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.
162 MELODRAMA
upon which Jason, in a rage, answers, " Yes, God curse him ! He was a low-born man and she was the daughter of the Governor." The relentless march of progress has left the bad baronet and the village Queen of the May a long way behind.
The hold of this author over his public is shown in the number of new plays he now made with old material. Bear in mind that it was a time when the fortunes of all other playwrights were made or marred by " first nights " : the verdict at the opening performance was final, for no plays had a second chance — save those written by Hall Caine. The Christian, rewritten, had a long run at the Lyceum in 1907, when intellectual dramatists were being admired. In a volume which bears on its cover the words, " Lyceum Edition. The Christian Play ", the author says, " I have reluctantly consented to the publication of the drama on condition that it shall be sold at the lowest price at which it can be produced ". His introduction also declares that he has suffered for The Christian, " perhaps justly, certainly severely ". Copies of this were distributed to the audience at the 175th performance of the revival, marking " the 3,221st performance in England ".
After the preface comes " Author's Note ", dealing in resounding prose with " the gravest problem that is on the forehead of the time to come ". This thing of the future is " the physical relation of woman to man ". The style keeps going in this strain until any audience ought to be trembling with anticipatory excitement, but it seems to have no effect on the play. John Storm, the saintly parson, and Glory Quayle, the pretty girl, leave Man for London, he to rescue fallen women and she to star in musical comedy. In Act IV John shouts wildly, " God sent me to kill you, Glory ", then he kisses her instead, and the Watchman outside calls, " All's well ".
Why Mrs. Warren s Profession should have been banned while Caine's " sensation " on the same subject was permitted, can be explained by the prevailing opinion that sentimental treatment justified anything — adultery, for example, was warmly recommended in many a charming ballad sung by prim young women in suburban drawingrooms, under the name of love. Shaw did not invoke the sacred word, but Caine did. Matheson Lang, who endowed John Storm with good looks of a most taking boyishness, describes the result in his autobiography, " Mr. Wu Looks Back ". The play that had been regarded as a stop-gap went like wildfire. " Hours before the doors were opened, on a bright, warm, summer evening, a seething mass of thousands of people was milling around the theatre, clamouring for admittance to see the first performance of a revival of this old play." That was in the August of 1907. In the October Matheson Lang left