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262 PROBLEM PLAYS the problem in dramatic action and permit the individual to draw his own inferences. 2. Problem plays should not be controversial. They may present problems and suggest the solution in some one particular case, they may even offer a condition and argue that this condition is right or wrong, but it is better to present a play offering a subject for dis- cussion, but not adding to the discussion. The true problem play is not a preachment against existing conditions. It is a play presenting interestingly some phase of the condition; an analysis rather than an arraignment of tlie condition. In other words, to be interesting it must first be a drama and then a non-partisan presentation of a con- dition. Were this borne in mind there would be fewer plays of this type rejected as being likely to give offense. 3. The problem play should not state its proposition too palpa- bly. It does not ask "Should the woman pay?" and then proceed to argue that she should or that she should not. It should not seem to state a problem. In action it should present the problem in the form of an interesting story. It should show what has happened to one woman and permit the spectator to make his own deductions and not force him to accept the conclusions of the author. It shows the woman's transgression and the results so clearly that the justice or injustice of her treatment is so evident that the spectator realizes the problem though no formal statement of the proposition has been made. You show that it is not possible for a woman to sin and ever wholly to retrieve her good name. You show that the man who has shared her sin can rehabilitate his reputation, if, indeed, it has suffered any injury. The contrast between the man's smug self- righteousness and the woman's gradual descent in spite of her efforts to retrieve her error gives a picture that is in itself a better argu- ment than an arrayal of logical facts. 4. Perhaps this selection of subject is unfortunate since it may add to the existing belief that the sex problem is the only one that is susceptible of interesting treatment. This not only is not true, but the almost universal resort to sex for problem matter serves to em- phasize the need for some other subject if the author would escape the inevitable "theme used before." 5. Any play that deals with a defiance of convention or that runs contrary in its action to accepted belief is a problem play, and many subjects can be found more vitally interesting and more generally acceptable than the threadbare triangle of the man, the woman and Mrs. Grundy. The question as to whether it is the duty of the physician to preserve the vital spark in his suffering patient to the last agonized moment, if intelligently treated, is more sensational and more gripping than a vain effort to view the repentant Magdalene from a new angle. The physician offers another problem in the the- ory that the confidences of his patients should be held as sacred as the secrets of the confessional. 6. Notice, please, that "physician" and not "Catholic priest" is