AustLit

Set in Paris in 1572 during one of the country's bloodiest eras, when 10,000 protestant citizens were murdered on St Bartholomew's Day (24 August) on the orders of Charles IX, his mother, Catherine de Medici, and the Duke of Guise. Leading up to the opening of the play the half crazy Charles IX's sister Marguerite de Valois is to marry Henry of Navarre so as to reconcile the two factions in France's civil war. The union is, however, a ruse to trick the Huguenots and bring about their slaughter. The play begins with the King absorbed in a game of cards. The conspiritors manage to obtain his signature to a decree ordering the massacre. Clohilde who knows of the plot is unable to tell her lover, Tigonville, of the plan but manages to get him to promise that he will visit the house next to the Golden Maid before midnight. There he finds assassins preparing for the night's hideous work. Each man is given a white band to tie on his arm so as to identify him and keep him form being killed by mistake. Tigonville is conscripted into the group against his will.

The second act sees the massacre carried out. That same evening Count Hannibal presses his intentions on Clothilde and offers to save Tigonville if she marries him instead. Tigonville has escaped, however, and enters the hotel whereupon he and Hannibal fight, having first agreed to a compact - the winner can take Clothilde as his wife. Tigonville is outsmarted in the fight and wounded, and the Count forces Clothilde to marry him agaisnt her will.

The final scene involves the attempted assassination of Count Hannibal's as he makes his way to the King with papers directing the murder of the Angers Huguenots. During the fight, carried out at the Angers Inn, Clothilde steals the papers. The finale is reached at the Castle of Vrillac, where a melee with the people of Angers occurs. The wounded Hannibal and his two faithful troopers escape and keep their spirits up by recounting stories of prowess in days long past. Clothidle appears in the end and gives Hannibal comfort by telling him that she did not really love Tigonville as she had said but instead loves him.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald theatre critic, Asche's dramatisation shows Tigonville as more of a hero than he appears in Weyman's original story. Asche also brought in the solemn reading of the marriage service, and follows the book by including the key scene between Hannibal and Clothilde in which the Count says : 'Shall it be a kiss or a blow between us?'

The Argus theatre critic wrote of the Melbourne premiere : 'Mr Oscar Asche, who is chiefly responsible for the dramatisation, has built up a bustling, moving play, rapid and realistic in character, and extremely palatable to those who delight in taking their evening's entertainment at the point of the sword. The production bristles with alarming incident, never leaving a moment's time for thought...' (17 January 1910, p9). The Sydney Morning Herald critic also noted the speed of the production, indicating that he or she was initially concerned that characterisation might suffer, especially as it also involved frequent fight scenes. The critic's appraisal, however, was that the dramatists had capably developed the story so that this was not an issue, and indeed commended Asche on being able to combine spectacle and plot so successfully (18 January 1910, p5).