This is everyday life and the dialogue expresses it; the lines are neither too bright nor good for any drawing-room. Here are no sky-rocketings to make the hearer gasp at the playwright’s cleverness, while at the same time they accentuate the difference between his own world and the world as it glitters from the stage. It is the talk to be expected out of the mouths of admirable yet matter-of-fact persons with whom we are quite at home. This is the man you meet at any corner, who is living his life as he conceives it, and is vaguely discomfited when the pattern comes out wrong. He and his fellow puppets are related in the most intimate and delightful way to our own cousins and aunts. It is a group of sharply differentiated types: Parbury, honey-combed with something that passes for amiability; his charming ruler; worldly-wise Gunning, fitted like a glove with amiable cynicisms; the Colonel, clad in rejuvenescence like the spring; and Miss Woodward, an original piquing to the intelligence of any actress ambitious to “create a part.”
“The Tyranny of Tears” was first produced at the Criterion Theatre in London, April 6, 1899, with the following
| CAST OF CHARACTERS: | |
| Mr. Parbury | Mr. Charles Wyndham |
| Mr. George Gunning | Mr. Fred Kerr |
| Colonel Armitage | Mr. Alfred Bishop |
| Mrs. Parbury | Miss Mary Moore |
| Miss Hyacinth Woodward | Miss Maude Millett |
The comedy made an instant and striking success, and ran to enormous business until the end of the season. It was revived on January 29, 1902, when the press, previously unstinting in its praise, greeted it with a renewed enthusiasm. The Times says of it, at this second hearing: “No English dramatist of our time has turned out more humorous or more human work than this delightful comedy. Every feeling in it is, as the French say, ‘lived,’ and every word of it tells. There is not a false note, no over-strained sentiment, no over-emphasized phrase in it from one end to the other. Wit it has in abundance, but not in superabundance—wit, that is, that obviously belongs to the speaker and does not delusively suggest the author. Truth, too, it has, but always simple, straightforward, fundamental truth, truth that comes home to men’s business and bosoms, not the far-fetched truth which costs a headache to master it. . . . The Comic Spirit, as expounded by Mr. George Meredith, inhabits it. We laugh at its personages and forgive them with an intimate solace, for in forgiving them we laughingly forgive ourselves. . . . The whole tone of the play is quiet, it soothes, it provokes smiles, chuckles, gentle ripples of laughter. It is a rebuke, a kindly, playful rebuke to the wild and whirling zealots of theatrical violence. We are reminded of the praise which Matthew Arnold bestowed upon the style of Addison—‘perfect,’ he said, ‘in measure, balance and propriety.’”
Equally warm tributes to the comedy as an unusual work of dramatic art were accorded on its presentation, September 11, 1899, at the Empire Theatre, New York, with the following
| CAST OF CHARACTERS: | |
| Mr. Parbury | Mr. John Drew |
| Mr. George Gunning | Mr. Arthur Byron |
| Colonel Armitage | Mr. Harry Harwood |
| Mrs. Parbury | Miss Isabel Irving |
| Miss Hyacinth Woodward | Miss Ida Conquest |
Of this performance Mr. J. Ranken Towse, in the New York Evening Post, says: “Mr. Drew played Parbury with his accustomed neatness and dexterity. . . . The play, perhaps, may not be quite highly seasoned enough with dramatic incident for the great mass of the public, but its ingenuity, its simplicity, its truthfulness and its humor will commend it strongly to connoisseurs.”
It was afterwards given in the principal cities of the United States with Mr. Drew as the victimized husband, and met everywhere with the same enthusiastic favor. This year, 1902, the play was done into German by Bertha Pozson, and it has been given with extraordinary success throughout the German Empire.