The Profligate: A Play in Four ActsPinero, Arthur Wing
General
The Profligate: A Play in Four Acts
Pinero, Arthur Wing
English drama -- 19th century; Man-woman relationships -- Drama; Married people -- Drama
But the theatrical career of “The Profligate” was to take a wider
range. The voice of the British dramatist was to be heard in the land
of the foreigner; but it spoke in the necessarily mimetic tones of
adaptation, and the tongue was Dutch. “The Profligate,” bearing the
title of “De Losbol,” was produced in Amsterdam on November 30, 1889,
under the personal supervision of Mr. J. T. Grein, at the Municipal
Theatre, which has since been burnt down. Only a partial success is to
be recorded, the play having enjoyed but a brief career, as it did also
at the Hague, where the production took place at the Royal Theatre.
The Dutch critics were for the most part patronising and lukewarm,
patronising because the play was English, lukewarm because the author
had not treated his theme after the cynical and pessimistic methods of
certain modern French writers. But one of the most prominent critics of
Holland was fain to admit, in the _Algemeen Handelsblad_ of Amsterdam,
that “viewed from an English standpoint, ‘The Profligate’ may certainly
be called a remarkable drama,” and that “it is a legitimate play
with a properly worked-out plot, although it contains a good deal of
coincidence, and shows a want of spirit in the dialogue.”
“The Profligate” is next heard of in Germany, where “The Magistrate”
and “Sweet Lavender” already enjoyed popularity; but there the voice of
the author was almost lost in the falsetto tones of the adapter. Dr.
Oscar Blumenthal, a well-known German _littérateur_ and the popular
director of the Lessing Theatre in Berlin, undertook to introduce
Mr. Pinero’s play to German playgoers. But Dr. Blumenthal has won
reputation as a wit and a humorist, and any work from his pen must make
his audience laugh before everything; so he appears to have adopted
very drastic measures in preparing “The Profligate” for the German
theatre. He has in fact transformed a serious drama of English life
into a frivolous comedy of Parisian manners; innocence is turned into
intrigue, the betrayed maiden becomes the scheming adventuress, the
play terminates with a laugh, and it is called “Falsche Heilige”--which
may be translated as “False Saints.” But the result is popular success.
The first performance took place on Friday, February 13, of the present
year, at the Stadttheater, Hamburg, and a perfect triumph was achieved,
adapter and actors were called before the curtain no less than twenty
times, and the press unanimously belauded the “author”--Dr. Blumenthal.
Performances then followed with equal success at Altona, Stettin, Graz,
München, Dresden, Hildesheim, and Lübeck, and on Saturday, August 29,
1891, “Falsche Heilige” was produced in the German capital at Dr.
Blumenthal’s own Lessing Theatre. The reception by Berlin playgoers and
critics was as enthusiastic as it had been elsewhere, and the glory
of the adapter was everywhere. And this is to spread still further,
for the play is to visit all the other important theatrical towns of
Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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