Birds Of Passage

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This play starts in a vain and fantastic humour but soon becomes serious with the spy and counter-spy business. In the first act one Carruth, a paradoxical, literary person who has knocked about the world, is found in possession of a house on the East Coast; it appears that he is personating his friend Hassack, a rough diamond, whom he believes to be drowned. At the end of the act Hassaack arrives but does not turn Carruth out. Then appears a Spanish American German and as the play develops it is clear that he’s is working for Germany while Hassaack, pretending to help him, is circumventing him. The scheme appears to be somehow to shut up our fleet while the Germans land a force. It is, of course, touch -and-go, and after sundry complications the German is nabbed in the nick of time and shot. Then Hassaack is going to be tried as this accomplice, but convinces a naval officer that his course was the only one which would succeed and that he was loyal all the time. Subsidiary matters are the German’s main love to Mrs Hassaack and other mild love affairs. The play suffers from obscurity: it is difficult to work out what precisely the different characters know or intend to do. But it is fairly well written and the spy business less silly and melodramatic then is usually the case. Recommended for license. G. S. Street.