Pictorial Shakespeare, 1880-1890 - eTheses Repository - University ...

62
hero* a faithful wife, and Geoffrey Ware, a subsidiary villain
killed at the end of the firt/b act. Motivations are simple and
strongly expressed - in .Vare's case an early rivalry for Nelly's
hand is made sufficient reason for a lifetime's hatred of the
hero. Apart from some novelty of plot, especially in the hero's
prolonged and nearly catastrophic loss of memory, Th@ Silver
King has the lines of an old-fashioned melodrama: it w;?s considered
to be a simple inversion of East Lynne.
The appeal of the play lay in its avoidance of Drury Lane
excesses. Vanity Fair exulted:
The authors ...have by no means fought shy of
the startling or the shudder-rsroducing business;
but the tesired effect is produced by excellently
- contrived situations, rapid, concentrated dialogue,
and good acting - not by fire, noise, or smoke.
(25 November 1882)
In The Illustrated London News Clement Scott, who had taken
over c'.ranatic notices from iJala, wrote:
There is a rift in the clouds, a break of blue
in the dramatic heavens, arid it seeius as if we
v;ere sic fairly at the and of the unlovely.
(25 November 1882)
A critic, possibly Scott, in The Theatre congratulated Barrett
on the literary qualities of the ?lry:
The tone of The Silver King is pitched in a
much higher key than the ordinary xacloc'ramL.s
of the uc'-y, and, in truth, it must not be confounded
with the sensational panoramas which
nowadays c-o of ton pass for plays. The dialogue
of the play is throughout clever and witty, and
much of the language is lofty and poetic...
The author concluded - in tcr^o tynical of Clement ocott's
criticism - by pronluncing Tlio oilvcr 'ting "thoroughly honest
in purpose, dramatic, pathetic, full of human nature, and,
v;it:ial, an original drama of English life, and sentiment, and
feeling". (The Theatre.. n. a. VI (1382) 357-360). 7ho dialogue
was praised by I:!p.tthew Arnold in The rail L ..11 gazette.
,,.in general throughout the pie'6^ ^^e fiction
ana sentiments fir© natural, they have sobriety
and propriety, they arc literature.
(6 Ucc ember 1882)^
This w s "an excellent and hopeful sign".
The dialogue does not seem quite as fresh as it nay have