ABSTRACT
The Complete Plays of Henry James have been awaited with some impatience by the devotees of the Master, and now that we have them we see that there is some excuse for the delay. Together they constitute the most spectacular failure that a major literary artist has ever encountered. In his disillusion, late in life, Henry James could hardly have been brought to look at the typescripts again; but Mr. Edel, who has edited them, is probably right in assuming that he would not have objected to their eventual publication. In 1913, answering a critic who had asked for a sight of the plays in order to write an article about them, James said:
While they were being played they of course came in for whatever attention the Press was paying to the actual and current theatre. They were inevitably then Theatre-stuff, and as such took their chance; but they are now, enjoying complete immunity from performance as they do, Drama-stuff—which is quite a different matter. It is only as Drama-stuff that I recognize their exposure to any public remark that doesn’t consist simply of the critic’s personal remembrance of them as played things … When my Plays, such as they have been, are published, then of course the gentleman you mention will enjoy all aid to his examination.
