Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3822/At the Play
"Mameena."
Those who are not in the mood just now for a whole evening of exotic melodrama might look in at the Globe Theatre about 9.15, and derive a few moments' distraction from a Zulu wedding dance. I found it a better show than anything I have ever seen in the native compounds at Earl's Court. The company, of course, was mixed, but the white contingent had caught the local colour (coffee) and showed great aptitude in imitating the methods of the aborigines. Naturally there were conventions; the chiefs talked fluent English, while the Zulu supers employed their own vernacular, except in certain formal phrases, as when the "praisers" (my programme's name for a sort of universal claque) punctuated the speeches of their king with cries of "Yes, O Lion!" or "Yes, Great Beast!" No doubt our honoured visitors could perceive many technical points in which the ruling race exposed itself as having something yet to learn, but they tactfully concealed all signs of superior civilisation; and the British audience, well pleased with the novelty and picturesqueness of the scenes, were content to waive invidious distinctions.
The little brochure that was thrown in with the programme informs me that the martial spirit of the Zulus (at that time under their own regimé) was "identical in many respects with 'Prussian Militarism.'" Certainly there was a savagery about the way in which they progged the air with their assegais that made one picture them as capables de tout. But any comparison, whether in point of costume or royal bearing, between King Mpande and the German Kaiser must have been in favour of the latter. On the other hand, his son Umbuyazi was a far nobler figure than my conception of the Crown Prince.
I may perhaps be excused if I do not dwell on the merits of the chief actors or of the plot—not too easy to grasp at the first, thanks to the difficulty we found in following the unfamiliar names of the characters. Both these interests were dominated by the attraction of the admirable setting. Fortunately the scenes were numerous and brief, but we still suffered considerable tedium from the affected and drawling delivery of the heroine. The frequent assurances which we received as to the exceptional quality of Mameena's beauty, and the fact that, to our knowledge, she had three husbands in the course of the play, never quite convinced us of the overwhelming character of her charms. Whether, with a fair chance, she would have worked them successfully on a fourth man, Allan Quatermain—the one white man who retained his native hue—I cannot say, for somehow a stage diversion always intervened just as they had begun to embrace. The reason, by the way, for Quatermain's existence was never made too clear. Sportsman and dealer in general stores, his habit of hanging vaguely about Zulu kraals and Zulu impis, on nodding terms with just anybody, did not greatly increase my pride of race, notwithstanding the statement made to him by Mameena: "I shall never love another man as I love you, however many I marry."
Mr. Oscar Asche, who dramatised Sir Rider Haggard's Child of Storm, did not aim at subtlety. But a rather nice question arose over the rival immoralities of Mameena's second and third husbands. Prince Umbuyazi (No. 3) had expressed regret to his old friend and comrade, Sadulta (No. 2), for appropriating his wife; but the apology was not received in the spirit in which it was tendered, and during the fight between Umbuyazi and his brother Cetshwayo the wronged husband went over with his impis to the camp of the enemy. Umbuyazi made a strong protest against this treachery, but he must have seen (for he had much intelligence) that his case was a bad one; and this reflection no doubt had something to do with the final act by which (in the old Roman way) he fell upon his own assegai and dropped backwards—an admirable gymnastic—off one of the high rocks above the Tugela.
I have already referred to the difficulties of Zulu nomenclature, and I would add that the native custom of addressing a man by his proper name in the course of every sentence materially extended the operation of the play. It must have made a difference—which I, for one, bitterly grudged—of nearly half-an-hour. How much more satisfactory the economy of a certain author of whom Charlie Brookfield used to say: "He read his play to the company, and it took three solid hours, and even so he didn't put in any of the "h's."