Pen

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

Mr Vachell calls his play a comedy, but it is altogether farcical in conception. Lady Penelope Brading is a beautiful girl with peculiar ideas. She believes in secret marriages and in husband and wife only meeting once a week, secretly. Five people want to marry her, a sportsman, a peer, a minor poet, an American Millionaire and the Jam of Jugpore. She says they are all nice men but not good enough and could improve each other, and pairs off the sportsman with the poet, the American with the Peer for that purpose. In Act II the results of the process are comically exhibited and then Pen confesses that she is secretly married, refusing to say to whom. In Act III, she has wired to her aunt, the Duchess, announcing a baby, still in her maiden name. The Jam has gone back to India, but each of the other four tell the Duchess in private that he is the husband and father to save Pen's reputation. Then she arrives and after, first, the Jam has been suspected - with speculations on the Duchess's part as to the baby's colour which might not please everybody but are really a matter of taste - and then the guardian, it turns out that the man is after all the young peer. The end is rather tame but the piece rattles on pleasantly enough. The only matter to which exception might be taken is the "Jam of Jugpore". He is rather funny and talks slang, but is not offensive or unkindly ridiculous. I do not know if the Jam of Nawanagar is meant, there is no particular reason to suppose it. I do not think any Indian's susceptibilities could be offended, but if the question is considered the references are ActI p.p.20 (bottom), 31 and 32. At the bottom in handwriting: The character of the Indian Prince has been entirely eliminated [...]