The story of "Chains" is common-place. The atmosphere is common-place, too. A city clerk resolves to throw up his berth and accompany his friend to Australia, there to start afresh in a new life. His salary has just been reduced by his employers, and this adds to his determination. His wife naturally wishes to accompany him, but when she finds that it is his intention to go alone, she is overcome with grief. She tells of her friends and relations that her husband has grown tired of her and wishes to leave her. The young clerk has a friend in his wife's sister, who promises to look after her when he has gone, and with this in view the young man resolves to leave secretly.
He arranges to meet his friend at Southampton, but his wife hears of his intention, and, as a last resource, she tells her husband that she is about to become a mother. This is the chain which binds him to his "fate" and for the sake of the child he throws aside his project and resigns himself to a life of monotony on his stool in the office.
Mr. Dennis Eadie, an actor who is coming rapidly to the front, played the part of the clerk with great distinction. The suggestions of blighted ambition and broken purpose were admirably set forth. Mr. Edmund Gwenn played the part of the wife's father, a lazy, ignorant, fat plumber: one of those individuals who live in a groove and haven't the pluck to get out of it. Miss Hilda Trevelyan, as the wife, showed a clever portrait of an everyday, middle-class housewife - one of the long suffering, cramped type, lacking herself in desire for betterment unless accompanied by an entire absence of risk.
The authoress is to be congratulated upon her knack of characterisation. It is quite happy. "Chains" is very interesting. It is pleasant to get away from dukes and duchesses, lords and earls. The modern stage is glutted with types of unreal and never-met-with people, and a trip into common-place suburbia is not without its charms.
The Playgoer and Society Illustrated, Volume 2 No. 9.