Theatricals. By Henry James. (Osgood, Mcllvaine, and Co.)— This volume,
the second bearing the title, contains two unacted plays, The Album and The Reprobate. It is not easy to see why Mr. James, who has proved to the satisfaction of all reasonable people that he can write successful stories, should go on writing unsuccessful plays. One consideration, indeed, is obvious, though we have no reason for supposing that it weighed with the author. By arranging your matter in a dramatic form, you can make it go a long way. The two hundred odd pages which each of these plays occupies might be compressed, as stories are com- monly printed, into something less than half the space. One page, for instance, contains just thirty-six words, not reckoning the names, which make ten, and the stage directions, which come to forty-three. As for the literary merits of the work, it is not easy to say much about them. In fact, when we have said that the dialogue is smart, we feel that criticism is exhausted.
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