The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1883-01-13
FAILURE.
How The Promise Of May was Presented-The
Audience ''Guys.' it or the Stsge-AbsErdiiles
Of the Drama.

The Promise Of Hay is a false pro-
mise. and Mr.. Tennyson is so anxious
lest his audience be deceived with it
that he c%ontrives in the first words of
the scene to f~oreshadow a coming catas-
troPhe. The scene is a pleasant view of
Steers farm, and Steers daughter
is heard singing these lines, which. BY
way OF further %precaution, had been
printed on the programme:
The town lay still in the low sunlight
The hen clucked late by the white farm gates,
The maid in the dairy came in from the COW,
The stock dove Good at the fall of night,
The blossom had opened on every bough.
o joy for the promise of May, of May.
o joy for the promise of May.
But a red fire woke in the heart of the town,
And a fox from the glen ran away with the hen,
And a cat to the cream and a rat to the cheese
And the stock dove Good till a kite dropped down,
And a salt wind burnt the blossoming trees.
o grief for the promise of May, of May,
o grief for the promise of May.
These stanzas excepted, the piece is
in prose. Farmer Steer, in whose Lin
colnshire domains the three acts PASS.
has two daughters, Dora and Eva, the
former beloved by Farmer Dobson, the
latter by one Edgar, a stranger in the
village, who is the hero and the villain
of the piece in one. 1t presently appears
that he has seduced Eva. She begs him
to marry her, he refuses, and the first
act ends with his desertion of the girl
he has ruined. Between the first and
second six years elapse. Eva is sup
posed to have committed suicide.
Edgar, for no particular reason, reap
pears in the village and on the farm, but
under a false name, and so changed in
appearance that, though his identity is
suspected, he is able to pursuade Dobson
and Dora that he is another man. He
learns of Eva's suicide and makes owe
to Dora, who gives away her heart to
him at first sight. Dobson's jealousy is
reused, and his suspicious are first eX-
cited by finding a letter which dropped
out of Edgar's pocket, and then allayed
by the production of a newspaper in
which his death is recorded-the real
dead being Edgar's father. SO ends the
second act. In the third the Steers are
ruined, apparently, from the fathers
grief over Eva's death, and neglecting
his business and becoming blind. If
this sound incoherent, L cannot he it.
[ give what is in the play. Eva all at
once turns up had not drowned her
self, because the water looked too dirty;
is welcomed by the sister, but repealed
by the blind father. 1t is settled that
Edgar and Dora are to be married
they duly carry on their counting in a
corner, but Eva overhears the talk, flashes
out on the stage, recognizes Edgar and
falls dead; this time for good. Dobson
comes in with a big stick, and there is a
momentary hope that he will use it on
Edgar, but Dora forbids. She is content,
for her part, with breaking off the
match and ordering the farmer to see
the villain safely off the premises. And
that is all.
All, that is, of story, incident or action,
but not all, alas of absurdity, of in
artistic and grotesque conception, of i'm
possible diction. Mr.. Tennyson has
had a moral in view, and thought to
turn the stage of the Globe Theatre into
a pulpit. Edgar is presented as a type of
the modern free thinker. or agnestic. He
has views about the naturalization of land,
about Democracy, about marriage. and many
other things. When he first began to prose
on these subjects the audience hardly knew
what to make of him. Some took him
seriously and applauded. It was presently
seen that Mr.. Tennyson's ultimate purpose
was to make this communistic and atheistic
nonsense odious, and then some of those
who had applauded began to boot. In all
seriousness, Mr.. Tennyson plainly meant to
be understood that a young MN who VEN
lures to speculate on such subjects must be
a bad young man. He seduces Eva because
his ideas of polite | and social economy are
false. Mr.. Tennyson designedly and sue
c~essfully draws his hero IS both hateful and
| ridiculous. At the same time he expects
him to be accepted by the audience as man
of whom two sisters are enamored not
| taking the trouble, meanwhile, to give one
redeeming or agreeable trait of character.
When Eva ass Edgar to marry her, he
| replies that marriage is a feeble institution
which will pass away with priestcraft into
| the abyss that Natures lesson is the true
one, under whose law the birds pair merrily
for the season, and part not less merrily
when the season is over. The brutality of
such a speech from a lover to his mistress
brought a storm about his ears. The pit
had for some time shown signs of impotence;
after this they broke into loud protests. The
unhappy Edgar none the less had TO proceed
with a still more unlucky speech " Mar
riage in itself! Well, when the great
democratic deluge which is slowly coming
upon US and all Europe shall have washed