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[ Aetat. 18-20 ] J O Y C E 79devoted to a private discussion of past and future by Angela and themayor. The doctor sees his brilliant career now turned lusterless; Angelabitterly departs; and a servant comes in to announce dinner. It is hardnot to exclaim, with Finnegans Wake, 'Ibscenest nansense!' 24William Archer read the play impatiently but carefully, and wrote Joycea long, helpful letter:Dear Mr. Joyce,2, Vernon Chambers,Southampton Row, W.C.15 Sept. 1900I have at last found time to read your play. It has interested me andpuzzled me a good deal—indeed, I scarcely know what to say of it. Youseem to me to have talent—possibly more than talent—and yet I cannotsay that I think this play a success. For the stage, of course—the commercialstage at any rate—it is wildly impossible. No doubt you realize that.But taking it simply as a dramatic poem, I cannot help finding the canvastoo large for the subject. It narrows in the last act into a sort of lovetragedy—almost a duologue—but in order to reach that point you constructa huge fable of politics and pestilence, in which the reader—onereader at any rate—entirely loses sight of what I presume you intend forthe central interest of the drama. I have been trying to read some elaboratesymbolism into the second and third acts to account for their giganticbreadth of treatment, but if you had a symbolic purpose, I own it escapesme. It may be very good symbolism for all that—I own I am no great handat reading hieroglyphics.On the other hand, you have certainly a gift of easy, natural and yeteffective dialogue, and a certain amount of scenic picturesqueness. Thescene between Paul and Angela is curiously strong and telling, if only itwere led up to, or, in its turn, led to anything definite. On the whole,however, you seem to me to be deficient as yet in the power of projectingcharacters so as to seize upon the reader's attention and kindle his imagination.It is true that you unduly handicap yourself in this respect bycrowding your stage with such a multitude of figures that Shakespearehimself could scarcely individualize them. At the end of the first act Ididn't begin to know one of your characters from another, and as for guessingthat the interest of the play was to centre in the 'depit amoureux' ofPaul and Angela, I had no such divination. You may say that I clearlydidn't read with sufficient attention. Perhaps not—but then it was yourbusiness to arouse my attention. Indeed it was only in the third act thatthe characters began to stand out for me at all. I tell you frankly what Ifelt—no doubt other people might be more keenly perceptive, but it isalways something to know the effect you have produced upon one entirelywell-disposed reader.I don't know whether you want really to write for the stage. If you do,I have no hesitation at all in advising you, by way of practice, to choose anarrower canvas and try to work out a drama with half a dozen clearlydesigned and vividly projected characters. If you could show me such a