More Music! Revised version of ‘Two Songs, Two Hymns and a March in the Play of Love on the Dole’.

I first published this article about the use of music and song in the 1935 play adaptation of Love on the Dole at the end of January 2024. However, recently looking again at the play I realised that the two printed editions (one by Jonathan Cape, one by Samuel French) have a further hymn in the case of the first and another song in the case of the second (a musical hit from back in 1914 titled ‘You’re Here and I’m Here’).

This revised article includes a recording of this upbeat love-song, which Mrs Dorbell, Mrs Jike and Mrs Bull start singing in a scene in the Hardcastle house after they have had a few nips of gin. It is totally inappropriate to the misery of Mrs Hardcastle and to Sally’s situation after she becomes Sam Grundy’s mistress in order to save her family from sinking even further into poverty and destitution, and so is another ironic use of music in the play. No wonder Mr Hardcastle throws them out of the house as soon as they begin singing the tune ‘off-key’. See Two/Three Songs, Two Hymns and a March in the Play of Love on the Dole: Act I and Act III, Scene 2 (1934/1935) (and a Coda on a Song in the Film, 1941) *

Enjoy! Best Chris.