Hunting Stuart and The Voice of the People

Ian C. Nelson is assistant director of libraries at the University of
Saskatchewan and président, La Troupe du Jour, Regina Summer Stage.

Hunting Stuart is a full-length play, originally published in 1955. It
has been noted that one of its themes—“the contrast between ‘the
bland, quiet, rather dull Canadian’ on the surface and ‘the bizarre
and passionate life’ within”—became “the foundation for
Davies’s portrayal of Dunstan Ramsay in Fifth Business fifteen years
later” (a good note given the perennial popularity of the latter
novel). The play is a reworking of the tiger showing his presumptive
stripes—in this case Scottish royal lust. Davies states that interest
in the peccadilloes and future of the British royal family lends a
current cachet to the piece. But even with an avowed purpose of comedy
or social satire, the setting, sensibilities, and scientific theories on
which the plot depends give it a dated air, rather like the Mesmer plot
in Da Ponte’s libretto for Cosi fan tutte. Unfortunately, Hunting
Stuart cannot boast a musical setting by Mozart and is not quite far
enough removed to be a period piece.

The Voice of the People (1948) suffers from comparison to the
celebrated Overlaid and is considered the slightest of Davies’s
one-act plays. It is a dash of amusement, like a short episode of “All
in the Family,” exposing some of the same limited horizons; a kind of
cautionary tale about engaging the brain before opening the mouth or, in
this case, before putting pen to paper.