November'll see what "gushers" call the "sweetest, daintiest play,"
And I'm to be Promise of May, KELLY, I'm to be Promise of May!
Punch, November 4, 1882.
As this parody refers to a nearly-forgotten play, the allusions in it may best be explained by the reproduction of the Play-bill, which has now become a literary curiosity.
The drama was a complete and melancholy failure; even George Augustus Sala, most lenient and genial of critics, could not but condemn it, as being as unactable a play as Shelley's "Cenci," or Swinburne's "Bothwell," or Southey's "Wat Tyler," whilst it possessed none of the literary merits of either of those compositions. He added, "It is finally and most wretchedly unfortunate that an illustrious English poet has not by his side some really candid and judicious friend, with influence enough, and courage enough, to persuade him to desist from subjecting this disastrous production to the ordeal of representation before a miscellaneous audience."
Bad as The Promise of May was, it contained one leading idea, which, from the very opposition it gave rise to, enabled the management to keep the play on the boards much longer than could have been anticipated. The plot had been foreshadowed in one of Tennyson's earliest poems, The Sisters:—
"WE were two daughters of one race:
She was the fairest in the face:
The wind is blowing in turret and tree.