Settling Day

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is described as a 'comedy-dramatic playlet'. But there is no comedy about it: it is a serious and sad little play. An ex-corporal, discharged from the army, comes home expecting a warm welcome from his wife and children. Instead of that he finds his children sent away to his wife's mother and his wife in suspicious agitation. A compromising telegram arrives and gradually it comes out that his wife is being unfaithful to him. At first he 'sees red' and points out with force the baseness of her conduct but when she has advanced a spirited (but rather unconvincing) defence about poverty and illness and loneliness he is touched and decides to forgive her. This solution of the situation is perhaps ultra-sentimental but it is a matter of opinion and I see no harm in its presentment. There is nothing offensive in the dialogue. Recommended for Licence. G. S. Street.

Researcher's Summary:

In a letter published in The Era, 7 August 1918, Albert Brasque referred to his productions of Denton Spencer’s plays Self-Defence and Settling Day, saying, ‘Considering that I have been running propaganda stuff all this time, and working in a small way to create a good influence among thousands of my fellow subjects in different parts of the country, I feel that I am doing also work of “National Importance”. Others have been doing it, too, and I think such artistes should be treated with every consideration if called before a tribunal, more especially if they come under the category of the older men of military age’.