Hobson's Choice

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A domestic comedy of the "Slice of Life" order, illustrating the revolt of the younger generation against the older. Hobson, a tippling but prosperous old boot maker in Salford, has three daughters, all of whom are so useful in his business that he keeps them tied to his shop, and hates the idea of their marriage. Against his tyranny the eldest daughter daughter, Maggie, whom he has considered to be safely "on the shelf" because she is thirty, suddenly rebels, and she practically compels the cleverest workman in the shop to marry her; and most of the sordid humour of the play springs from the masterful young woman's management, first of her father, then of her reluctant bridegroom. To this latter she behaves as benevolent schoolmistress, and sets him to do his lessons on their wedding night until she appears at the sitting room door in her nightgown, takes him by the ear and leads him off to bed. Under Maggie's able influence the pair soon build up a business, the rivalry of which - combined with his now unrestrained drinking - brings Hobson to the verge of ruin; from which he is ultimately rescued by Maggie's adroit trickery, which incidentally gains husbands for her younger sisters and leaves her to be "Hobson's Choice". Clever but hard study of rather disagreeable provincial folk, but without offence [...]