THEATRE REVIEWS

5. The Queen of Connaught (1877)

The Queen of Connaught
by Robert Buchanan and Harriett Jay (adapted from Harriett Jay’s novel, The Queen of Connaught.)
London: Royal Olympic Theatre. 15 January to 17 March, 1877 (53rd performance).
Other London Performances:
Crystal Palace, 18 November, 1880 (Harriett Jay matinée. Her London début as an actress).

(Harriett Jay played the role of ‘The Queen of Connaught’.)

[Advert for The Queen of Connaught from The Times (Monday, 15 January, 1877 - p.8)]

The Times (18 January, 1877 - p.9)

THE THEATRES.
_____

     The management of the Olympic has but poorly consulted its own interests in the advertisement with which it has prefaced the programme to its new play, the Queen of Connaught. We are required to believe that this play, of which the subject is “entirely contemporary,” depicts a kind of “Irish life, character, and manner, which has not been portrayed in any previous drama.” We may read a fairy story with very great pleasure as a fairy story, but if we are gravely desired to accept it as a narrative of actual fact, and to believe that jewels really did fall and may again fall from the mouths of good princesses, and toads and reptiles from the mouths of bad princesses, the story ceases to amuse us. Now, as a matter of fact, Irish life as depicted in the Queen of Connaught appears to us to be remarkably like Irish life as depicted in any other Irish melodrama we ever saw, save that, perhaps, it may be a little less like the reality. The whole play is, as it seems to us, but a compound of pretty nearly every Irish piece that has been on the boards within this generation, with a spice of Maxwell’s “Irish Rebellion” for flavour. The good and bad characters are pretty much as usual; there is a most unconscionable villain; a headstrong Irish girl, rather more headstrong perhaps than she has generally appeared to us; a pretty peasant girl, whose affections are “trifled with,” whose life is attempted, but who passes with safety through both ordeals, and appears in the nick of time to confound the machinations of the villain; there is a comic servant, and the usual proportion of “boys,” who are equally ready to die for or to kill “the master,” on the slightest provocation. There is, to be sure, some attempt at originality in the character of the heroine, who gives her name to the piece, but it is a distorted and unnatural character, and for our part we much prefer some goold old conventional type, endeared by long and pleasant familiarity, than originality such as this. So much for the claim of novelty. With regard to the piece itself, there is a fair amount of life and action about it; and the third act concludes with a powerful and picturesque scene, though of a very familiar type. The play is, in short, a fairly good melodrama of the school with which Mr. Boucicault has made our stage familiar. In such works no great literary skill is generally to be found, nor perhaps even required, and its absence here cannot be regarded as abnormal. If it had not been for that unfortunate advertisement, the responsibility of which the authors and the management must, in the absence of any definite information, be content to share, though it would have been impossible greatly to praise the Queen of Connaught, it would not have been necessary to linger over its defects. The best acting in the play is unquestionably shown by Mr. Flockton in the character of Anthony Dunbeg. The man, who has taken life in a drunken brawl, is a fugitive from justice, and believing himself to have been betrayed by the hero, the English owner of an Irish estate, is determined, in revenge, to add the crime of murder to that of manslaughter, but fortunately discovers hsi mistake before he has satisfied his vengeance. This character Mr. Flockton represents with much power, and, in general, with a just avoidance of exaggeration. In the last scene, where he discovers and owns his mistake, he is much to be praised for the quiet of his tone and bearing which are yet full of strong force and pathos. The part of the heroine is played by Miss Cavendish with animation and correctness; but it is an unnatural and something of an unpleasant part, and Miss Cavendish, though a skilled and powerful actress, is somewhat lacking in variety of expression, and too generally dependent on her author to be able to conceal these facts. Mr. Neville, as the hero, John Darlington, is pretty much like Mr. Neville in most of his late characters, and Mr. Hill’s vein of humour is not suited to the representation of an Irish servant. Both Miss Carlisle and Miss Dubois do the little they have to do in a satisfactory manner; but the playbill says all that is necessary to say of the other characters.

___

The Examiner (27 January, 1877 - Issue 3600)

     The value of a comma is great, but has perhaps never been so distinctly evidenced as in the review of the ‘Queen of Connaught,’ in Public Opinion, from which we quote the following:—“Who wrote ‘The Queen of Connaught,’ one of the most popular novels of last year? Rumour says, Mr. Robert Buchanan’s sister-in-law. Who has dramatised it? The same saucy jade, says Mr. Buchanan.” What Public Opinion means is not at first by any means clear. It does not, however, intend any rudeness, but there should be no comma after the word “jade.”

[Advert for The Queen of Connaught from The Times (29 January, 1877 - p.8)]

The New York Times (6 January, 1878)
An extract from ‘The English Stage: Story of the Year’:

Mr. Robert Buchanan probably finds a new cause for feeling bitterly against all mankind because “The Queen of Connaught” did not make his nor the fortune of Mr. Neville at the Olympic. The drama was not without merit but the action of the play was worked out on the poorest models, and the situations were forced and unnatural. You may possibly have an opportunity for judging for yourself how far London was right in rejecting “The Queen of Connaught” as Miss Ada Cavendish will be with you next year and this drama is in her répertoire.

___

The Daily News (19 November, 1880 - Issue 10793)

     CRYSTAL PALACE.—The revival of The Queen of Connaught, as one of the afternoon performances in the Theatre of the Crystal Palace, derives an additional interest from the first appearance in the part of the heroine of the young lady who is the author of the remarkable novel on which this play is founded, and also joint author of the stage adaptation. Miss Jay is a lady possessing many qualifications for the position of leading actress in romantic drama. She has a fine expressive countenance, a graceful figure of the full middle height, and a voice which is not wanting in power, and is probably capable, under good training, of excellent effect both in light and pathetic utterances. Unfortunately she is as yet but little skilled in the arts of the stage. Her movements are not ungraceful, but they are somewhat timid and constrained; she has no adequate command of those little resources by which the practised actress is able to make her presence felt, even when she is taking no part in the dialogue; and moreover her delivery is rather distressingly formal. This latter defect was apparently exaggerated in some degree from her efforts to reach what actors call the “pitch,” of a theatre by no means favourable for conducting the sound of the voice. It will be fair therefore not to judge her from the performance of yesterday afternoon any further than to say that her impersonation, in spite of its technical deficiencies, is of sufficient promise to give hope that Miss Jay will eventually take a place in the leading ranks of her new profession. Her efforts were well supported by Mr. Henry Neville, Miss Jecks, Mr. Brooke, Mr. Proctor, and the other members of the rather strong company assembled; and the play, with its picturesque and quaint scenes of life in the West of Ireland, appeared to afford much pleasure to a large audience.

[Press notices of Harriett Jay in The Queen of Connaught
from The Era (28 November, 1880 - Issue 2201)]

_____

Next: The Nine Days’ Queen (1880)

Back to the Bibliography or the Plays or Harriett Jay Theatre Reviews