The title of this play is
also the name of a children’s party game that was popular in 1917, the year the
play was written. The game is referred
to, by name, throughout the course of the play so it helps to have a sense of
the rules. It blends Blindman’s Bluff
with Musical Chairs. Chairs are placed
either in a circle or in two straight lines opposite each other. One player is
designated as Postmaster General. Each remaining player is given the name of a
town that will be his identity for the game. All the “town” players are seated except
there is one player left without a chair.
That player is blindfolded. The Postmaster General calls the names of
two towns to which the mail is to be delivered by the blindfolded player. When the names are called, the two named
towns rise and try to change chairs before one of them is caught by the
blindfolded player. Sometimes the
Postmaster General calls “General Post” and all towns must scramble to find new
chairs. Of course, there is always one town player caught without a chair and
the game continues. The reference to the game, as it is used in the play,
stands as a symbol of the social shakeup created by the war.
J.
E. Harold Terry (1885-1939) was a successful playwright in London prior to
March, 1917, when his war comedy titled General Post opened at London’s
Haymarket Theatre. It was immediately
successful and ran for 532 performances. Any play that ran over 500
performances in this period is part of a historic record. General
Post was described in newspaper advertisements across Great Britain as “a
delightful story of snobbery repentant.”
The play did not offend the aristocrats since the lessons for snobbery
were cleverly inserted and proved to be amusingly delivered. In the November 23, 1917 issue of the Cambridge Independent Press an article
states: “The piece is described as a rippling thing of laughter, mountain high
above mere farce.” The comedy continued
to be popular across England until late into the 1920s.
Each act of this
three act play is set in a different year: Act One is set in 1911 prior to the
war; Act Two is 1915 during the course of the war and Act Three takes place in 19??
after the war had been won by the Allied forces. Since the play was written
prior to the end of the war, Terry had to leave the exact year open.
The plot
illustrates how the war was altering the social structure of the classes, as
well as the conscience of the upper class.
The setting is a small country town.
The local tailor falls in love with the daughter of a conservative
Baronet, who is one of his clients. The
young daughter is sent abroad by her parents for several years so she will not
embarrass her family by her indiscretion. In Act II when the war is well
underway, the family is surprised to learn that the tailor is the ranking
officer of their son’s unit. The son has
changed his attitude towards the tailor as does the Baronet, since military
rank gives the tailor an elevated level of respect. By the end of the war, the
tailor had risen in the military ranks to Brigadier General and won the
Victoria Cross. He enjoys a hero’s
welcome to his home town and is greeted by the Baronet, who is prepared to
accept him in society and as his son-in-law. The question becomes whether the
daughter will agree to marry the man who was previously shunned by her family.
She is the character who frequently compares the family’s beliefs to the game
of General Post.
General Post
was also presented in New York City at the Gaiety Theater, where it opened on
December 24, 1917. It played for
seventy-two performances. The review in the
New York Times on December 25,
1917, called it “A clever and well sustained satire.” The review also states: “The situations are
intensely English, but they are very cleverly rendered, with admirable theatric
effect, and should be easily understood by any audience.” After the play left New York, it toured many
cities in the United States where it continued to delight audiences with its
wit and satire. In 1920, General Post was made into a silent film.
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