It is uncertain where Daviot obtained her passionate interests in the theater and history, but they were to combine in her most outstanding play, Richard of Bordeaux, which was initially produced at the Arts Theatre Club in London in June 1932. The following February a revised version opened for a year's run at the New Theatre. The director and leading actor was John Gielgud, who had recently performed a successful season at the Old Vic playing, among other parts, Hamlet and Richard II. Richard of Bordeaux made him a famous West End "star," and it was partly owing to his guidance and shrewd dramatic suggestions that the play was turned into so remarkable a success. Ernest Short called Gielgud's Richard "the performance of his career. Here was all the Terry charm, coupled with the capacity to display a character which was gracious, generous and wayward in the early scenes, hysterical and short-tempered in the King's encounters with his barons and dignified and pathetic when facing death."
It was a play of distinction which many critics acclaimed as the finest drama since Shaw's Saint Joan; not without reason for like Shaw's play it was written with wit, political irony, and in clear modern forms of speech, still something of a novelty in history plays.
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