"KINGS AND QUEENS."
Just as THOMAS CARLYLE, out of his superior knowledge of the
proletariat, informed us that, if you pricked it, it would bleed, so
Mr. RUDOLF BESIER, fortified by intimacy with Court life,
confides to us on the programme (in quotation) that Kings and Queens
"have five fingers on each hand and take their meals regularly."
But unless we are to get a little sacrilegious fun (such as Captain
MARSHALL gave us) out of the contrast between the human nature
of Royalties and the formalities which govern them as by divine right,
there is not much object in raising a vulgar domestic scandal to the
dignity of Court circles. True, the higher claims of kingship did enter
into the question in the case of _Richard VIII._, whose heart was badly
torn between his duty to his people and his passion for his wife; but
for the rest, and apart from the mere properties (human or inanimate)
of a royal palace, we might have been concerned with an ordinary
middle-class interior complicated by a residential mother-in-law.
[Illustration: NOBLESSE OBLIGE.
_King Richard VIII._ (Mr. ARTHUR WONTNER), referring to his
mother, _Queen Elizabeth_ (Miss FRANCES IVOR). "KEEP HER
AWAY FROM ME, OR I SHALL KILL HER!"
_Emperor Frederick IV._ (SIR GEORGE ALEXANDER). "TUT, TUT!
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. WE CAN'T PERMIT MATRICIDE AT THE ST. JAMES'S
THEATRE."]
The causes of the misunderstanding (partially shared by myself) between
the King and his Consort were some four or five. There was the Dowager
Queen--a constant obsession--who stood for the extreme of propriety.
She ought, of course, to have had a palace of her own. There was the
young King, upon whom she rigorously imposed her own standards of
living. There was the young Queen with a harmless taste for the natural
gaiety of youth. Not designed by nature for the wearing of the purple,
she had been taken from a nice country home, where there were birds and
flowers and mountains. She kept saying to herself:--
"Mid pleasures and palaces though I may roam,
Be they never so regal, I'd rather go home."
But, since she couldn't do that, she clamoured for pretty frocks, and
for the right to choose her own friends. Among these was an American
Marquise of so doubtful a record that her name had to be deleted
from the list of guests commanded to the State Ball. I was greatly
disappointed not to meet her. Then there was a royal female Infant
(deceased), who should of course have been a boy. Her contribution
to the general discomfort, though pressed upon us with fearless
reiteration, was always outside the grasp of my intelligence. Neither
of her parents seemed to share my hope that they might possibly live to
beget other offspring, including even a male child.
Lastly, there was a vagrant troubadour with a gift for the pianoforte.
He was called _Prince Louis_, and firmly held the opinion that he
alone appreciated the Queen's qualities and could offer her a suitable
solace. He had his simple dramatic uses, and by an elopement (as
innocent, on her part, as it was arbitrary) enabled the lady to return
to the arms of her desperate husband, for whom it appears that she had
always entertained a profound adoration. What they all really needed
for the correction of their little egoisms was a Big War. That is the
only lesson that I could draw from Mr. BESIER'S play, and I
don't believe he meant me to draw even that.
Such originality as it offered was to be found in the soul of the
young King, with its distraction between two loyalties; its despairing
conviction that virtue as its own reward was not good enough;
its threatened rebound to the primrose paths which his father of
never-to-be-forgotten memory had trodden before him. Mr. ARTHUR
WONTNER looked the part and played it with a very quiet dignity.
Sir GEORGE ALEXANDER, as an imperial uncle, of no particular
nationality, filled his familiar _rôle_ of _amicus curiæ_; a man of
sixty and much dalliance in the past, but with his heart--what was left
of it--in the right place. His facial growth (a little in the manner of
Mr. MAURICE HEWLETT) suited him well--far better indeed than
the frock coat of the final Act. He was admirable throughout (except
in one rather stuffy homily where he was not quite certain of his own
views); but I could have done with much more of those lighter phases
in which he excels. It was the same with the pleasant humour of Miss
FRANCES IVOR as the Queen-Mother, which was sadly curtailed.
Miss MARIE LÖHR played the young Queen with extraordinary
sincerity, notably in one of the many scenes in which she lamented
her lost child. Here, if this tedious baby had not failed to touch my
imagination, I must have been honestly moved. If we suffered any doubt
as to the reality of her grief, this was due to the disturbing beauty
of the frocks in which she gave utterance to it. Anyhow they totally
failed to support the charge of dowdiness which had been freely brought
against the Queen-Mother's _régime_.
Finally, that native air of frank loyalty which Mr. BEN
WEBSTER'S gifts as an actor are impotent to disguise gave the lie
to his thankless part as _Prince Louis_. Nor did the superiority of his
morning-coat go well with the sinister touch of melodrama in his set
speeches. The villain of the piece should not have been _plus royaliste
que le roi_, who was content to wear a lounge serge suit.
If Mr. BESIER'S play achieves the popular favour of which, as
I understand, it has already secured the promise, it will not be on
account of its intrinsic merits, though it has its good points; it will
be due in part to the excellence of the performance, and in part to
that innocent snobbery which is latent in the typical British bosom.
I ought to add that I think I asked Mr. BESIER long ago to
try and make a better bow to his audience. Well, he hasn't paid any
attention to my request.