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Plays: Fourth Series:
A Bit O' Love,
the Foundations,
the Skin Game;
by John Galsworthy.
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Fourth Series:
A Bit O' Love
The Foundations
The Skin Game
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A Bit O' Love, by John Galsworthy.
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Galsworthy begins this play with a curate, desperately in love with his wife and trying his utmost to do good in a small village where most people (and not just women - and girls -), gossip, losing his wife to the love she had for another man, a doctor in a nearby small town.
Her plight is not different from what Galsworthy has dealt with in various works, caught as she is in a marriage without love that she tried to convince herself she could make work; it's his character that's different from the run-of-the-mill husband enforcing his will, trapping the wife in marriage, or at least insisting she stays away from her love or he would destroy the guy. Here the good curate lets her go, promising not to hurt them, however much in pain he is himself at the break.
What's even tougher than his devastation is the craziness of the reactions from most of the villagers, and even more so their actions. What's a saving grace is decency of the few.
Galsworthy attempts in this play to spell out the villagers' speech with its dialect. It's distracting when reading. Perhaps he could have made two versions, one properly spelt for reader and another for performance personnel.
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June 09, 2021 - June 10, 2021.
Purchased June 08, 2021.
Kindle Edition, 71 pages
Published May 17th 2012
(first published 1894)
ASIN:- B0084B3Y3W
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The Foundations, by John Galsworthy.
THE FOUNDATIONS (AN EXTRAVAGANT PLAY)
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Delightful, the first act, what with Little Anne and almost everyone else! This is despite the bomb found in the wine cellar, too.
The second act brings us the possible one responsible, not so delightful. The gas man leaving a selfmade bomb in the wine cellar of the house he serviced, a home of a family with at least one child, is horrible enough; his bragging about it to his old mother whom he's unable to support, even as he drinks the bottle of port he stole from that cellar, is enough to bring disgust on himself.
Until he gets to speaking political philosophy, thst is - then he's a character out of a play by George Bernard Shaw! From Alfred Do little on, his speech could fit half a dozen of them.
The mother, old Mrs Lemmy, is another story.
But Galsworthy returns to the spirit after the second act, and after a great third act, one is left as curious as Little Anne at the end.
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June 10, 2021 - June 11, 2021.
Purchased June 14, 2013.
Kindle Edition, 97 pages
Published May 17th 2012
(first published 1920)
Original Title
The Foundations
ASIN:- B0084B3XKQ
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The Skin Game, by John Galsworthy.
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About the new wealth of trade and industry, encroaching on old landed gentry, but without the breeding or bringing up to understand the noblesse oblige creed of looking after the tenants, or of carrying out promises.
And as they blunder on, goading the neighbourhood beyond endurance, they forget others can play those games too, only, they've not done so for a while.
"HILLCRIST. I'd forgotten their existence. [He gets up] What is it that gets loose when you begin a fight, and makes you what you think you're not? What blinding evil! Begin as you may, it ends in this —skin game! Skin game!
"JILL. [Rushing to him] It's not you, Dodo; it's not you, beloved Dodo.
"HILLCRIST. It is me. For I am, or should be, master in this house!
"MRS. H. I don't understand.
"HILLCRIST. When we began this fight, we had clean hands—are they clean' now? What's gentility worth if it can't stand fire?"
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June 10, 2021 - June 13, 2021.
Purchased June 14, 2013.
Kindle Edition, 116 pages
Published May 17th 2012
(first published 1920)
Original Title
The Skin Game
ASIN:- B0084B3X4W
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June 09, 2021 - June 13, 2021.
Purchased June 08, 2021.
Kindle Edition, 258 pages
Published March 24, 2011
(first published July 20th 2006)
ASIN:- B004TOWDWG
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