We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
GRECIAN DRAMATISTS
93
to the breathless excitement of the audience — " excitement dispelled when presently a property train, resembling nothing more impressive than a child's toy on a large scale, puffs in at a rate of four miles an hour, stops, goes on again, prances, and falls into two palpably pre-arranged segments amongst much explosion of squibs, yelling of supers, and manipulation of all the noise-creating instruments under the command of the prompter." Harris rescues the heroine just before a train from
For Ever (Surrey Theatre, 1882)
the opposite direction falls to pieces with business as before. Later a mob wrecks a bank, windows of real glass are really broken, and in the " memorable snow-storm of 188 1 " somebody finds his child dying in the snow. In 1882 the Surrey eclipsed this with For Ever, by George Conquest and Paul Meritt, which made the most of its reputation for creating strange monsters (and old playgoers in years to come would recall this with laughter when bed-ridden and in pain). It was Beauty and the Beast over again, but more intense. Zacky Pastrana, the monkey-man, would stop at nothing to sacrifice himself for the damsel in distress. " But what ", she asked, " what can I do for you? " and a voice from the gallery advised, " Lady, chuck him some nuts ". Even that did not lessen the pathos when he uttered the simple words, apropos of nothing, just before the curtain fell, " For ever ". Finalitymongering was very active at a time when everybody was singing Tosti's " Goodbye " and " Nevermore ", and this play came at exactly the right moment for everybody except another of those poor longsuffering critics. This one saw " suggestiveness " in the " unwholesome " love of a demi-savage for a young and pretty girl, since, " The