Love Letters

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A re-written version of its author's farce "The Bloomsbury Burglars". It opens with the entry of a couple of thievish window-cleaners into the bedroom of a young lady who is about to dress for a ball. The men first get on her bed and then under it, when from this hiding place they witness a painful scene between her and a jilted lover who comes into the room, says he must prevent her intended marriage with his rival, and will show her compromising letters to the latter unless she accedes to his demands. By the aid of the burglars help is summoned; and the brutal lover is got rid of, after which the thieves are hired by the girl's aunt to steal from the scamp the compromising letters. A subsequent scene shows the villain discovering the plot by which he is threatened, and the action, and the action then passes to his own house where the burglars then accomplish their task after much pantomimic business, but are rewarded by arrest. Most of the fun is preposterous in its melodramatic burlesque, but is otherwise unobjectionable. The scene however pp 7-12, in which the burglars get into the heroine's bed, vulgarly discuss her garments, and "cuddle" one another, after one of them has donned her nightdress, must be modified; while the lines marked on p7 must be omitted, and the girl's subsequent undressing pp 9 and 10 must be minimized. Ernest A. Bendall