Criticism
In general, the critics felt that the play reflected Gilbert's 1860s style more than his more mature playwriting. The closing line, "Let us pray", added by Gilbert late in the play's construction, was widely believed to ruin the final scene and cause hilarity where drama was needed. Gilbert soon cut the line, but it was too late, and the play folded. Clement Scott's harsh review (especially of Neilson) led to the termination of Gilbert's relationship with Scott and threats of legal action. According to Barrington's 1908 memoir, the critics also felt that no woman would go to the lengths that the heroine does in the play to save her husband's father.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
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“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
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