JUSTICE. John Galsworthy's play 'Jus tice' belongs to that imported school of drama that found some lodgment in England and America during the first years of the 20th century and accompanied the movement for re pertory theatres to play to the few rather than to the many. While it deals with English characters the spirit and the manner of attack are characteristically continental. In no respect does this play nor the class to which it belongs connect with the historic strains of the fish theatre. This isolation from English man ners and molds of thinking in the theatre is revealed as much in the extraordinary technical and moral honesty of the work as in its diver gence from conventional British themes, As a novelist Galsworthy had been influenced in turn by French and Russian schools of literary man ners. From the first he derived a certain schol arly detachment, a certain lack of heat in deal ing with pregnant topics; from the second a brooding note of high cosmic seriousness. Clearly as he sees facts, and few modern writers are better students of detail than he, Gals worthy is most interested in the truth behind the facts. The pressure of larger issues gov erns the plots of most of his novels and all of his plays, and provides the explanation of that Blocked" type of the tragedy of footless discontent that he has written so much. In the handlinig of the characters, in the display of the petty lives of infinitesimal men and women working under the sway of mighty forces the play is like many of Hauptmann's. In attack
ing a code of justice it is like Brieux's The Red Robe.' Really it lies between these two, between a diatribe against man's injustice under the name of law and a dispassionate etching in cold black and white. There are in it some points of resemblance to the same writer's earlier 'The Silver Box> in that this also is a study of the improper balancing of the scales of the law. Neither in action nor in its mes sage does 'Justice' command a large audience. This fact should not blind us to the unusual claims of the play for high consideration as a stage work. For sheer vividness of unlit erary appeals, for the power to project an im pression without words and even without went, for the power to turn the glass on nature and make even dull hours intense with interest the play takes high rank. There can be no question as to the effectiveness of the author's artistry. Whether his general theme has the relevancy he attaches to it may be open to ques tion. 'Justice) was presented as the first play of Frohman's Duke of York's Repertory Theatre under the direction of Granville Par ker, 21 Feb. 1910. It 'has often appeared in the repertories of ((new') theatres, and was given a distinguished production in 1916 in New York city. Consult Dukes, A., 'Modern Dram atists> (1912) ; Herford, C. H., (Essays and Studies> (1914) ; Galsworthy, J., 'The Inn of Tranquillity' (1913).