed 

 a man pious and pulilic-spirited, a good father, a 

 I iving son, a faithful husband. He was a sovereign 

 d'^voted to his peo|)le's welfare. In order to escape 

 from the jiredicted horror of a double crime he 

 sacrificed his right to the throne of Corinth and fled 

 as an exile to another realm. l!y his ready wit he 

 saved the people from the devastating appetite of the 

 .Sphynx, and was regarded by his contemporaries as a 

 benefactor and a Saviour. Yet this man of all men 

 is made the victim and the sport of the malignant 

 gods. He is led, all unknowing, to commit with 

 innocent heart the very oflcnces which he desired of 



The Nun in the M'racle Play. 



all things to avoid, and having committed them tliere 

 rains down on him the pitiless vengeance of the gods. 

 His wife-mother hangs herself. He tears out his eye.s 

 in the anguish of his remorse, and departs alone an 

 outcast and a wanderer into the desolate wilderness. 

 Prom our point of view Qidipus had done no wrong 

 and deserved no [ninishment. He deserved indeed 

 our profoundest pity, our loving compassion ; but 

 from the point of view of the drama not only was this 

 not the view of his contemporaries, it was not even 

 his own view. He was terribly punished, but he 

 makes no railing protest against the divine fienJs who 

 had ordained his destruction. It is all very strange 

 and abhorrent to us, an outrage upon what we now 

 regard as the elementary ideas of justice. 



And yet and yet ! 'I'he 

 night upon which I saw 

 (Edipus was tl-.e twenty- 

 sixth anniversary of the 

 night on which I was wel- 

 comed in triumph in Exeter 

 Hall after my release from 

 Holloway gaol, to which 1 

 had been consigned as a 

 penalty for having en- 

 deavoured, not wisely but 

 too well, to increase the 

 legal safeguards against the 

 ruin of young and innocent 

 girls. 'Phe anniversary rc- 

 i-.illed some of my medita- 

 tions in my prison cell. 

 < »nc of the most persis- 

 tently recurring thoughts of 

 that time was the injustice 

 with which Society treats 

 the fallen woman. Many 

 a girl has "lost her virtue" 

 in innocence as absolute 

 as that of OEdi[)us. But 

 although she may have been 

 as helpless in the toils of 

 her betrayer as the trapped 

 do\e. Society takes no ac- 

 count of that. She has lost 

 her character and is cast out, like Qidipus, or doomed 

 often to a fate even worse than his. Nay, many 

 times her undoing has been due to her very effort to 

 preserve her virtue. Fleeing from temptation in one 

 (|uarter, she has found herself in the toils from which 

 llicre was no escape. Of which fa^t the annals of the 

 \\'hite Slave trade afford only too much overwhelming 

 evidence. \'et Christian society, priding itself ujion 

 its morals, is as remorseless as Apollo in the tragedy 

 of So|)hocles. ' 



This brings me to the equally immoral story of 

 " 'Phe Miracle." Here the pendulum has swung to 

 the other extreme. In " Qidipus " the innocent falls 

 crushed by the ruthless gods. In " 'Phe Miracle " 

 we have the guilty made the special object of the 



