MADRAS HOUSE, The, is not only an admirable example of the work of Granville Barker as a dramatist but also of the modern type of play written by, and for, those who con ceive of the theatre as a place where it is per missible, even enjoyable, to think as well as to feel. It does not depend for its effect on thrill ing situations, violent emotions Or cunningly devised mystery but depicts the dramatic in terplay of character and circumstance under normal conditions with a skill, insight and humor which afford even more 21easure, per haps, to the reader than to the spectator. Of all the wide variety of human relations in volved in the play, none are dealt with, so to speak, in actual crisis and there is a resulting lack of dramatic tension, but the author suc ceeds, nevertheless, in making one acutely con scious of the intensity and force of the emo tions that underlie the surface not only of the play but of life. The two main themes are business and sex. The particular aspect of business which is presented is one that is un familiar in America, namely, the "living-in" system, inherited from the days of guilds and apprentices in England, under which clerks and other employees receive board and lodging as part of their wages. It is obvious that in a large "drapery establishment" employing both men and women, like the Madras House, such an arrangement would be likely to give rise to social comphcations. The business theme,
therefore, although open to the reproach of be ing local in its application, may boast the charm of novelty for Americans. The sex interest, on the contrary, is of the familiar, universal, all pervading variety. It inter-penetrates the life of the conventional suburban family, into which we are introduced in the first act; it comes frankly to the fore in the second, in the case of Mr. Brigstock, "third man in the hosiery," and one of the "lady shop assistants ;* it pulls the strings during the sale of Madras House to an American millionaire in the third act; and it looms largest of all in the last act, in which that unconscionable old lady-killer, Constantine Madras, finally renounces his family and the trammels of conventional morality and turns Mohammedan. In this, as in- his other plays, Barker, following Bernard Shaw's lead, omits the customary list of dramatis persona' and in troduces his characters in a sort of literary preface to each act which is no less interesting and illuminating than the dialogue. "The Madras House" was written in 1910 and was first produced at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 9 March of the same year under the direction of, the author.