THE DETECTIVE IN DRAMA.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIX, Issue 1083, 8 December 1910, Page 18

THE DETECTIVE IN DRAMA.

Mr. GEORGE MARLOW’S REFLEC-

TIONS.

“Ever since Hawskshaw, the detective, first arose from his trapdoor,” j stated Mr. George Marlow to a '-I representative of “ The Adelaide Daily Herald,” the detective in drama has had an unfailing ! charm for theatregoers. What is surprising, though, is that in view of his immense popularity in book form, the detective has not had a much bigger place in stage fiction. It had to be left to Messrs. Shirley and Landeck, the well-known writers of melodrama, and authors of Nick Carter, Detective, to realise this fact, and the real red hot detective dish as it is found in the shockers is only just being served up in London in the manner in which it was offered in Adelaide in “Nick Carter, the Detective.”

“The detective in drama is usually taken too seriously or too flippantly. The dramatic treatment of Sherlock Holmes, artistic as it was, would doubtless have been more popular had it been on more sensational lines, for Conan Doyle in literature is never ashamed to be sensational. On the other hand, we find the detective figuring continually in farces (or also in picture shows) as an absurdly ludicrous figure. The fact did not seem to be realised until Nick Carter was dramatised that the detective, has, by reason of the hazardous nature of his profession, a special license to do daring deeds without being considered an impossible hero. In other words the detective can go to extremes in heroism and be convincing. “The reason is apparent. No detective ever made a success in his profession without going through adventures which, if enacted on the stage would have half the audience fainting. In drama, therefore, he can depict heroics to a degree that would seem ridiculous if credited to a clerk or a shop walker, simply because his profession is identified with that sort of thing. The soldier of fortune is mediaeval romance stood, to his time much in the same relation as our modern day detective does to us. His designation proclaimed him the doer of brave deeds and consequently they were expected of him, and no one was surprised when they happened. Therefore we see him the central figure of romantic drama —posing, boasting and knocking down every one in sight, and we regard it as quite the natural thing for him to do.

“The detective to-day is entitled to the same liberty on the stage. We

know that in real life he gets himself into some very tight corners and gets out of them often without se-

curing even a newspaper paragraph as a reward. Surely then, he is entitled to have his fling in melodrama. I consider him the ideal hero. Crime in all its worst aspects comes naturally into a detective play, and the fact that melodrama has never been guilty of allowing its detective to fail, is a strong tribute to the power of virtue.”