Comedy

Arthur W. Pinero

Characters: 10 male, 8 female

4 interior scenes

Actress Rose Trelawny falls in love with the grandson of a snobbish knight. Unfortunately her visit to her lover's home is a humiliating failure and she finds she can no longer act. But the elderly tyrant relents, unexpectedly developing an interest in the theatre; he even finances a play and finally gives his blessing to Rose and his grandson

FEE: Public domain.

The Magistrate is a farce by the English playwright Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. The plot concerns a respectable magistrate who finds himself caught up in a series of scandalous events that almost cause his disgrace. The first production opened at the Court Theatre in London on 21 March 1885.

'That is what marriage gives - the right to destroy years and years of life.' Venice, Easter 1895. In the cafes around St Mark's Square, all the gossip among the English ex-pat community is about two mysterious arrivals in the city. Agnes Ebbsmith is a young widow with a scandalous past. Travelling with her is Lucas Cleeve, an up-and-coming Tory MP who has abandoned his wife in London. Defying convention, Agnes and Lucas are refusing to marry, and living in a 'compact' together. But before long their peace is shattered by the arrival of Lucas's aristocratic family from London. The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith is a dramatic, entertaining,and utterly enthralling play by one of the greatest Victorian dramatists. This playtext, slightly adapted from the original,was prepared for its first ever revival, presented by Primavera at Jermyn Street Theatre in 2014. The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith was last performed by Mrs Patrick Campbell in the West End in 1895. With an introduction to the play and its historical context by Dr Sos Eltis.

When Aubrey Tanqueray marries for the second time, he knows that his new wife, Paula, is a 'woman with a past'. But he has no idea how that past will catch up with him in the end. More probing than Oscar Wilde, more accessible than Ibsen, Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893) is one of the masterpieces of the Victorian theatre: sexy, dramatic, funny and very moving.-6 women, 5 men

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was the theatrical sensation of the London stage in 1893. It established Pinero as the leading English dramatist of serious social issues, and created a star out of Mrs. Patrick Campbell in the title role. The play recounts the marriage of a "woman with a past" and how it fails because of the double standard of morality applied unequally and hypocritically by Victorian society to men and women. This Broadview edition includes a thoroughly revised text based on the author's manuscript, the prompt copy for the first production, and the published first edition; it also incorporates pertinent stage directions from the first production. The critical introduction examines all facets of the play and its production, and the appendices make accessible a wide variety of hard-to-find contemporary contextual materials related to the play.