The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Cat, by John Todhunter

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Title: The Black Cat
A Play in Three Acts

Author: John Todhunter

Release Date: December 4, 2005 [EBook #17218]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE BLACK CAT.
A PLAY IN THREE ACTS BY
JOHN TODHUNTER.
FIRST ACTED AT
THE INDEPENDENT THEATRE IN LONDON.

LONDON: HENRY AND CO. 93, ST. MARTIN'S LANE, W.C. 1895

_Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._

Preface.

Mr. Grein has asked me to write a preface to THE BLACK CAT.
I cannot myself see much occasion for this. Why should an author be
called upon to make a speech before the curtain? Because, I presume,
people want to have something to talk about besides the play itself,
and an author must surely have "views." Well, it is a day of
views--and of talk.

THE BLACK CAT was produced at the Opera Comique on December
8th, 1893, at one of the Independent Theatre Society's performances.
It had a certain _succes d'estime_ before a special audience, for
whom, however, it was not written; and it has not been performed
since.

The critics were wonderfully kind. They actually praised the play;
some reluctantly, some with a reckless enthusiasm which quite
astonished me. I had expected a much less pleasant reception.

The main objection they made to the thing was that it had a tragic
ending, which they kindly suggested I had tacked on to my comedy, to
appeal to the morbid taste of an "Independent" audience.
Unfortunately I had done nothing of the kind. The play was conceived
before the Independent Theatre had come into existence. The end was
foreseen from the beginning; the tragedy being implicit in the
subject. The tragic motive lay deeper than the death of the heroine,
who might have been allowed to live, if that last symbolic pageantry
had not had its dramatic fitness. Given the characters and the
circumstances, the end is the absolutely right one.

Of course the circumstances might have been altered, and a