Mr. Shaw's latest and wittiest play to see our stage was presented Monday for the first time in Boston, by Mr. Faversham and his wonderful company. Mr. Faversham, having essayed, in the immediate past, the roles of a faun, a gentleman gambler and a barbaric king, was quite at his best last night as a bishop of the Anglican Church. Until recently, the dramatic tradition of the English stage has tacitly and unalterably ordained that a clergyman of that religious body should invariably be a pompous and platitudinous ass. Mr. Shaw and Mr. Faversham, being men of the world and not mere dramatists, know better; and the gentle, witty, tolerant prelate of Mr. Shaw's fancy and Mr. Faversham's creation is, or should be, one of the really great figures of our contemporary drama. The actor's conception of the part really cannot be praised too highly. In the first place, it is a role essentially suited to a great actor, not a star, but an actor. Though the play consists of more than three hours of solid conversation, Mr. Faversham's share in it is comparatively slight compared to the dreadful bulk. None the less, it is necessary that he dominate the stage three-fourths of the time. He succeeds in doing this inimitably. He presents an almost perfect picture of a gentle, super-intelligent worldling, with a touch of typically Shavian spirituality, a kind of Fenelon in gaiters. It is a very fine creation.

In regard to that depressing thing--the play's message--we cannot say a great deal. It undertakes to be a dramatic discussion of the disadvantages of married life and proceeds to discuss them, as we have said, for three hours on a stretch. A more correct name for the play, we suggest, would be a sexual farce. In many respects, it is the most daring production of this dramatist, and has the inevitable touch of Shavian heroics and Shavian mysticism, as usual, in the last act. The excessively long and mystical monologue of the Mayoress seems at first to strike a false note, until one suddenly wakes up to the fact that it is really the play's manifesto, and that the Mayoress is the eternal Woman, the eternal Eve, pleading for her misunderstood sex, or rather analyzing it with prenatural cleverness and a certain poetry, for the benefit of her male hearers.

The acting is all that could possibly be desired. Miss Henrietta Crossman as the Mayoress does what is really a wonderful piece of work. In many respects the Mayoress is the most subtle feat of characterization Mr. Shaw has accomplished. Mr. Lumsden Hare, as the scarlet general, succeeds in conveying just the right degree of appalling sentimentality characteristic of soldiers. Mr. Charles Cherry, as one of the slightly attractive super-cads, Mr. Shaw is so fond of depicting, achieves the best piece of characterization we have ever seen from him. Mr. Edwin Cushman, as the High Church curate, is appropriately preposterous but no more preposterous than people like that are in reality. We should add that Mr. Shaw's sentimental hatred of sentimentality is occasionally a little boring. Altogether it is as fine a production as we are likely to see in this imperfect age. CUTHBERT WRIGHT Occ.