Tether a Dragon

[5] A reviewer from the Argus said "With the touch expected of a writer of her stature, Miss Tennant has not made her play a study of the one man and- left the other characters to wallow in obscurity...

"[6] Leslie Rees argued: Perhaps by intention, the play was effective rather as a series of fresh, rather airy pastel sketches than as a fully-shaped portrait in mature colours.

Adapted to radio form, the play made stimulating and pointed listening for those interested in the problem: Is it inevitable that political leadership shall destroy the leader by the very tumult and pressure of the task?

Its title comes from a pseudo-Chinese proverb used to illustrate a point in a leading article Deakin wrote as a young journalist on the Melbourne Age: “To tether a dragon with a thread of silk,” Miss Tennant uses this simile as the theme of her play, which argues “that democracy needs a special type of man to lead it, and that such a man is nearly always devoured by the democracy he serves.

The strain of harnessing the dragon is too much.” So it was with Alfred Deakin, whose retirement from politics was compelled by the decline, apparently through exhaustion, of his memory and great intellectual resources.