Dramatic and Musical Law; Being a Digest of the Law Relating to Theatres and Music Halls and Containing Chapters on Theatrical Contracts, Theatrical, Music and Dancing and Excise Licenses, Dramatic and Musical Copyright, &C

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 Excerpt: ...recover damages in respect of an alleged - libel. At the trial, before Mr. Justice Field, it appeared that the Carson. plaintiff and his wife were the joint authors of a play called "The Whip Hand." The defendant was the editor of a theatrical newspaper. Early in May 1886, the play was performed at a theatre in Liverpool. On May 7 a criticism of the play was published in the defendant's newspaper. The part of the article charged in the statement of claim as libellous was as follows: --"' The "Whip Hand, ' the joint production of Mr. and Mrs. Herman Merivale, gives us nothing but a hash-up of ingredients which have been used ad nauseam, until one rises in protestation against the loving, confiding, fatuous husband with a naughty wife and her double Tabart -. Tipper, 1 Camp. 351. t Times, November 26 and 27, 1878. t 20 Q.B. D. 275. existence; the good male genius, the limp aristocrat, the villainous foreigner. And why dramatic authors will insist that in modern society comedies in the villain must be a foreigner and the foreigner must be a villain, is only explicable on the ground, we suppose, that there is more or less of romance about such gentry. It is more in consonance with accepted notions that your continental croupier would make a much better fictitious prince, marquis, or count than would, say, an English billiard-marker or stable-lout. And so the Marquis Collona, in 'The Whip Hand, ' is offered up by the authors upon the altar of tradition, and sacrificed in the usual manner, when he gets too troublesome to permit of a reconciliation of husband and-wife, and lover and maiden, and is proved, also much as usual, to be nothing more than a kicked-out croupier." The innuendo suggested was that the article implied that the ...