Why Marry?

From a photograph by White Studio.
Helen: You're about the most conceited man I ever knew. Ernest: How can I help it, when you admire me so?
New York: Astor Theatre: Produced by Selwyn & Company, Dec. 25, 1917, under the direction of Roi Cooper Megrue. The scene is a week-end at a country house not far away; the time, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning, and Sunday evening. THE PEOPLE AT THE HOUSE (As You Meet Them)
One afternoon shortly before the New York opening of this comedy a most estimable lady sat down to make me a cup of tea.
Now, do tell me, what is your play about? she inquired with commendable enthusiasm. For, being a true woman, she had early achieved the becoming habit of letting members of the superior sex talk about themselves.
'Why Marry?' said I, tells the truth about marriage.
Oh, why, she expostulated, why write unpleasant plays?
But it is not 'unpleasant.'
Then it isn't true! she exclaimed. That is, I mean—I mean—did you say cream or lemon?
And in the pause which accompanied the pouring of the cream I detected the look of one realizing too late that it is always better to think before speaking.
This little incident, it seemed to me, epitomizes charmingly the attitude of our nicest people toward our fundamental institution. The truth about marriage must be unpleasant. Therefore, tell us something we know isn't true. It will be so much nicer for our young people.
It is to be feared, however, that young people who go to see Why Marry? in the hope of being shocked do not get their money's worth. I have heard of but two persons who have been scandalized by this play, and they were both old people. One was a woman in the country who had not seen it, but had read the title, and so wrote several indignant letters about it. The other was an elderly bachelor of the type which finds useful occupation in decorating club windows like geraniums. He took his niece to see it, and, deciding at the end of Act II that the play was going to be unpleasant in Act III, took her home at once. The next afternoon she appeared at the matinée with a whole bevy of her own generation and saw the rest of the play. I asked her later if it had shocked any of them.