The captive

Front matter

piecia tates: ss

\ au RRA *

PRRCRT PARAL odeas:

Introduction

During the summer and early autumn of 1926, rumors that an American producer was bringing to America an adaptation of Bourdet’s “a Prisonniére” were received with a good deal of uncertainty by the more responsible citizens of New York. For the theatrical news from Paris, where this trenchant drama began its career, had stressed the audacity of the theme, with a general tintinnabulation about censorship and the decadence of the stage. And those who were already nauseated by the fetid smells of several plays then current were quite naturally distressed at the prospect of sensationalism in the form of abnormality. Surely, they complained, themes of this character are not fit subjects for open portrayal on the stage. Indeed, the audience assembled for the opening performance at the Empire Theatre was obviously prepared for a violent shock. But whatever the expectations may have been, the objective treatment of the theme and the austere quality of the performance cleared the humid air like a northwestern breeze. With Mr. Hornblow’s adaptation and Mr. Miller’s masterly direction “The Captive” became, as it was written, a restrained though uncompromising tragedy, rather than a malodorous truckling to low curiosity. Thus for the thousandth time it was evident that the motives of vii

Vill INTRODUCTION a dramatic production are of far greater importance than the details of the subject-matter.

Not that M. Bourdet has cloaked his drama under the sanctimony of the crusader’s armor. If one may judge by the haunting impression left by the grim performance, M. Bourdet is interested, not in the details of his theme, but in their illumination of human character; and he is by that sign preeminently a dramatist. None of the soul-flagellations of a Rousseau or a Strindberg alleviates the horror by distributing the blame among gods and men, or by sighing over the sensual temptations or the squalor. Choosing a Greek theme M. Bourdet treats of it, if not in the classical manner, then in the modern counterpart to that tragic inevitability. Tn fine, the play approaches its subject objectively. And since M. Bourdet understands his characters through and through, his conclusion is foreordained. In reading it we have no feeling that he is shaping it to prove an arbitrary thesis, or to lead his characters through theatrical adventures for lurid effects. So “The Captive” moves swiftly through three long acts; even before the nature of the malady is defined in the second act, doom swims over the play like a thick, black cloud.

Although, as the reader will soon discover, the occasion for “The Captive” is the fact of an abnormal relationship between two women, the interest is solely in its revelation of character. M. Bourdet has described his people as ordinary well-bred human beings, whatever their failings may be. Irene’s tenderness towards her little sister, and her own humil-

INTRODUCTION 1X ity and -anguish, reveal her as a young lady of fine instincts; she is in no sense the neurotic debauchee of tawdry melodrama. Jacques Virieu, likewise, is a young man of high impulses; and of sufficient strength of character to fly recklessly in the face of danger to support an ideal. Unlike the contemporary school of pettifogging novelists and dramatists, with their garish sophistication, M. Bourdet does not excuse his characters on the score of congenital weakness or worldly disillusionment or pseudo-scientific buncombe. No, indeed, he is not interested in excuses; his is a tragedy of consequences. He shows Irene estranged from her father, playing false to her ingenuous sister, and fast losing all the friends with whom she once associated freely. He tortures her before Jacques. Once she was his ideal, a woman to whom he looked up; now she comes as a petitioner for mercy and pity rather than respect. In the second act, M. Bourdet shows the husband of the unseen Madame d’Aiguines—a simulacrum of a man, gray before his time, wretched and tormented, unable to escape from a poisoned home. All these characters, involved in various ways, have been withered a little by their proximity to the festered one. And if any proof were needed of the sincerity of M. Bourdet’s purpose, his treatment of Madame d’Aiguines would be sufficient. They talk of her occasionally, but by keeping her in the background and by describing the blighted fruits of her influence, M. Bourdet retains the fine objectivity and austerity of his drama.

M. Bourdet casts his tragedy in the familiar threex INTRODUCTION act mold of crisp, economical playwrighting. Without bothering his head too much about details of craftsmanship, without wasting time over the motivation of exits and entrances, he pursues his course vigorously to the end. As the composer contrasts his main theme with fragile, minor developments, so M. Bourdet heightens his tragedy by rippling interludes with Gisele and Francoise Meillant, fresh, charming and frank. This is M. Bourdet’s first notable play; he is still in his thirties. His first play was “Le Rubicon,” put on at the Théatre Michel in 1910. During the war M. Bourdet abandoned his career as a playwright to fight in the infantry; he was wounded twice, cited three times for bravery, and given the cross of the Legion of Honor. In the trenches he met as a fellow officer a young man who was deliberately seeking death in battle as an escape from the wretchedness of his home life. This man corresponds to the d’Aiguines of “The Captive,” and was the germ of the present play. The planning and writing of the tragedy occupied M. Bourdet off and on for two years. Within a year after its first appearance in Paris, “The Captive” was played in Berlin, Vienna, Budapest and New York. Mr. Hornblow’s notable adaptation communicates the precise flavor of the original.

J. Brooxs ATKINSON.

October, 1926.

LA PRISONNIERE by Edouard Bourdet was presented for the first time on any stage at the Théatre Femina in Paris on March 6th, 1926. Adapted by Arthur Hornblow, Jr., it was presented for the first time in English under the title of THE CAPTIVE at the Empire Theatre in New York, on September 29th, 1926. The play was presented by the Charles Frohman Company and produced by Gilbert Miller with the following cast:

ST I ME

Ae pe

THE CHARACTERS

Dre Montcer

_ Irene pe Montcen GISELE DE MontTce.

Jacques VIRIEU D’ AIGuUINES Francoise MEILLANnt Mure. MarcHanp JOSEPHINE GEORGES

Acr I: Irene de Montcel’s room in her father’s apartment; Paris.