But Robertson is decidedly strongest when he walks without crutches.
His own original plays, _Society, Caste, Ours_, are by far his best. A
foreign support made him limp. Of all his adaptations, _home_ alone
is really good: most of the others failed. Although that cosmopolitan
mosaic _School_ has been the most successful of his pieces in
London--it has passed its five hundredth night--it is by no means the
best. Success is not necessarily a test of real merit. Evidently,
_School_ has the elements of popularity, although it is a very weak
piece, although it is full of foreign matter, and although it violates
that most necessary rule of dramatic art, declaring no play should
contain an effect, a line, a scene or an act which does not bear on
the end in view by developing either the characters or the action. The
entire second act, containing the farcical examination-scene, is
useless. Robertson again sinned in this way in the _Nightingale_:
although it had no effect on the plot, although it was entirely
unnecessary, he introduced a pretty tableau representing the heroine,
a lovely prima-donna, singing under the silver moonbeams in a boat
rocked to and fro by the waves.
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