Tether a Dragon

Tether a Dragon is a 1951 Australian play by Kylie Tennant about Alfred Deakin and his battle with William Lyne.

It won first prize in the 1951 Commonwealth Jubilee Play Competition.

The play was adapted for radio on the ABC in 1952. The radio play version was repeated in 1953. It was published in 1952.

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... This play genuinely moved me as I read it. It would be better still to see it competently performed, as, it is to be hoped, it soon will be."

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. But it hardly avoided the pitfalls of submerging Deakin the man in a mass of complicated politics, even if these were not taken too solemnly. 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?"

Premise
According to the ABC Weekly the play "gives domestic vignettes of Alfred Deakin equally with scenes from politics. The setting is Melbourne and parliamentary London.  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."

Cast of 1953 radio production

 * Robert Peach as Bajley
 * Colin Crane as David Syme
 * John Morgan as George Syme
 * Michael Duffield as Isaacs, Speaker
 * George Randall as Edmonds
 * Grant Taylor as Deakin
 * Penella Maguire as Eldest Daughter
 * Robyn Allardice as Second Daughter
 * Shirley Murphy as Third Daughter
 * Loma Forbes as Pattie Deakin
 * Keith Hudson as Narrator
 * Richard Davies as Balfour
 * Cyril Gardiner as Devonshire
 * Williams Lloyd as Chamberlain
 * David Reid as Barton
 * Edward Morcom as Kingston
 * Hudson as Lyne Kenrick
 * Michael Collins as Forrest
 * Syd Conabere as Fisher