“THE LAW OF THE LAND.”

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1408, 19 April 1917, Page 32

“THE LAW OF THE LAND.”

George Broadhurst’s play “The Law of the Land” is to be put on to-night (Wednesday) and two following nights, the season closing on Friday. In this vigorous drama the mam figures are a brutal husband, who is a disgrace to the American legal profession, a wife who is driven by his cruelty to seek the solace of an unauthorised lover, and the latter. After ten years of matrimonial agony the wife in a spirit of desperation rids herself of her cruel and exasperating spouse by a bullet through his heart. Then the problem faces her of how the terr.ble deed is to be dealt with. She has the alternative of considering the future of a child who has been much ill-treated by the father, and of sacrificing her lover, who is prepared to take on his shoulders the responsibility of the murder. At the end of a most exciting interview which takes up the best part of one act she is moved to consider the child, only to break away from her resolution afterwards when her lover is placed under arrest. She is then saved by the resource of an unusually human police inspector, who learns from the child the tragic inner history of the house-

hold. The woman tells the story of what led up to the murder and at the end falters. “And then —” she tremblingly relates. “And then —.” “And then,” says the inspector, “the revolver fell from your hands, and in striking the floor exploded, and shot Mr. Harding through the heart. It was an accident.” He reports to the coroner accordingly. Miss Florence Rockwell is said to have exceptional opportunities as the ill-treated wife.