FOREIGN DRAMA ON THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STAGE I45 



original title, made capital and copy out of it, and succeeded, as 

 invariably happens, in baiting a certain well-meaning but gullible 

 element of the people, so that protests against the piece were not long 

 in appearing. These, as usual, had the result of advertising the play 

 and of making it a success financially. As a play it deserved success 

 for its dramatic merits and for the brilliant acting of Mr. George 

 Arliss in the title-r61e. After all, the devil of Molnar was only the 

 Mephistopheles of Goethe in a modern society setting. The old 

 idea of the moraUty play is as potent now as it was in the 

 Middle Ages. 



Seven Sisters deals with the rigid Hungarian custom that the oldest 

 daughter in a family must be married first. Mrs. Gyurkovics, mother 

 of the seven, finds herself in a predicament, as her fourth daughter, 

 Mici, aged seventeen, has just been sent home from the convent in 

 disgrace, having been caught by one of the nuns in the act of flirting 

 with a handsome young lieutenant. Count Feri Horkoy. The dis- 

 tracted mother, with this unruly beauty on her hands, sees no way of 

 solving her problem except by putting the seventeen-year-old Mici in 

 short skirts and long hair and calling her fourteen. The young count 

 appears upon the scene and is at first dismayed, but comprehending 

 the situation, he takes courage and wagers Mici three kisses that he 

 will get her three older sisters married and out of the way within the 

 year. Of course he wins his wager. This is the golden thread of the 

 story, which is spun out to a four-act farce, filled with capital text and 

 laughable incidents. The theme is, to be sure, as old as love itself, 

 but fortimately in this instance the Hungarian farce has not been 

 Americanized and is served to us with the real home flavor. Instead 

 of the usual exaggerated horse play of farce, as we know it, we find the 

 fun suppHed by individual characterization of natural types and by 

 the pecuhar customs of the country. There are many charming 

 touches of Hungarian home life. Altogether Seven Sisters furnishes a 

 choice evening's entertainment of innocent merriment. It does not 

 leave the spectator pessimistic and cynical as does The Devil, nor does 

 it thrill and haunt him for a long time after as does the tragic story of 

 The Typhoon. 



