The Swan (play)

The Swan is a 1920 play by Ferenc Molnár, adapted from the Hungarian language A hattyú by Melville Baker. It is a three-act comedy with three settings and fifteen characters. The action of the play takes place within 24 hours. The story concerns a dethroned family of minor Germanic royalty, whose head hopes to marry her daughter (the Swan) to a crown prince, but runs into trouble by ill-using her sons' tutor. Though a comedy, the story contains tragic undercurrents, in the emotional suffering of the tutor and the futile dynastic scheming in the face of the coming Great War.

The play was produced by Gilbert Miller of The Charles Frohman Company. It was staged by David Burton, and starred Eva Le Gallienne with Basil Rathbone, Philip Merivale, Hilda Spong, and Halliwell Hobbes. It had tryouts in Detroit and Montreal before it premiered on Broadway during October 1923. Critics at the time likened the storyline to The Prisoner of Zenda without the melodrama. It ran to the end of May 1924 for 243 performances, but was then shut down by a labor dispute that affected other Broadway shows as well. It resumed in August 1924, running for another month.

The Swan was adapted for a silent film of the same name in 1925.