The plot of Mr. John Masefield's new prose tragedy, The
Faithful (William Heinemann, 3s. 6d. net), is based—though he does not mention the fact—upon an episode in Japanese history at the beginning of the eighteenth century, which has been made familiar to English readers in Mitford's Tales of Old Japan under the title of " 71lie Forty-seven Rollin," and which is also the subject of the famous Japanese dramatic romance, Chiushingura. There is no cause whatever for com- plaint in this, for the plots of some of the best English plays have been borrowed without acknowledgment from foreign romances, and, though The Faithful can scarcely be compared with Much Ado about Nothing or with Othello, it a nevertheless perhaps the hest play that Mr. Masefield has written. He keeps very closely to the simple and dramatic situations of his original, succeeds in lending an almost Attic brevity and intensity to his dialogue, and only occasionally lapses into the dieconeerting sentimentality which is his besetting sin. We look forward very much to the time when it may be possible to see it upon the stage.
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