The Admiral's Daughter

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a vigorously written but (except for a passage or two) inoffensive melodrama. In the first act Winifred Selwyn-Keith, daughter of a late admiral, and Andrew Gordon, the village Schoolmaster, are in love. Mrs Keith opposes the match on class grounds and Andrew departs for South America. The usual spies, male and female, urge Mrs Keith’s safe, to get the late admiral's plans for defeating submarines and Mrs Keith dies of heart failure. Andrew is suspected. In act II the spies turn up at Andrew's hut in the oil-fields. The female spy makes love to him in vain the male spy thrashes her; Andrew departs to enlist. War being now declared the third act is in Winifred’s home again; now a hospital with a shrewish matron (this is unnecessary but unimportant) and Winifred and the female spy, now repentant, are nurses. The male spy turns up again, but so does Andrew, wounded and everything comes right. In act II, pp51 and 52, the stage directions of the male spy thrashing the female spy suggests a rather horrid scene, even though the actual thrashing is done 'off'. There might be a caution that it must not be too much drawn out or too horrible. In act II, p.34 'bloody German' is used by an excited patriotic. It was allowed in 'The Hidden Hand' and I do not think it matters. After all they are all bloody in the strictest sense of the word. In act II, p.36, however 'you b….' occurs, and there should be a caution about the word. The female spy has been the crown prince's mistress which is unfair to him, but it has been allowed already. Recommended for licence […] Blood to come out […] Word 'blood' taken out of MS by author. Sentence on p36 will be 'you…..'