Publisher's Synopsis
"His House in Order" is among other things remarkable for having no story at all, though its relation occupied long columns in the press. It is a psychological situation, such as could be found in one form or another in any English household. Its undramatic qualities are particularly striking; indeed, it is so actual that some people already find it unnatural. It is just as realistic and natural as Gorki's "Out of the Depths." Even the exits and entrances are so adroitly contrived that they occasion no remark. By keeping the device of the letters till Act iii, Mr. Pinero with conscious art proved that it was not the keystone to the perfect architecture of his drama. The play is, indeed, a lesson for all of us. Given adequate interpretation, the most intense stimulation can be derived from a play where the dialogue is not particularly brilliant, and the situations not more sensational than any one may witness for himself at a family party in the country. Surprise has been expressed that Mr. Pinero should revert to discarded dramatic conventions, the aside and the long speech; but they have not been discarded in real life. All of us use asides and we listen, alas! to long speeches not quite so entertaining as those of Mr. George Alexander in the play. I confess that Hilary's parable in Act ii seems to me out of note with the character. He would surely have presented a simpler and wittier fable. It appears to me to have caused the author qualms; to have been rewritten, omitted, then reset. Nor do I understand Hilary's language in communicating the first wife's infidelity to his brother. It is improbable: he seems to be breaking it gently to the audience (already in the secret) not Filmer: Nina's method was cruder and more lifelike. Several people have hazarded the politics of Filmer Jesson, M.P., and rally Mr. Pinero for not revealing them. It seems to me fairly obvious that he was a Liberal Unionist and a Tariff Reformer, with an open mind on Chinese Labour and strongly in favour of legislation for the suppression of Ritualism. I am sure he was defeated by a handsome majority at the recent election.
Dramatic tides have washed the London theatres from time to time; the waves of Ibsen, Maeterlinck and Mr. Bernard Shaw have beaten like passing bells against the financially successful dovecotes and cleared away many foolish and ancient traditions of the stupid English stage. When the flood has receded, secure and smiling Mr. Arthur Wing Pinero is found exactly in the same place, none the worse for the wetting, and with perhaps just a little salt sticking to his coat-tails. He, at all events, has not built upon sand; his house was in order long ago. Many would like to regard him as a pleasant reminiscence of their youth - the last of the Anglo-Saxon dramatists (I believe he is of Portuguese extraction), something that belonged to the old time before Irish and Norwegian and Belgian influence sapped our British sentiments. "His House in Order" will be a rude awakening. A very foolish book appeared in France not long ago (I think by M. Auguste Filon), in which we were complimented on the possession of an ornament not ours. For to talk of English drama is like talking of French cricket or Australian champagne. But, as the late Marques of Bute was able to grow exquisite vintages on a specially cultivated soil in Wales, so Mr. Pinero and a few other isolated dramatists can produce the vine which ceased to flourish long before England became a Free Trade country, intellectually or otherwise.
-"The Academy," Volume 70
