The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith
The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith

Author: Arthur Wing Pinero

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-08-02

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 1783197897

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

‘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.

Plays by A. W. Pinero
Plays by A. W. Pinero

Author: Arthur Wing Pinero

Publisher: CUP Archive

Published: 1986-04-17

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780521284400

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume contains four plays by the leading late Victorian and Edwardian playwright Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934). It provides a representative sample of the work of a writer who far outshone his rivals (including both Wilde and Shaw) in his own day, and inspired such successors as Somerset Maugham and Terence Rattigan in the genre of the 'wellmade play', and Ben Travers in the writing of farce. The plays are The Schoolmistress (1866), one of the famous Court farces; The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893), the best known of all the plays about 'a woman with a past'; Trelawny of the 'Wells' (1898), a much-loved backstage romance; and The Thunderbolt (1908), a pioneering social drama. Two of the plays (The Schoolmistress and The Thunderbolt), are not available in print elsewhere. This scholarly edition includes an introduction, a biographical account, a full list of Pinero's plays in performance and publication, and several important appendixes, including an alternative ending to The Schoolmistress and significant variants in the text of The Second Mrs Tanqueray.

Pinero: Three Plays
Pinero: Three Plays

Author: Sir Arthur Wing Pinero

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-05-08

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1408149206

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Born within a year of both Shaw and Wilde, Pinero was one of the most popular - and prolific - playwrights of his age. This volume contains his three best - and still most often performed - plays, each written in a different mode: The Magistrate (1885), a splendid farce; The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893), a social problem play; and Trelawny of the 'Wells' (1898), an affectionate comedy on the inevitability of change.

The New Woman and Other Emancipated Woman Plays
The New Woman and Other Emancipated Woman Plays

Author: Jean Chothia

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780192824271

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Female emancipation and the much derided `New Woman' was a subject of immense fascination in the English Theatre of the 1890s. Associated issues of women's education, freedom of thought, the sexual double standard, and the right to self-determination feature in play after play of the period.However the advent of the New Drama after the turn of the century marked a change of emphasis and figures previously demonized were now heroized. This collection includes two plays from the 1890s, Sidney Grundy's The New Woman (1894) and Arthur Wing Pinero's The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith (1895), bothmuch mentioned in recent criticism but neither available, until now, and two of the liveliest examples of the New Drama, Elizabeth Robins's Votes for Women (1907) and St John Hankin's The Last of the De Mullins (1908).

British Playwrights, 1880-1956
British Playwrights, 1880-1956

Author: William W. Demastes

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1996-12-09

Total Pages: 470

ISBN-13: 0313032653

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From 1880 to 1956, when John Osborne transformed the British theater world with Look Back in Anger, British playwrights made numerous lasting contributions and provided a foundation for the innovations of dramatists during the latter half of the 20th century. This reference profiles the life and work of some 40 British playwrights active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of whom are also known for their work as novelists and poets. Included are figures such as W. H. Auden, Max Beerbohm, Noel Coward, T. S. Eliot, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, D. H. Lawrence, W. Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde. Each entry provides a biographical overview; a list of major plays and summaries of their critical reception; a list of minor plays, adaptations, and productions; an assessment of the playwright's career; and archival and bibliographical information. Included in this reference book are alphabetically arranged entries for some 40 British playwrights active from 1880 through 1956. Entries are written by expert contributors, with each entry providing a biographical overview; a list of major plays, premieres, and significant revivals, along with a summary of the critical reception of these works; a listing of additional plays, adaptations, and productions; an assessment of the playwright's career and contributions, with reference to published evaluations in magazines, journals, dissertations, and books; a listing of locations housing unpublished archival material, if available; a selected bibliography of the dramatist's published plays and of essays and articles by the playwright on aspects of the theater; a selected bibliography of secondary sources; and, when available, a listing of previously published bibliographies on the playwright.