Home on Leave

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A crude melodramatic sketch, formal in speech but violent in action. It shows how a young officer, suddenly ordered to the front, confides his wife to the care of his best friend, who without any previous indication of his base character grossly abuses his trust. He gives the poor lady too much champagne, and when she is senseless "kisses her lips, her hair, and her face and shows his passionate nature". He then cries "Mine! mine! at last!" and not a moment too soon comes the direction "lights go out". When the lights go up the lady is discovered alone, sitting on the couch, three hours afterwards and, as memory of her friend's "demonstration of love" comes back to her, exclaiming "My honour has gone! I am undone". Later on the scoundrel writes a letter of apology which the husband discovers on his return "home on leave", and which prompts him to threaten his false friend with a revolver. He is however fool enough to hand the fellow the revolver that he may commit suicide, thus allowing himself to be shot and wounded; whereupon the wife fortunately intervenes and shoots her foul lover dead. The motive of the strategy tragadietta may pass; but not so the treatment of what is practically a rape committed on the stage in the dark. I suggest that p. 6, as marked, should be rewritten in such a way that the indication of what has been done should be derived solely from the criminal's somewhat inadequate "apology". Under this condition the play may be recommended for license.