The Fires of Fate (article 8 december 1909)
The Fires of Fate is an article written by Charles Collins published in The Inter Ocean on 8 december 1909.
The article is a review of Arthur Conan Doyle's play The Fires of Fate with Hamilton Revelle.
The Fires of Fate
"Melodrama with a purpose" is a phrase that might serve for a definition of "The Fires of Fate," which had its first American performance at the Illinois theatre Monday night. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author — whose continued residence in London did not prevent many enthusiasts from calling for him at the end of the third act — has labeled his work "a modern morality play," which caption is well-meaning enough not to be quarreled with, though its descriptive quality is vague. But at any rate here is a drama of ethical and spiritual intent, one that endeavors to throw an interpretative light upon the meaning of life and its travail; written naively in the literal, straight-from-the-shoulder manner of Doyle, yet compelling and impressive. Its story is wrought out with the devices and incidents of melodrama; the romance is picturesque and exciting. Artistically, "The Fires of Fate" can take no commanding rank, yet its meaning, its theme, its "message" is big and vital, and its theatric values have an engrossing demand upon the attention.
The conflict is the old one of idealism versus materialism, expressed in poignant terms. Doyle has taken a man who is afflicted with a fatal disease, and who chooses immediate suicide rather than a lingering end, and has shown that his social and moral duty lay in making the most of each day of life given to him. And after passing through "the fires of fate," which, according to the dramatist, "purify and spiritualize"; after aiding a band of his fellows through a horrible disaster, this patient condemned by the doctors discovers that, almost miraculously, he has been granted an indefinite reprieve by the inscrutable powers.
And to a comparison may he traced between "The Fires of Fate" and "The Dawn of Tomorrow" in general topic, but the play in question is not concerned with "mental healing," "new thought" or any of the modern variants of occult therapeutics; the creed that it announces is simple; its transcendentalism is old fashioned, yet none the less inspiring. While in the comparing mood one might also draw a likeness of manner and form, though not of content, between "The Fires of Fate," and "An Englishman's Home," both being the work of Englishmen of a somewhat similar temperament. The presence of William Hawtrey, who played the stanch householder in "An Englishman's Home," in the present cast is an incident that may help to re-enforce this impression; but this aside, the similarity of dramatic touch is noticeable, comic detail being inlaid upon a melodramatic framework in the same straightforward, bluntly British manner, and tending toward the same danger of arousing silly cackles from vacant American minds that see only the superficiality of the moment and overlook the meaning underneath.
"The Fires of Fate," however, is not threatened with the execution by laughter which befell befell the other — and greater — play, the element of "comic relief" being much less obvious, and not in the mood of ironic travesty which caused "An Englishman's Home" to be so completely unappreciated in this country; but it will profit nevertheless by a little more adroitness in the playing, or rather in the stage director's manipulation of the ensemble.
A physician and a clergyman discuss their attitudes toward life in the first act, which in some way, has the formality of a prologue; they are brothers, and can be heatedly frank without becoming abusive. The man of science sees no use in human suffering; the man of the cloth believes, from instances which he cites, that all tragedies and mortal woe, no matter how apparently the acts of a blind, mechanical fate, are the instruments of a divine providence, working for the good of the world. This minister, in fact, is almost like the old Puritans in his bland as acceptance of sorrow as providential; his point of view is almost a dramatic flaw in the play, though in itself the characterisation is excellent; this spokesman for a divine plan is not quite "advanced" enough.
To the doctor for medical advice comes a soldier home from India, a colonel with the distinguished service order, who thinks that he has some trivial complaint. Then Doyle brings his physician's lore, which has been a favorite weapon in his literary arsenal ever since he abandoned the stethoscope for the pen, to the front. The patient is questioned and examined, and his symptoms seem more and more serious; he has a "belt of pain" around the body; his leg does not kick out when the knee is tapped; he almost falls when told to stand erect with his eyes closed. An old sword cut across the nape of the neck has done the business for him; he has a hopeless case of "sclerosis of the spinal cord," which the layman will find more intelligible as locomotor ataxia, and he is doomed to finish as a helpless wreck in little more than a year.
The soldier promptly decides for suicide and the doctor does not discourage him in that design. But then the clergyman is called in; he expounds his creed movingly and yet reticently, and the Colonel agrees to see it through. That scene between the three men is beautifully handled, with no excess of emotionalism, William Hawtrey's quiet pleading as the minister being masterly in its fine, intense, profound feeling.
They all start for as Egyptian tour together, and the remaining three acts pass in the romantic atmosphere of the upper Nile. The second act limps, its development of love between the worried sufferer and a young American tourist being tamely forced. The third, however, is splendidly theatric; it has the broad, grim sweep of tragedy. It shows a group of travelers on a remote rock in the desert, the farthest south of the Egyptian sight-seer in 1894, the time of the story, which was before the machine guns of Omdurman had broken the power of she dervishes. They are entrapped there by a band of these ferocious barbarians, and the stage is suddenly filled with picturesque, terrible tribesmen whose implacable aspect arouses ghastly forebodings for their prisoners. The Colonel to cut down in an attempt to save the women of the party, but as the curtain falls he revives to wave a signal for rescue that seems wellnigh hopeless.
These last two episodes of powerful melodrama must be passed over hastily, but it may be told that in the last act the survivors are shown in an oasis, refusing offers of life if they accept the Koran, despairing, worn by privation and face to face with the nameless terrors of savagery. The suspense is ended with the flashing of a heliograph across the desert, and an Egyptian camel corps, led by an English officer, demolishes the dervishes, with a rousing drumming of guns off stage. Then the Colonel a knee, tapped by accident, reacts properly; all his symptoms of "tabes dorsalis" have disappeared — indicating that those who are stricken with the sword shall recover by the sword — and the end proves the clergyman's doctrine that Providence plans wisely through all miseries.
An excellent performance is given by a numerous company, in which William Hawtrey, Hamilton Revelle and Lionel Barrymore are prominent.
CHARLES COLLINS.
