adored to learn that it was her husband who was the real coward and traitor.  He knew that the lady detested her husband; he knew that they had no children to suffer by the husband’s disgrace; he knew that there was a quite probable way by which he might have cleared his own character without casting any imputation on the other man.  But in a sheer frenzy of self-sacrifice he blasted his own career, and thereby inflicted far greater pain upon the woman he loved than if he had told the truth or suffered it to be told.  And twenty years afterwards, when the villain was dead, the hero still resolutely refused to clear his own character, lest the villain’s widow should learn the truth about her wholly unlamented husband.  This was an extravagant and childish case; but the superstition of heroic self-sacrifice still lingers in certain quarters, and cannot be too soon eradicated.  I do not mean, of course, that self-sacrifice is never admirable, but only that it can no longer be accepted as a thing inherently noble, apart from its circumstances and its consequences.  An excellent play might be written with the express design of placing the ethics of self-sacrifice in their true light.  Perhaps the upshot might be the recognition of the simple principle that it is immoral to make a sacrifice which the person supposed to benefit by it has no right to accept.

Another motive against which it is perhaps not quite superfluous to warn the aspiring playwright is the “voix du sang.”  It is only a few years since this miraculous voice was heard speaking loud and long in His Majesty’s Theatre, London, and in a play by a no less modern-minded author than the late Clyde Fitch.  It was called The Last of the Dandies,[3] and its hero was Count D’Orsay.  At a given moment, D’Orsay learned that a young man known as Lord Raoul Ardale was in reality his son.  Instantly the man of the world, the squire of dames, went off into a deliquium of tender emotion.  For “my bo-o-oy” he would do anything and everything.  He would go down to Crockford’s and win a pot of money to pay “my boy’s” debts—­Fortune could not but be kind to a doting parent.  In the beautiful simplicity of his soul, he looked forward with eager delight to telling Raoul that the mother he adored was no better than she should be, and that he had no right to his name or title.  Not for a moment did he doubt that the young man would share his transports.  When the mother opposed his purpose of betraying her secret, he wept with disappointment.  “All day,” he said, “I have been saying to myself:  When that sun sets, I shall hear him say, ‘Good-night, Father!’” He postulated in so many words the “voix du sang,” trusting that, even if the revelation were not formally made, “Nature would send the boy some impulse” of filial affection.  It is hard to believe—­but it is the fact—­that, well within the present century, such ingenuous nonsense as this was gravely presented to the public of a leading theatre, by an author of keen intelligence, who, but for an unhappy accident, would now be at the zenith of his career.  There are few more foolish conventions than that of the “voix du sang.”  Perhaps, however, the rising generation of playwrights has more need to be warned against the opposite or Shawesque convention, that kinship utters itself mainly in wrangling and mutual dislike.