Melodrama : plots that thrilled (1954)

BRUTAL REALISM 73 The Two Orphans (Olympic, 1874) : Rignold and Neville setting a new standard for realism in stage fights bought the rights and toured the play until Hollywood turned it into a tale of the Revolution, Orphans Of The Storm, and film-fans thought the play " left out something ". In Europe its popularity was not so constant, for its place was usurped by the work of authors who came under its influence. That scene in the garret, for example, was the making of one London playwright, G. R. Sims, who had another kind of fame, widespread among people who knew nothing of his writings beyond his signature, as the unintentional abolitionist of antimacassars. Though old people may be bored by the statement, young people are frankly shocked to learn that these protected upholstery from macassar oil on the flowing manes of young Victorian lions. The nuisance was abated by a new hair-restorer bearing the portrait of G. R. Sims. Infants who learned to lisp his name before they heard of Shakespeare would always associate him with shelves of bottles rather than shelves of books. Yet he undoubtedly deserves honourable mention for his share in what embittered critics called " the exposition of the gospel of rags ". It is usually supposed that the task was handed down to him by Dickens, for Ruskin's share has been overlooked. Something more tangible was borrowed from The Two Orphans by the two dramas that made (in this branch of human endeavour) Sims' name. The first was The Lights O' London at the Princess's in 188 1. In this, trouble begins when Harold Armytage and Bess keep their marriage