Transcribed from the 1921 W. Heffer & Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

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SIX PLAYS
By Florence Henrietta Darwin
and an Introduction by Cecil Sharp

Memoir and Portrait of the Author

W. HEFFER & SONS LTD.,
CAMBRIDGE, 1921.

SIX PLAYS BY
FLORENCE HENRIETTA DARWIN
The Plays may be had in paper covers at
1s. 6d. net as under 1. LOVERS’ TASKS 2. BUSHES & BRIARS 3. MY MAN JOHN 4. PRINCESS ROYAL } 5. THE SEEDS OF LOVE } In one volume 6. THE NEW YEAR
W. HEFFER & SONS LTD.
CAMBRIDGE

INTRODUCTION

I have been asked to write a few lines of introduction to these volumes of Country Plays, and I do so, not because I can claim any right to speak with authority on the subject of drama, but in order that I may associate myself and express my sympathy with the endeavour which the author has made to restore to his rightful estate the English peasant with whom my work for twenty years or more has brought me into close relations.

There have been few serious attempts to depict English country life on the stage. Nor, for that matter, can it be said that the English peasant has fared over well in our literature. Nevertheless, the English countryman has qualities all his own, no less distinctive nor less engaging than those of his Irish, Scottish, Russian, or Continental neighbours, even though his especial characteristics have hitherto been for the most part either ignored or grossly travestied by the playwright. Now in these plays, as it seems to me, he has at last come into his own kingdom and is painted, perhaps for the first time on the stage, in his true colours, neither caricatured on the one hand, nor, on the other, sentimentalised, but faithfully portrayed by a peculiarly sympathetic and skilful hand.