The Amazing Marriage

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

I have read something almost the same as this melodrama before: presumably it is a fresh version. It is rather an unpleasant production. In the beginning the villain, Callaw, and the hero, Esmond, are students at Edinburgh. Callaw falsely tells Esmond that the heroine, Helen, is engaged to him, and persuades Esmond to go through a form of 'Scotch marriage' with a poor girl Delilah. After this Callaw drugs Esmond and Delilah's lover in her own class takes her away. Two years later Callaw and Esmond are officers in the same regiment. Esmond accuses Callaw of cowardice at the Front and makes him send in his resignation; Callaw, having persuaded Esmond to promise silence, withdraws his resignation and says that Esmond is lying. Helen, persecuted by Callaw, who is backed up by her mother, flies to Esmond's quarters. She stays the night with him (act II, p43) and the next day they go to a Church to be married. The ceremony is interrupted by Callaw, who produces Delilah. In the result Delilah confesses that she was arrived before and Esmond and Helen are free to marry. Callaw is convicted of cowardice on the field by the production of a witness, supposed to be dead, and having shot at Esmond and wounded the witness is himself shot by the soldiers who think him made. There is some rather indelicate comic business, but not enough so to cut. The military business is absurd, but I do not think there is any harm in it. There are a few other points to be considered. (1) Act I, p.24. The villain proposes a night with two girls too coarsely and I should cut out the passage marked. Later on (2) act I p.32 Delilah's 'commencing to undress' etc is unnecessary (though nothing comes of it ) and should be cut. (3) One can hardly excise, perhaps the passage indicating that the heroine passes the night previous to marriage with the hero, Act II, p.43, but her references to this incident as their 'spiritual marriage' and the approval of heaven, act III, p.24 and act IV, p6 are objectionable. (4) Lastly, the beginning of the marriage service in church at the altar may be thought objectionable, but I think there are precedents for it. Recommended for licence. G. S. Street.

Researcher's Summary:

This is a new version of a play by the same title, which was first performed on 4 September 1916 and was popular through late 1916 and 1917. For performances of that version of the play see: https://www.greatwartheatre.org.uk/plays/script/1449/