Three Plays

LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1923
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
These plays are printed here in the order in which they were written.
I wanted not to write an introduction to these three plays, but circumstances are too strong for me. Yet, after all, what is to be said but, to the public, “Here they are; like them,” and, to the critics, “Here they are; fall on them”? But apparently this is not enough. I must think of something else.
A. A. M.
The Scene is laid in the Broxopp home of the period.
Twenty-four years pass between Act I. and Act II., eighteen months between Act II. and Act III., and a year between Act III. and Act IV.
The first performance of this play in London took place at the St. Martin’s Theatre on March 6, 1923, with the following cast:
Scene: The GREAT BROXOPP’S lodgings in Bloomsbury; a humble room in late Victorian days, for BROXOPP has only just begun. He has been married for six months, and we see NANCY ( the dear ) at work, while her husband is looking for it. He is an advertising agent, in the days when advertising agents did not lunch with peers and newspaper proprietors. Probably he would prefer to call himself an “adviser to men of business.” As we see from a large advertisement over the sideboard—drawn and lettered by hand (NANCY’S)— he has been hoping to advise SPENLOW on the best way to sell his suspenders. SPENLOW, we are assured, “gives that natty appearance.” The comfort, says THE GREAT ONE, in an inspired moment :
“ The comfort is immense
With Spenlow’s great invention!
Other makes mean Suspense,