First and foremost, it is a delightful surprise to find out that there is more to Jerome K. Jerome than humour, although one loves the Three Men series - no matter how often one has read them, one still cannot help laughing so much it hurts. This play is far from devoid of humour, but is rather serious in more than one way - a veiled indictment of the European caste system that is never called so but understood as the way decent people live, while love is paid lip service to but really means one arranges one's own marital affairs with help of the whole society, keeping the caste and other suitability criteria always in mind.
Shortly after beginning to read this, it dawns on one that this is familiar, and one has loved the film version based on this; but as one goes on it is quite apparent that the film version is much more of a glitter and this rather prosaic one far more real - although people enamoured by the corporate misogynistic glamour might think the opposite way.
Fanny is a stage artist, with music and performance to her credit, and fame and name to boot, who happens to see someone she likes and he is in love with her for herself. Nevertheless he makes discreet enquiries re her family connections and is not too bright so makes it off her own agent, so is given some half truths and some not quite so true details; if the boy were not in love, he could easily check out the details not being true, but he is merely looking for something to tell his social connections. And so they marry and arrive at his home, she completely in dark about his aristocracy and he unaware that the pack of servants at his residence for several generations who are all from a family are in fact her close relatives.
To add to it all the butler, her uncle, and most of the family is rather strict re propriety, so much so they leave scripture quotes in the bedroom chosen for her by her aunts in law before she arrives, everyone being apprehensive about a stage artist - this was probably before films were quite so common and had eclipsed stage rendering it a poor second, except in a few, very few metropolitan cities - so imagince their shock when they realise it is the daughter of the sister who ran off to marry a musician, and that too an Irishman!
Unlike the film version this one is resolved much more satisfactorily, and one must thank the author.
Thursday, May 8, 2014.
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Shortly after beginning to read this, it dawns on one that this is familiar, and one has loved the film version based on this; but as one goes on it is quite apparent that the film version is much more of a glitter and this rather prosaic one far more real - although people enamoured by the corporate misogynistic glamour might think the opposite way.
Fanny is a stage artist, with music and performance to her credit, and fame and name to boot, who happens to see someone she likes and he is in love with her for herself. Nevertheless he makes discreet enquiries re her family connections and is not too bright so makes it off her own agent, so is given some half truths and some not quite so true details; if the boy were not in love, he could easily check out the details not being true, but he is merely looking for something to tell his social connections. And so they marry and arrive at his home, she completely in dark about his aristocracy and he unaware that the pack of servants at his residence for several generations who are all from a family are in fact her close relatives.
To add to it all the butler, her uncle, and most of the family is rather strict re propriety, so much so they leave scripture quotes in the bedroom chosen for her by her aunts in law before she arrives, everyone being apprehensive about a stage artist - this was probably before films were quite so common and had eclipsed stage rendering it a poor second, except in a few, very few metropolitan cities - so imagince their shock when they realise it is the daughter of the sister who ran off to marry a musician, and that too an Irishman!
Unlike the film version this one is resolved much more satisfactorily, and one must thank the author.
Thursday, May 8, 2014.
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