More. Indeed! That’s new.
Rough Voice. Look at his white liver. You can see it in his face.
A Big Navvy. Shut it. Give ’im a chanst.
Tall Youth. Silence for the blasted traitor?
[A youth plays on the concertina; there is laughter, then an abrupt silence.]
... and so on.
The whole of this scene is vigorous and convincing, so too the scene of More’s death; but again and again we are irritated by the way Galsworthy misses his chances. Take, for instance, the scene in which Katherine uses her beauty and his love for her to tempt More from his ideal—it is full of magnificent opportunities, and there is some fine stuff in it, but somehow it misses fire. This may be partly due to the fact that in his later plays Galsworthy’s restraint occasionally seems to lose its force. Economy of words and emotion is effective only when used to control the riches of both.
A Bit O’ Love is in a sense the most personal of all the plays—I say in a sense, because, for the first time, we find Galsworthy definitely exploiting Place. The importance of Place in literature is a comparatively new discovery, for we must not count the descriptive and local novels which have been with us more or less from the first. Studies in Place, which set out deliberately to bring forward the personality—if I may use the term—of Place, are only just beginning, and Galsworthy, with A Bit O’ Love, comes among the pioneers. It is his latest play, and it will be interesting to watch if he chooses to develop along this line.
We have the Devonshire village as a central character in the piece—the various types which compose it are just so many parts of the whole, and it would be a mistake to treat them as separate persons. The village is at once sturdy and sweet and foolish, it is curious, it is pig-headed—it is built of the wisps of moon-and-dew cobwebs, and of the sty-door stakes from which they float. It is the common life of the village which is dealt with here, rather than subtleties of atmosphere—the actual locality has no definite existence apart from its inhabitants, which is a milder practice of the art of Place. But the central idea is the same as in all Place studies—the effect of the Place on the Man.
The man here is Michael Strangway, curate of the village, “a gentle creature burnt within,” who plays the flute, and loves dumb animals, and acts St Francis without the adorable Franciscan coarseness. His wife pleads with him not to ruin her lover’s career by bringing a divorce, and for love of her he promises. Unfortunately the interview is overheard by a little gossiping village girl who has a grudge against him because he had set free her imprisoned skylark. The news is spread, and the village is righteously indignant, wrath culminating when the curate crowns his impious toleration by falling upon the man who has used a few plain words about his wife in a public-house. Attacked and shunned on all sides for his attempt at a literal gospel, and betrayed within by the ache and emptiness of his heart, the curate resolves on suicide, but is rather tritely saved at the last moment by the little che-ild of such occasions, who offers him “a bit o’ love.”