Abstract

Drama

The humor is, to be sure, of no very squeamish kind, and those who take pleasure in viewing with alarm should be able to get a good deal of satisfaction out of comparing the rowdiness of the piece with the decorum which marks the revival of the play "The Merry Widow." Time makes all things quaint, and even naughtiness is not exempt from the general process. "The Merry Widow," which once seemed so continental and so wicked, is now only charmingly romantic. Doubtless the time will come when even the play "Fifty Million Frenchmen" will appear sweetly old-fashioned, and it will seem no more surprising that civilization survived despite its frank allusions to the manners of nineteen-twenty-nine than it does today to realize that not even ten million renditions of "The Merry Widow" waltz in ten million innocent American homes sent all who danced by it to the bow-wows.