ENTERTAINMENTS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 312, 27 May 1911, Page 2

ENTERTAINMENTS

"THE PRINCE AXD THE BEGGAR MAID." Thft William Anderson Company, who are to play a two-nights season at the Theatre Royal, commencing on Friday, •June 2nd, with the romantic drama, "The 'Prince and the Beggar Maid," are thus spoken of by the Auckland Herald: "Mr. William Anderson's Dramatic Company, with Mr. H. R. Roberts and Miss Beatrice Day at the head of it, opened a season at His Majesty's Theatre last night to a good house. The play was "The Prince and the Beggar Maid," a work by Walter Howard, some of whose successful melodramas have been seen here. But this is not a melodrama. It is a play set in a couple of the romantic petty nations that lurk in the southern heart of Europe, and wage war upon each other about negligible scraps of territory, which their big neighbors are as likely to seize as they are to come to a settlement about. Of one of these nations, Illyria, there is a reigning princess, Monica. The reigning prince of the neighboring state of Sylvania, Mildred", has two brothers, and all three love Monica. Hildred seeks her in marriage, wtih the bribe that he will withdraw lii's troops from her country. Michael, who is hunch-backed, loves her with the frenzied passion of a man whom women 'despise. Olaf, with the lofty and romantic love that a fine figure, a noble voice, and a god-like cheerfulness well accompany. The bribe she scorns; Olaf's affection she returns with enthusiasm, but to save her people from the ravages of war she allows herself to be trapped into a promise to wed the miserable Michael. Olaf seizes Michael to prevent his marriage, but he is frustrated, and the wedding proceeds until Michael, hitherto adamant in his determination to secure the bride, suddenly gives way, and hands her over, with a fine display of emotion, to Olaf. Here is a good finish enough, and a play, too, of comfortable length; but the canons must be observed, and the villain cleared out of sight. So an extra act is added, and a use is found for a person who has so far had no use in the play—one Nathan, a dumb and deformed servant,- who is de-' voted to Michael. Having been often ' taunted by Hildred for his deformity, ami finding the latter in the act of attacking the master to whom he is baund by the strong tie of sympathy for a common infirmity, he struggles with the . monarch upon the brink of a parapet, and both are hurled to death upon the pavement below. The whole play is interesting and vigorous, and the least convincing episode is that so common one when the hero, fighting against unreasonable odds in an isolated castle is helped in the nick of time by trusty followers. There are more than one love story in the plot. That of Olaf and Monica runs out its .stormy course, while the others go fairly enough—the one between a gruff captain and a romantic beggarmaid, and the other between his "fool of a lieutenant" and a quite charming schoolgirl."