The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1913-02-08
Love on the Stage.

To think of producing a play with
out a love incident, is like taking an
uncoated pill without water or milk.
Love is the cherry of the dramatic
cocktail, the pimola of the plot. Audi
ences are like women-some women
who order the cocktail for the sake Of
the cherry, they delight in holding the
glass to sunlight and letting the rays
warm the bright color of the fruit
the liquid has no allurement for them,
all that is desired is the cherry which
they deftly stab with a toothpick, or
the tine of fork and it is swallowed
with a smile. So with a play, to be
stirred into proper aperitif, it must
have plenty of the sugar of love, plenty
of the spirit Of love and be frightened
with the. cherry of love. The sugar
and the spirit may be left untasted, but
the cherry will be eaten by the woman,
the average man will drain the liquid
and eat the cherry too.
Bulwer Lytton, writing upon love
and lovers. said that, in adapting the
legendary love-tale of Romeo and Ju-
liet, Shakespeare had changed the
scene in which it is cast for a more
northern cline, we may doubt whether
the art of Shakespeare himself could
have reconciled us at once to the sud-
denness and strength of JuIiet's pas
sion. Shakespeare filled his glass with
a good mixture, but he liked more than
one cherry. to brighten a potion that
was strong as DEATH" In France
such cocktail is a Jest, here in Amer
lea it is a doubt, in Germany, Italy
and Russia it is more faithfully pre-
served. The English have no palates,
1t has to be $50 over proof to tickle
them, but the Irish, and the Jews swal-
low it whole and become intoxicated
If the cherry is whole.
Therefore to have health merriment
we must put in the cherry of love
which need not be the consolidation of
affection born of a night, for love, even
stage love, varies woderfully in the
shapes it takes. All of the recent plays,
were served with the cocktail of love;
""The Pink Lady was served with the
cocktails in every course; "Kismet' is
one long intoxicant; THE Count of
Luxembourg" is one long, delightful
jag of love, while John Fox, Jr., has
the primitive June kept alive along the
Trail of the Lonesome Pine with the
cherries of love. And like the ingre-
dents of all good cocktails, June's
love Economically conceived, though il
Is she takes from the air and the sun
of her mountains; from her ancestors,
from the self contagion of example.
Like all good, earnest lovers she sur
renders herself to the excitement, the
elysium of the hour fully realizing that
from out the night comes the sunshine
and the day.
Love scenes in plays are seldom ex-
aggerated, the pictures presented are
those to which the veriest common
places of life would afford parallels
without number, as in different ages,
so in different chimes love varies won
derfully in the shapes it takes. The
stage love of June for Hale, in "The
Trail of the Lonesome Pine" and the
love of Marsinah for the Caliph in
"Kismet'' are much the same in quail
ity of affection and intensity of pas
sion. Both women are doubtful of the
quality of the cocktail offered them,
but both make a stab for the cherries
and eat them; for the fruit is alluring-
ly placed in an irridescent mixture of
poetry and song, with the concomi-
tants of vagueness and refinement
not the power, the concentration, the
mortality of desire.
1t is a cocktail served with look,
a pressure of the hand, perhaps a first
kiss and when drunk it fills both Mar
sinah and June with new life, elevates
both with a new soul, making their
worship more inalienable, more unsul-
lied by selfish purposes and sordid
views.
The love cocktail in a play takes
the chill off an audience, 1t brings back
| to that age when all thought they
could never die. Well served, 1t makes
good play almost deathless, and
those who drink, all the more popular.
| In such musical plays as 1.-The Pink
/ Lady, and 1.-THE Count of Luxem-
bourg' love is the vox humane in the
melodies of Already and Olympus. The
silent loyalty of a woman's love de-
/ picted on the stage never fails to bring
out the zeal of an audiences noisy ap-
prevail. The attraction will be in
Pensacola on Feb IA.