Monsieur D'Or : $b A dramatic fantasy

"Monsieur D'Or" by John Louis Haney is a play (a dramatic fantasy) written in the early 20th century. It dramatizes the seductive and corrosive power of wealth through Robert Dorr—who recasts himself as “Monsieur D’Or”—as he tests, buys, and dazzles his way through salons and factories, setting people and principles against the glitter of gold. Counterpoints like Eleanor Richmond and the worker Adrienne Courteaux challenge his creed, while industrialists, artists, and socialites reveal how money distorts devotion, taste, and honor. The result is a cosmopolitan satire of privilege and conscience, threaded with the refrain that time unmasks all things.

The opening of the play unfolds at a Lenox villa during a ball, where idle chatter and a farcical lantern mishap frame a sharper clash: Dorr and his friend Hastings debate whether anyone can resist money, and Eleanor Richmond coolly ends her secret understanding with Dorr after he exalts wealth as life’s true lever, invoking a sun-dial’s motto, “Time will reveal all things.” The first scene then shifts to a Swiss laceworks, where D’Or, having quietly secured control, humiliates the Lehmann brothers by imposing a wage increase—largely to impress the skilled worker Adrienne—only to be rebuked by her for corrupt motives and, shaken, he restores the factory to its founders. The next scene opens in D’Or’s Versailles chateau, a gilded musicale introducing society women, a pianist, and avant-garde guests, as D’Or flatters and angles for a private liaison with the married Mme. Dacier while the poet Moreau and the painter Lemaire arrive to complete the brilliant, uneasy tableau. (This is an automatically generated summary.)