The Amazing Marriage

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

In essence this ‘romantic melodrama’ which has nothing to do with Meredith’s oval, is simply sentimental melodrama but it is much better written than such things usually are and it is not at all a bad play in its way. Captain Desmond is in love with Helen, daughter of Sir Charles Pryor, and she with him. Unfortunately Esmond, when a mere boy, had in a frolic gone through a form of scotch marriage with a girl, Jenny, who left him immediately afterwards and who he hopes is dead. Now, Major Callaw, villain, also wishes to marry Helen. Callow has shown gross cowardice during the retreat from Mons, thereby nearly causing the annihilation of Desmond (who won the VC) and his men. The only witness of his cowardice was Lieut. Raison believed to be dead, but Desmond has a document signed by him. He gives this up to Callaw, on the latter’s consenting to resign his commission. At the end of act II Helen, being persecuted by the attentions of callow and her father’s siding with him, goes to Desmond’s quarters. He tells her about Jenny, but she says she will stay with him in spite of all. It appears, however, in the next act that she did not spend the night with him (to my relief) but went on to the house of a woman friend. Desmond and Helen chance the existence of Jenny and get married. Callaw, however by accident has discovered that she lives and produces her: she is a dipsomaniac and goes mad on the spot. The colonel of the regiment holds a private enquiry into Callaw’s cowardice, who is turning the tables on the oer, Esmond, when Rawson, the witness, providentially found, turns up. Callaw, faced with the alternatives of court martial or suicide, fires into the barrack yard and shoots raison; he goes on firing and the soldiers, thinking him mad, fire a volley and kill him. Jenny, in the excitement, throws herself from a window and dies, leaving the way clear to Desmond and Helen. The cowardice etc. of an office are undesirable, but as the play is an all about soldiers the villain is necessarily one too, and it can hardly be prevented. There is nothing, in a general way, at all derogatory to the service. But I have marked, act 1, p43, a remark about commissions being given to counter jumpers. It is made by the villain, to be sure, but even so it is a pity. Jenny’s dipsomania and madness will be unpleasant, but with many precedents recommended for license. G. S. Street

Researcher's Summary:

A second version of this play was written in 1918 and licensed on 13 June 1918. For performances of that play see - https://www.greatwartheatre.org.uk/plays/script/2639/