Owen Seaman

“ In almost the only case where quick movement is here demanded one becomes conscious of the intrusion of words. When he knows that the relief of Pomfret depends upon his instant action, Lisle still finds time for conversations with his servant, with Miriam and with the doctor, and for a couple of well-sustained soliloquies. ”

“ This is not Rimini; it is the English Fenland; and all the characters, with the exception of Miriam Mardyke (the Bathsheba of the piece) , who was bred in France and had its sun in her blood, were of the Puritan pattern that does not accommodate itself very easily to the language of passion.
But all this we knew ten years ago, when The Sin of David was first published; and the only new interest was the question of its adaptability to the theatre. Poetic drama seldom gains much by presentation on the stage, unless it is full of action ”

“ If ever a woman's beauty shall ensnare
My soul into such sin as he hath sinned"—
these passages, even if the title of the play had not prepared us, afford fair warning of the way in which things have got to go. In fact it is all very simple and straightforward, and (on the constructive side) Hellenic. Per-haps indeed the treatment is a little too direct, and the tragedy moves too quickly to its consummation (thirty or forty minutes suffice for the reading of it) . It might serve its publisher (of the Bodley Head) as one of a series to be entitled: "Half-hours with the Best Sinners." ”