“The Feast of a Thousand Welcomes”
| Little Sano | Madge West. |
| Chidori | Mrs. Charles Walcot. |
| Rosy Sky | Eleanor Moretti. |
| Setsu | Ada Lewis. |
| Kaede | Dorothy Revell. |
| Madame Asani | France Hamilton. |
| The Fox Woman | Mrs. F. M. Bates. |
| Isamu | May Montford. |
| Niji-Onna | Helen Russell. |
| Nu | Madeleine Livingston. |
| Princess Yo-San | Blanche Bates. |
Gentlemen of Rank, Messrs. Redmund, Stevens, Dunton, Smith, Meehan, Richards, Shaw, Chamberlain and Shaw.
Geisha Girls, Misses Winard, Karle, Vista, Mardell, Coleman and Ellis.
Singing Girls, Misses Livingston, Mirien and Earle.
Heralds from the Emperor, maids-in-waiting to the Princess, screen bearers, Kago men, coolies, retainers, runners, servants, geisha, musume, priests, lantern bearers, banner bearers, incense bearers, gong bearers, jugglers, acrobats, torturers, carp flyers, Imperial soldiers and Zakkuri’s musket-men.
THE PLAY AND THE PERFORMANCE OF “THE DARLING OF THE GODS.”
The tragic drama of “The Darling of the Gods” is an excellent play, one of exceptional power and ethical significance. It is a unique fabric of fancy, wildly romantic, rich and strange with unusual characters, lively with incident, occasionally mystical with implication of Japanese customs and religious beliefs, opulent with an Oriental splendor of atmosphere and detail, like that of Beckford’s romance of “Vathek,”—fragrant with sweetness,—like Moore’s “Lalla Rookh,”—busy with movement, effective by reason of situation, and communicative of a love story of enchaining interest and melancholy beauty. That story is told in continuous, cumulative action,—each successive dramatic event being stronger than its predecessors in the element of suspense; and at the climax there is a weird picture of supernatural environment, a thrilling suggestion of the eternity of spiritual life and personal identity,—a poetic symbolism, at once pathetic and sublime, of the glory and ecstasy, the supreme triumph, of faithful love.
The story of Yo-San, the heroine of that play, who is designated “the darling of the gods,” separated from all adjuncts and accessories, is simple. She is a princess in Japan, betrothed to a Japanese courtier whom she does not wish to wed. She has stipulated, as a preliminary condition of their marriage, that the courtier must prove his valor by capturing a certain formidable outlaw, Prince Kara, who, on being captured, will be put to death. She has been saved from fatal dishonor through the expeditious courage and promptitude of that outlaw (unrecognized by her as such), and on seeing each other they become lovers. Kara pledges himself to appear at the palace of her father, at a “feast of a thousand welcomes” to be held in his honor, there to receive that parent’s thanks. Thither he comes, passing through the guards of Zakkuri, the dreaded War Minister of Japan, but sustaining a desperate hurt in doing so. Yo-San, when her lover, wounded and almost dying, has failed to make his escape from the precincts of the palace through a cordon of enemies, conceals him in her dwelling, and for many days she tends him, till his wounds are healed, and then, for a time, those lovers are happy in their secret love. The girl is, however, compromised by this indiscretion, and when presently her father, Prince Saigon, discovers her secret,—and, as he thinks, her dishonor,—she is declared an outcast; and her lover (taken prisoner while attempting to fight his way to freedom) is doomed to torture and death. She is compelled to gaze upon him as, stupefied with opium, he is led down into a chamber of infernal torment. Then she is apprised that she can secure his life and liberty by betraying the hiding place of her lover’s outlaw followers, and in desperate agony she does betray them: but she gains nothing by that action except an access of misery. Prince Kara, surprised with his band by soldiers of the War Minister, having, with a few of his followers, fought his way through the lines of his enemies and discovered that the secret of their hiding place, confided by him to Yo-San, has been by her revealed, commits suicide in the honorable Japanese manner, and she is left alone, with only his forgiveness as a comfort, and with the hope that,—after a thousand years of loneliness and grief, in the underworld of shadows,—she will be again united with him in the eternal happiness of heaven. The play shows Yo-San as an innocent, confiding, pathetic figure, a child-woman, passing amid stormy vicissitude, cruel temptation, and afflicting trials to a forlorn and agonized death by suicide, and leaves her at the last, redeemed and transfigured, on the verge of Paradise, where Kara stretches out his arms to embrace her, and where there is neither trouble nor parting nor sorrow any more.