Arizona republican., 1910-10-16
THE FRENCH PLAYS
 ARE OUT OF DATE
Their Ever Recurring Theme Not Justified By the Facts, Says an
 Observer.

Livery one hIlOWS lldI IL IS Tn
 France that the family has reached
 its apOtheosis," says an Englishwom-
 an in the Lady's Pictorial. that mar | riage nine times out of ten is a req sOnably happy and safe adventure to
 undertake, and yet all French drama
 and most French novels depict a cur | ious society, in which all the charac- ters of an attractive age are engaged | in breaking the Seventh Command ! ment
 Now French society-one of the
 best organized and cohesive in the
 world-cOuld not endure for a year if
 such state of things really existed
 As a matter of fact these unlawful | lnurlgues are no more typical of French family life than of English family life; indeed, I should imagine rather less so.
 The young French wife Is ob-
 served, chaperoned, surrounded by
 mothers-in-law, aunts and cousins,
 who watch all her doings with lynx
 like assiduity, and she has to account
 for her time to a whole circle of af- fectionate hut experienced women of
 the world. In summer and autumn | they fill their villas and chateaux with relatives, and not with friends, so that the chances of monsieur or
 madame being able to indulge in a love affair or even the mildest 'flirt' are exceedingly remote.
 ITO the chateau come the sons or daughters-in-law and their children uncles, aunts, grandmOthers and cOu- sins from the most distant provinces, but rarely does the French host or hostess have a succession of house parties such as we are accustomed to in England. The young wife must sit in the drawing room of an afternoon and of an evening. surrounded by her husbands female relatives, assiduously doing fancy work, making clothes for the poor of the village or embroider- ing a new altar cloth or a robe for the Madonna in the little parish church.
 She is the woman in Europe who is least able to live her own life, to go about without malicious comment or to see maculine friends with any sort of cordial intimacy. Then again there is the tie of her religiOn-the necessity of confessing all her mis- dOings-tO make her adhere to the narrow path of duty.
 Yet so observant a dramatist as M. Maurice Donnay is apparently un- able to embark upon a description of modern life and modern people with out using the motive of conjugal in fidelity. La Verge Folle,' M. Henri Bataille's great Parisian success of last spring, is still more improbable ( I-, ,.fa 1f r~fp nnrn nay, for here we have a lovely young girl of IS. the daughter of a duke, running off to London with a middle aged married lawyer.
 Such an Oncoming mink has sel dom been seen on any stage, least of all on the Parisian boards, and if there is something strangely distaste full in the love scenes there is, ac- cording to modern ideas, a still more unpleasant flavor in the abject atti- tude of the sorrowful abandoned wife. The foolish virgin certainly has the courage to live her own life, destroy ing the happiness of two families in the process; but the Griselda wife. so wonderfully acted by Berthe Bady, does not resemble any cultivated woman of any nationality in this twentieth century.
 Certainly no wife of northern race would act in the way that M. Henri Bataille's heroine acts. the feminine pride which is so marked a charac teristic of the modern woman would prevent her adopting so mediavel an attitude to her erring spouse. Per haps in a few years it will occur to the French playwright that there are other themes than the somewhat one of the erring husband or the unfaithful wife"