AT THE PLAY.
"King and Queens."
Just as Thomas Carlyle, out of his superior knowledge of the proleteriat, informed us that, if you pricked it, it would bleed, so Mr. Rudolf Besier, fortified by intimacy with Court life, confides to us on the programme (in quotation) that Kings and Queens "have five fingers on each hand and take their meals regularly." But unless we are to get a little sacrilegious fun (such as Captain Marshall gave us) out of the contrast between the human nature of Royalties and the formalities which govern them as by divine right, there is not much object in raising a vulgar domestic scandal to the dignity of Court circles. True, the higher claims of kingship did enter into the question in the case of Richard VIII., whose heart was badly torn between his duty to his people and his passion for his wife; but for the rest, and apart from the mere properties (human or inanimate) of a royal palace, we might have been concerned with an ordinary middle-class interior complicated by a residential mother-in-law.
NOBLESSE OBLIGE.
King Richard VIII. (Mr. Arthur Wontner), referring to his mothr, Queen Elizabeth (Miss Frances Ivor). "Keep her away from me, or I shall kill her!"
Emperor Frederick IV. (Sir George Alexander). "Tut, tut! Something must be done. We can't permit matricide at the St. James's Theatre."
The causes of the misunderstanding (partially shared by myself) between the King and his Consort were some four or five. There was the Dowager Queen—a constant obsession—who stood for the extreme of propriety. She ought, of course, to have had a palace of her own. There was the young King, upon whom she rigorously imposed her own standards of living. There was the young Queen with a harmless taste for the natural gaiety of youth. Not designed by nature for the wearing of the purple, she had been taken from a nice country home, where there were birds and flowers and mountains. She kept saying to herself:—
But, since she couldn't do that, she clamoured for pretty frocks, and for the right to choose her own friends. Among these was an American Marquise of so doubtful a record that her name had to be deleted from the list of guests commanded to the State Ball. I was greatly disappointed not to meet her. Then there was a royal female Infant (deceased), who should of course have been a boy. Her contribution to the general discomfort, though pressed upon us with fearless reiteration, was always outside the grasp of my intelligence. Neither of her parents seemed to share my hope that they might possibly live to beget other offspring, including even a male child.
Lastly, there was a vagrant troubadour with a gift for the pianoforte. He was called Prince Louis, and firmly held the opinion that he alone appreciated the Queen's qualities and could offer her a suitable solace. He had his simple dramatic uses, and by an elopement (as innocent, on her part, as it was arbitrary) enabled the lady to return to the arms of her desperate husband, for whom it appears that she had always entertained a profound adoration. What they all really needed for the correction of their little egoisms was a Big War. That is the only lesson that I could draw from Mr. Besier's play, and I don't believe he meant me to draw even that.
Such originality as it offered was to be found in the soul of the young King, with its distraction between two loyalties; its despairing conviction that virtue as its own reward was not good enough; its threatened rebound to the primrose paths which his father of never-to-be-forgotten memory had trodden before him. Mr. Arthur Wontner looked the part and played it with a very quiet dignity.
Sir George Alexander, as an imperial uncle, of no particular nationality, filled his familiar rôle of amicus curiae; a man of sixty and much dalliance in the past, but with his heart—what was left of it—in the right place. His facial growth (a little in the manner of Mr. Maurice Hewlett) suited him well—far better indeed than the frock coat of the final Act. He was admirable throughout (except in one rather stuffy homily where he was not quite certain of his own views); but I could have done with much more of those lighter phases in which he excels. It was the same with the pleasant humour of Miss Frances Ivor as the Queen-Mother, which was sadly curtailed. Miss Marie Löhr played the young Queen with extraordinary sincerity, notably in one of the many scenes in which she lamented her lost child. Here, if this tedious baby had not failed to touch my imagination, I must have been honestly moved. If we suffered any doubt as to the reality of her grief, this was due to the disturbing beauty of the frocks in which she gave utterance to it. Anyhow they totally failed to support the charge of dowdiness which had been freely brought against the Queen-Mother's régime.
Finally, that native air of frank loyalty wbich Mr. Ben Webster's gifts as an actor are impotent to disguise gave the lie to his thankless part as Prince Louis. Nor did the superiority of his morning-coat go well with the sinister touch of melodrama in his set speeches. The villian of the piece should not have been plus royaliste que le roi, who was content to wear a lounge serge suit.
If Mr. Besier's play achieves the popular favour of which, as I understand, it has already secured the promise, it will not be on account of its intrinsic merits, though it has its good points; it will be due in part ot the excellence of the performance, and in part to that innocent snobbery which is latent in the typical British bosom.
I ought to add that I think I asked Mr. Besier long ago to try and make a better bow to his audience. Well, he hasn't paid any attention to my request.
O.S.
"Our World Famous Toilet Cream
IMPROVES THE COMPLEXION
of all Local Chemists and Stores."
We do not worry about the complexion of the Stores but we are glad for the local Chemists.
